Mosman Park

We've been in our temporary home for a week now - the City Beach house is empty (and very very clean thanks to Simon's hard work), our storage shed is full, and we're living out of our Canada suitcases in a furnished house in Mosman Park. We celebrated our last night with the keys of the City Beach house on Thursday with fish and chips at Floreat Beach (very cold - not a soul around), and our 10th wedding anniversary last night at an Italian restaurant (Maretti)around the corner. Harrison got a guernsey to this dinner and the chef was really good with his gluten free requirements. They make their own desserts there - and Harrison has decided that creme brulee is his favourite dessert of all time (though he did manage to con Simon into also sharing the chocolate mousse with him).

Hopefully we get a few days R&R after the frantic pace of the packing etc over the last couple of weeks. We managed to combine having a baby with moving to Canada, and selling our Brisbane house (not yet unconditional, but the contract has been signed). One positive is that the house Simon wanted to buy over here is off the market, so we can't add buying a house to the list of things we have on our plate!

Looks like the new Science Library will be handed over on or around the day I give birth... If I'm not otherwise engaged I'll drop in late this week to have a last glance. Sounds like the plans for the Charles Darwin exhibition in the foyer of the new library when it opens are going amazingly well - wish I was going to be here in July to see it.

R & R

Well, it's taken 4 days, but today I've been able to have a relatively relaxed day - just baking and icing some cup cakes for Harrison's last day at day care, making a few calls, and catching up on emails. I'm about to go and have my first afternoon nap in about 3 months! Gotta love this maternity leave.

Last day

Today is my last day at work until May 2010.  Nearly finished all the things on my to do list.  Kind of wish I was starting work again on Monday now that everything is tidied and squared away!  I have a week to myself next week, so hope to do lots of exercise, resting, and a bit of packing for Canada. 

2 days to go

Only 2 more days of work to go.  The to do list is still looking impossibly long, I am getting increasingly exhausted, and there may be no way I can walk away from this job with a clear conscience....

 

New plans

I’m 30 weeks now, and still feeling good.  We’ve had a change of plans for the birth – we’re now staying in Perth and having the baby at St John of God hospital instead of in Toowoomba.  My GP will deliver the baby, which I’m really looking forward to.  We’ll extend our lease a bit in the City Beach house, and move into a house in Mosman Park for the last month we’re in Perth.  It takes a lot of the pressure off us in terms of the time frame for packing, though it does make for a few horrendous flying days with a 5 year old and a 2 week old baby.  We’ll go to Brisbane, stay for a day to recover from the first flight, then go to Vancouver, stay for another day, then go to Victoria.  It will be tiring, but once we’re there we are all on leave, with no places to be or things to do, so hopefully we can just concentrate on getting into the new time zone and getting ourselves settled.

 

New Science Library

We had a tour of the unfinished UWA Science Library on Friday. It's looking good, though there's a fair bit of work to do. Seems so BIG at the moment. The furniture selection is fabulous. Very high end and stylish - but of course it's not in the building yet. I spent a fair bit of time on the weekend working on the 5000 metres of fixed book shelving - how wide each bay is, how many shelves are in each bay, where the reference collection, quartos and folios go, how much room there is if we shelve at 80% full ... We don't have all 900 mm shelves, but some are 600mm, 1050mm or 1200mm. A bit unusual, but it's so our shelves fit around pillars and look like they're of a uniform length. We also don't have all bays with 7 tiers of shelving. Most are 7, but we have some 6 tiers, and quartos are 5 tiers. Makes the calculations nice and complex!

Next job is to get my staff to fill in how many mm of space each call number from each of the 5 collections we're merging takes up so that we can tell the removalists where to put all the books. And this is before we even look at the 8000 metres or so of shelving for journals!

Above is a photo of Friday's tour group. I'm in the red shirt - can you tell I'm 7 months pregnant? Jill is next to me in black . She's doing my job while I'm on maternity leave.

Daylight savings

Our third year of trial daylight savings ends on Saturday night/Sunday morning (Simon’s birthday) in WA.  We won’t be here for the referendum to decide whether to make daylight savings permanent in WA.  I’ve found it great for evening walks after Harrison’s in bed (it’s too difficult for us to get ready for work and day care AND fit in a walk in the mornings, but pretty easy for me to leave Simon doing the bedtime story while I hit the pavement in the evenings).  It was lovely over Christmas when we could have friends over and have the kids running around the backyard while the adults relaxed.  We haven’t had a problem getting H to bed in daylight.  Many millions of people are putting kids to bed in countries where the sun sets at 10pm or later in summer without any difficulty.

Back to normal?

After 4 and a half weeks of incredibly high stress, this morning we passed the baton to the rest of Simon’s family to deal with the crisis.  I’m sure Simon will continue to be involved by phone, but the family in Qld will be able to bear most of the burden from today onwards.  Simon is absolutely exhausted – and has to give a 2 hour lecture to Masters students today.  Once that’s over, he could well sleep for a week!

On hold

We’ve had a few weeks of family crisis over here (not our own little family, thankfully), but it has meant lots of guests from Qld, and weeks of late nights and worry.  Not sure when it will be over, but things are a gradually settling down and we’re trying to get back into something resembling a normal life.  There is still heaps to organise for Canada, and lots more to catch up on at work after having both had several weeks of either no work or very broken episodes of work.  We’ve got 7 weeks to go in Perth, I’m now 6 months pregnant, and our own lives have been put on hold for a while, but we’ll get there.  Simon had borne the brunt of it, and is emotionally and physically exhausted. 

Apology Day

It’s one year today since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to Australia’s indigenous people.

More adventures in the west

We can keep calling this blog our adventures in the wild west - it will just be the west of Canada for a while. Our plans for Simon's long service leave and sabbatical are coming together. We have a lease on a house in Oak Bay, Victoria (Vancouver Island) from the end of June, and have tentatively booked our flights. My leave is approved too, so there's nothing stopping us now. Just a lot of packing up and organising to do before we leave Perth in late April. We'll spend 8 weeks in Toowoomba on route to Canada, and while we're there, acquire a new baby - hopefully on time and trouble free so that I'm fit to fly 2 weeks after the due date.

Babies galore

Rose and Andrew had a little boy (Harrison Luke) on November 14. He was 10 pounds 5 oz, so not so little! That makes 4 boys for them. Rose got Harry into a good sleep routine very quickly, and seems to be doing very well.

Greg and Barb had a baby girl (Zara - just under 9 pounds) on Tuesday, which makes them a family of 5. Both families did renovations prior to the births - seems like we're hard wired to want to do these things when we're pregnant. After being quite happy renting here, and keeping our Brisbane house rented out, Simon and I are suddenly talking about buying a "renovator's delight" in Perth, even though it would be very stressful at this stage in our lives, and we're leaving for Canada in a few months. We seem compelled to put down roots.

We're looking forward to catching up with both families and their new babies when we're back in Qld on the Australia Day long weekend for Mum and Dad's 50th wedding anniversary celebrations. It will also be the first time we see Denis and Tracey's little one.

Stella and John had their second baby - Annabel (6lb 4 oz) on 29 December also.

Festivities

We had our Science Christmas party a couple of weeks ago. We chose the park in front of the Biol Sciences Library, which the VC also chose for the University's party last Friday. Purely by coincidence, the day before our party, 2 big piles of soil were delivered to the venue, which by the day before the VC's party, had been transformed into some gorgeous new gardens. However, we just had the piles of dirt.... Nonetheless it was a beautiful afternoon. Everyone brought food to share, partners and kids came along, boules was played, soccer balls flew around the lawn, and our green mascot (Kermit) did the honours as secret Santa.

Just for fun

I was reading a librarian’s blog today and saw that he had done the Jung Typology Test, so I thought I’d see if it came up with anything interesting.  I came out as an INFJ, which I always do, both on the web and in properly administered Myers Briggs Type Indicator courses.  This, of course means I’m introverted (quiet, private), intuitive (not good on detail, look at big picture), feeling (make decisions on value/the effect on people rather than logic), and judging (a list maker and a planner – not good at off the cuff “lets fly to Morocco today” decisions).  No surprises there, I guess.

My suggested careers were –

·         Literature/Writer    

·         Humanities         

·         Web Design     

·         Philosophy   

·         Archaeology 

·         Religious Education  

·         Psychology      

·         Counselling

Not sure where science librarian comes into it...  Funnily enough, even though this is supposedly the rarest of the “types” (about 1% of the population), Simon and I are both this type.  I think he must score higher than me on the J scale, as his use of a diary and bring up system is quite amazing.  While I admit I have a small obsession with my personal labelling machine and am addicted to my PDA, my in tray and task list still both get overflowing with alarming regularity.  And the writing thing is obviously a strong point for Simon – Mr “Robert Street Prize”.   

Visit from Ryan

Mel and Tim came over on Sunday, with 7 week old Ryan. Harrison was a bit nervous and shy at first, but was soon all over the baby, patting him, tickling him, coo-ing at him, and choosing books that Ryan might like to read. We lent Mel a few Mem Fox and Lynley Dodd books to try out on Ryan. After indulging in the gluten free jam drops Harrison had helped make for morning tea, we all went for a walk to the beach.

I've been getting into a bit of a fitness routine (for the past week, anyway) whereby I go for a walk up along the walking path beside the Boulevard and the dunes up beside the West Coast Highway.

Making plans

Harrison has some very firm plans about his adult life already.  He wants to marry 2 people (Lillian and Gemma from day care), and is aware of the legal ramifications of bigamy, so he intends to move to a country that allows you to have 2 wives.  Ever the romantic, he intends to buy them flowers on their wedding day.  I think that implies it’s the only time they’re ever getting flowers.

We are also to move to this country with the liberal marriage laws, as he wants to always live next door to us.  But we’re not getting too gooey eyed over that sentiment – he just wants us close by so that we can babysit his 2 kids (Hugo and Tracey) while he goes out to dinner with his wives.

Visitors from Toowoomba

We’ve just had a lovely visit from Mum and Dad.  They stayed for 2 weeks, and did a fair bit of tripping around (and a little bit of getting lost).  I suggested they stay at New Norcia in the monk’s guest house, which they did – and loved.  I think they would have stayed 2 nights had they known how interesting the place was going to be.  We all went up to Kalbarri (Mum and Dad took a few more days than us).  The widlflowers were spectacular up there.  We had a lovely meal again at the Grass Tree Cafe where the chef is very on the ball in terms of Harrison’s diet.  Dad indulged in the famous Kalbarri Rock Lobster.  They also visited the zoo with us, and we had the obligatory buffet at the Pines at Observation City.  On their last afternoon we all went to the Perth Royal Show where Dad naturally met up with various saddlers and leather work enthusiasts and got orders for whips.

Harrison just adored them both of course, and loved playing “roughing up” with Dad.  He went into their room in the morning and gently touched Mum’s cheek or Dad’s hand to see if they were awake.  We made a very interesting balloon dog using multiple balloons tied together with string (I have no skill in balloon sculpture!). Harrison drew the dog’s face, including a patch around one eye.  He was very pleased with it until one of the legs burst.

In a couple of weeks we get our next Toowoomba visitor – Simon’s mum.  Simon and Harrison are heading down to Esperance for a long weekend with Marg during that visit.

Ryan Sercombe

Mel and Tim’s baby arrived yesterday (Ryan James 8 pound 2 oz, 50cm long), and Harrison and I went to see him when he was just 5 hours old. Needless to say he’s very, very cute. Looks like he’s going to have Mel’s lovely thick dark hair. Harrison was absolutely besotted with him, and very gentle. He spent the evening at home putting Pooh bear under his shirt, lying down on the couch and ‘delivering’ him through a cut in his tummy, then breast feeding him.

More cuteness

Simon has just discovered this blog (a sign that he’s well and truly emerged from the fog of overwork), and suggested I record –

The kneecap search

Last night Simon and Harrison were having a “super-shower” which means they were both in our big bath/shower together.  Harrison leaned back in the bath with one leg raised, and started lifting his foot up and down, looking at the way his knee moved, and talking to himself – “look, kneecap, now you see it, now you don’t, now you see it, now you don’t, now you see it, now you don’t....”.

Concern for Grandma

This morning it was drizzling, and Harrison said to Simon – It’s starting to rain a bit.  We haven’t had rain for a while.  I hope grandma’s safe inside.  He also asked the other day if he could live next door to grandma when he grows up so that he can visit her every day.  AND he told us he loves her because she’s so old (she’s only 72!), and old people have floppy skin, which he loves.

Space man

Some time ago, Harrison added space man to the long list of professions he’s going to have when he grows up.  When asked why, he said it was because space men don’t have to get married.  When asked why that was, he said that’s because there are no girls in space.

It must be noted that he did relent and decide that I was allowed to share his rocket and go into space with him.  Mums don’t count as girls, obviously.

Taste test

The other week Harrison came home from day care, and as usual loitered around the front steps looking for slugs.  Suddenly there was an ear splitting wail and he comes running up saying he’s hurt his tongue because he licked a slug!  Apparently he just wanted to see what they tasted like.

This morning, he was stomping down the front stairs and looked back at Simon, announcing “For several months now, I haven’t been licking any slugs.”

Just gorgeous.