Impromptu Photography Shoot - the Australian War Memorial

I have never been a huge fan of the War Memorial.  I don't like the insight into what war is, the reminder of how many lives have been taken in the name of...well, whatever the purpose of war is.  Freedom to exist in the form you choose to exist in I suppose.  But sometimes I find myself there and I'm always overwhelmed with the mix of emotions.  It is both beautiful and terrible, one of our most sacred sites.

I've never photographed there before and I didn't have my camera with me this time either because I was there on a mission with one of my good friends, Miss Kim, who was looking for information about a relative of hers, George Hamon.  But I was compelled to take some photos outside with my camera phone.

We found George's name on the honour roll because he was killed in action.

Lest We Forget

Charlotte's room renovation - Part 2

So what prompted the moment of actual action on the room front?  Well half of our little family headed to Coffs Harbour for a week's holiday.

Given Rowan gets migraines from nail polish and baby Evan is only a few months old, I thought having them out of the house while I painted was probably a good idea.  It also happened to line up on a week when the kids were with their Dad.  The timing couldn't have been more perfect.

My Dad tells me that when you have big plans the Universe will send something to test your commitment to them.  This time the Universe sent the plague.  Since I wasn't going to get another opportunity like this for a good long while, plans had to go ahead.  A one-day job turned into three and suddenly I was heading up the ladder in between head spins and chewing pseudoephidrine the way some people knock back Skittles.  I kind of felt like if the Universe was testing me I should have passed after the first day and the sickness would give way but no such luck.

First up I cleaned out all the furniture and went through all her stuff.  I only took one photo to record the horror of this particular process.  Behold, under Madam's bed...

Bleugh.  Way, way, way past the time when this should have been done.  Next up was prep lock for the ceiling.  Here's what it looked like after two coats of paint;

Two coats of ceiling paint went over the top of that.  You can still see some of the worst bits very faintly if you know where to look but otherwise it looks like a perfectly normal ceiling.

Next came patching the walls and cutting in around the edges with the paint.  

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The colour, in case you're wondering, is Taubman's purplicious.  I was worried it might be too dark but the room has enough windows to make it light enough to pull it off.  Here's the end result;

So I mentioned in Part 1 of the room renovation blog that the carpet had some issues.  I hadn't been planning to do anything about it but when the room was painted it quickly became obvious that I couldn't put everything back on top of the feral carpet, I just couldn't.  So I called a carpet cleaning guy who came and took one look...

...and was immediately like, "Lady, no, I am not cleaning that."  First of all he wasn't sure the cleaning process would do much about the worst of the coloured stuff.  Second, he was pretty sure that ominous large waxy stain we've been hiding under a bed for five years would "melt and spread" and finally, because the carpet is wool he said the amount of water needed to clean it would make the whole lot turn brown and smell bad.  "I don't know what your finances are like," he shrugged, "But I think we'll both sleep better tonight if we agree I'm not going to clean this carpet and you're going to find a few extra dollars to buy a new one instead."

This takes place at four o'clock on a Thursday afternoon.  I have an hour to try and find someone who can sell me carpet and lay it the next day because Kat and Rowan are due back Saturday and I'm guessing they'd rather all their bedrooms weren't filled up with Charlotte's furniture and belongings.  Long story short I managed it. J & M flooring solutions in Weston agreed to supply and fit 100% pure wool Berber carpet the very next morning for $300 - roughly double what cleaning it would have cost.  Oh.  My.  God.   It's beautiful.

So this takes place on Friday morning and I'm still completely trashed with the plague.

Thursday nights I always have the kids and so they've seen the new room and were present while the carpet was laid.

It's also school holidays.  As soon as the carpet was down I planned to take them over to their grandparents' house for the day so I could die a quiet death in bed but Charlotte was desperate for her room to be finished.  Please Mama, please, please can we finish it?  I'll even help you with the furniture...

How do you say no to that?  You can't unless you're dead.  True to their word they helped.  Little man carting books back to the bookshelf and Madam powering up her little arms for some quality furniture moving.  So here you go.  Some shots of her new room with all the revamped furniture back in place;

There are a few more loose ends to go.  The money for her blinds went on the new carpet instead so, for now, we're stuck with the crappy aluminium ones.  I also need to make her a name plate for her door and a valance to hide the base of her bed (a job for this weekend).  But I did manage to buy her some new manchester on sale and she is the happiest little girl, spending all her time in there and cleaning it before bed every night.  

A run down of the renovation costs for those interested;

Premixed plaster repair - $15
1L Zinsser 1 * 2 * 3 prep lock - $25
4L British Paints Ceiling White - $31
Taubman's low sheen Endure in Purplicious - $70
Taubman's semi gloss in Soft Velvet - $80
Berber carpet supplied and installed - $300
Coffee table from tip shop - $5
Bedside table from tip shop - $10

Brass handles for bedside table $12
Quilt cover set - $14 from Kmart
King Single fitted sheet - $4.20 from Best and Less

All up, just under $600.  Stay tuned for the finishing touches when I get there.

Charlotte's room renovation - Part 1

This is one of the most recent photos I have of my oldest baby.

She's growing up.  There have been changes.  Physical and behavioral changes but she's been shifting for a while now from being a kid to being more of a teenager.  Which is hard to take when you consider she's only eight.  And still my baby.

But there it is.  These days she asks me for spicy laksa instead of McDonalds, she wants girl's nights to watch bad eighties movies and paint her toe nails with me, she has definitive opinions on fashion and she has been asking me for a long time to please, please, please fix up her room because it's too babyish.  And she has a point.  I did nothing to her room when we moved in.  It was painted pink and green (not as terrible as it sounds, I swear) and the wardrobe didn't have doors but it was passable.  The carpet was not spectacular - in particular there was one enormous waxy stain that we didn't even want to think about, but we simply popped her bed over the top.  Face crayons, oil pastels and a variety of other contaminants have since added to that particular situation.  At some point her toddler brother made it onto the top bunk with her set of alphabet scrapbooking stamps and this happened;

When you're three a ceiling is mostly just the biggest canvas you've ever had the good fortune to lay your stamps on.  So yes, the time had come for a change.  Let me walk you through some of the "before" issues.  First up, here's behind her bedroom door.  You can see the green paint and you can also see that when they put the wardrobe in they didn't bother to fix up the plaster and we still have bare metal mesh happening.  They didn't even have a frame for doors around the wardrobe cavity so that raw pine there is something I put in myself.  Embarrassingly that was roughly two years ago.

This is the other side of the wardrobe cavity.  Raw pine frame again and now you see the pink.  The butterflies are the only decoration I've added myself.  And spend a moment contemplating the industrial feel of those aluminium blinds.  Mmmm, institutional and broken.

The draws there are a project from a long time ago, shown on my other blog.  You can sort of see the corner of the TV table in this photo and I wish I'd got a better photo because it was in a terrible state.  But it was also scheduled for a similar revamp to the draws.  This photo also gives you an idea of just how untidy the whole place was.  No pride, no respect and honestly, who can blame her?

 Her bedroom corner.  More revamped tip shop furniture as a bedside table and more of the lovely green.

So there you have it, the blank canvas as it were.  Definitely time for a big change.  Stay tuned for part two, the revamp.

Back in the hot seat

It's been a while since I wrote anything.  Writing is something I love.  It's cathartic, it's motivational and energising...but it's also something that takes effort and frankly my efforts have been elsewhere of late.  It took a really long time to get my feet under me.  There are still days when I feel overwhelmed.  But I miss blogging.  I miss writing about my life.  I miss the dialogue that starts when you bare yourself for the world to see.  I feel like I'm ready for that kind of exposure again...and the sometimes negative comments that come with it.  It's been a pretty epic couple of months and this week it culminated with me, knocked over from the flu, still putting some pretty big runs on the board.

Consent orders are through, our financial settlement is finalised.  This week I negotiated a new mortgage, in my name alone, with the bank.  All those zeros next to my name.  It's daunting.  I really must get around to putting a "donate here" link on this blog in case anyone ever feels compelled to throw some dollars my way.  Emotional stripping - nowhere near as lucrative as the real deal.

I finished renovating my daughter's room (mostly.  More on that later).  I finished organising my room.  I made a catch-up book for my ex brother-in-law.  I spent most of yesterday asleep because I overdid it and knocked myself out.  Tonight the big kid has a friend coming for a sleepover.  I have sewing to do.  It's all happening.  I'm up to day 28 of my second shot at the 100 Happy Days campaign.  This time I'm determined to finish it.

I don't want to promise anything I can't deliver but I am hoping this blog becomes active again and that I can find the time to post regularly.  Let the insanity commence!

Day Nine - My Dad

THIS GUY.  After we went to Europe together and the state of my life and my mind became apparent he's taken more of an interest than ever before.  He feels like he dropped the ball - as though my misery and the failure of my marriage are something that he could have prevented.  I know he worries about me and I hate it.  74, living on a farm and managing on a pension, he constantly asks me if I need financial help and when I say no he peppers me with discount fuel vouchers, home grown produce and presents.  It makes my heart ache.  Today he brings me marigolds for my daughter's garden, peaches from his orchard and the ever-present fuel vouchers.  He grins at me over lunch, three teeth left on the bottom.  "Get yourself a chest freezer.  We've got a sheep with your name on it."  Organic grass fed lamb coming my way.  And then he shyly asks me if he can have prints of the photos I took in Europe.  Sure Dad, any enlargements?  Only you and me on the boat in Brugge.  The one where you look like yourself for the first time in years.  And maybe one of me with the brothers.  You got it Dad.

Our trip to Europe was an eye-opener for my Dad.  I'd obviously been covering things well because he knew I was unhappy and that there were issues in my marriage but he had no idea.  Charles lost control about a week into my trip away and there was no way for me to hide.  Dad saw the way I couldn't stop crying, he read the emails full of vitriol.  Rebow, he said firmly, this is abuse and you cannot allow this to continue.  I will not allow it to continue. I nodded, agreed not to speak to Charles anymore while we were away and started putting myself back together,  A week before we were due to come home Dad started to cry over his breakfast because he said he'd forgotten what I'm really like.  He hadn't seen me so happy and relaxed in years and he said I looked young again.  Like myself.  He begged me to not go back to Charles and the four-day long headache in the lead-up to the flight home told me he was right.



I decided to lay it out for Charles.  Apologise for the things I was sorry for and offer to start new.  I may as well not have bothered - he said he was done and as much as I was devastated, I was also relieved.

Dad calls at least once a week to make sure I'm okay.  It's a part of my shame that I make him worry about me.  I should be looking after him and not the other way around.  My God but I love him.  And for him as well as my kids I am strong and present in this world.  I keep this photo handy to remind me of why I can't go back and must never tolerate that kind of behaviour again.  Because I like being happy and I hate breaking my father's heart.

Day Eight - Charity

I've been thinking for a few days now about how to photograph the concept of charity - something I'm relying more heavily on these days due to circumstance.  This is an obvious representation of charity - beautiful things bought from the Salvos that I would never be able to afford brand new.  But there's a more subtle charity in this picture - those items are on the front seat of the CX7 my friend Erin loaned me while my car is out for the count.  It has been a sweet ride but tonight it goes back to her and Clare, a friend who knows very little about my driving ability, other than that I most recently annihilated wildlife with my own vehicle, is lending me yet another replacement car.  The final bit of charity in this photo is that those items were photographed with a phone and paid with money that were returned to me by another single mother when she found them where they'd fallen out of my bag inside the store.  I almost knocked her over when I hugged her in that heady rush of relief.  Today I am grateful for charity in all its forms.

As a side note to this photo - everything in this shot was practically brand new.  Almost no wear on the shoes and the lining in the handbag still bright and beautiful.  So what we have here is an Ooh la la handbag RRP $100, Laura Benini boots RRP $200+ and Diana Ferrari shoes $100+.  Over four hundred dollars of quality merchandise (so they say) for about $15.

Day Seven - My Whole World

These two are my whole world.  Having children means your life changes.  It isn't yours anymore.  You can't quit, you can't run away, you can't even spend the day in bed while they watch television purely because you're miserable.  But then...when you see a photo like this, why would you want to?

This was the day I couldn't really get out of bed.  Hours ticked by and I made token efforts.  Getting up to make a sandwich or disengage a fight but it was a token effort.  I was really struggling.  After a while this sort of caper starts to seem self-indulgent.  I remember being on the receiving end and I hate doing it to my kids.  So I clawed my way out of the hole and into my swimmers and drove to the closest place we could swim.  They never seem to notice how hard that can be for me - they just think I'm this awesome mother who does all this cool stuff with them.  It shames me.  Towards the end I was fading and Charlotte took over.  Taking her brother, helping him float, playing the little mother effortlessly while I laughed and took photos.

When she was born I realised that I owed her the best life I could give her which, to my mind, means being a stable foundation.  Suicide is forever off the table for me because I gave away the right to that when I had children.  I resent the hell out of that agreement with myself bitterly some days.  I want to check out. I've had enough.  They are all that holds me here - my anchor in the world.  And even then sometimes I have to be reminded that I'm bound.  For them I live.  For them I rise and fight...and wait for the day when it won't be so bloody hard anymore.