City Beach sunset

I took Simon to dinner at Oceanus restaurant at City Beach on the 12th - to celebrate his native title book coming out, and also as an early Valentines Day dinner. It was a very hot night (and astonishingly, the restaurant isn't airconditioned!). All that glass directly facing the west, with the tables positioned for sunset viewing made for an uncomfortable dining experience. We did have a nice meal (the Asian influenced tasting plate we shared was lovely, Simon's steak was apparently great, but his dessert was simply scoops of a readily available brand of gelato, and mine was a bit uninspired).

Best seller?

Simon’s native title book has sold almost 200 copies in the first month (which is about $24,000 worth). Pretty good for a “heavy” academic book.

Return of the intrepid traveller

Simon had a week off to do some solo driving and camping (his favourite type of holiday). After to-ing and fro-ing about whether to drive north to Kalbarri and Exmouth to seek out good spots for us to holiday in July, or to escape the heat and go south, he decided Exmouth was too hot, and he would go south. He covered a good chunk of the south west – Margaret River, Pemberton, Augusta, Walpole, Denmark, Albany and the Stirling Ranges.

He did a very long driving day on Friday to get back early (he was expected on Saturday), stopping in at Bunbury to buy me a teeny tiny camera to thank me for letting him have this time off. I absolutely love it. It’s a Panasonic (like our other digital camera) except that whereas the other one looks and feels like a “real” camera and has a 10x optical zoom, this one will slip into a pocket or a small handbag and is easy to take out and about.

We went to Hillarys on Sunday morning for a swim (it was HOT!). We also went to Mel and Tim’s to meet their new puppy Coco on Sunday afternoon. H just LOVED the puppy. I think he totally exhausted her, as she’s only 6 weeks old and chasing a 3 year old around is hard work for her.

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Simon has another 2 days leave up his sleeve, so is thinking of taking a 4 day weekend. I’m wondering what kind of gadget I can wrangle out of him for that trip…. Better put my thinking cap on!

Into the wild

Simon and I had a rare night out last Friday (thank you Marg!) and saw Into the Wild. The main character (Christopher McCandless played by Emile Hirsch) reminded me so much of Simon at 20 (in fact, in real life he was only 2 years older than us)... Quite by coincidence I had just started re-reading Walden, so I was a bit in the zone. Walden is, for those who don't know, where Thoreau went "into the wild" in the 1840s, what Simon and I discussed on the night we met, where he proposed to me, and one of the inspirations for Chris, the main character in the movie, to abandon society and take off.

All through the movie I was wondering if Simon would suddenly declare a burning desire to cut up his credit card, don a backpack and hit the road. Of course, the whole starving to death in Alaska thing did bring us somewhat back to reality.

Directed by Sean Penn, this is beautifully shot, and though it does make Chris into some sort of Jesus creature at times, it's quite haunting.

For the record

Doesn't seem like much is changing, though the stress levels are markedly reduced.
Sat 11th - Simon worked all day.
Sun 12th - Simon worked a few hours from home (but was in communication with us, which is an improvement)

For the record

Not great process... 4th August, Simon worked all day. 5th August, he worked for the afternoon.

For the record

Simon has almost finished his record 4 or 5 years of extreme workload. So after being a de facto single mother for 3 years, the tide is starting to turn. I'm going to keep a record now, of the time he spends at home on the weekends, until it becomes completely normal for him to leave work on a Friday and not think about it again until Monday.

7/8 July - in Brisbane, a couple of hours of work
14/15 July - in Brisbane, no work
21/22 July - home on Saturday, working from home on Sunday
28/29 July - home, but working Saturday afternoon, and a couple of hours Sunday
4/5 August - stay tuned....

Stop singing, Donkey!

Simon was singing along to Bernard Fanning while he was driving Harrison to daycare the other morning, and he kept singing after they'd arrived and he was leaning into the back seat of the car, putting Harrison's shoes on. He was just thinking what a lovely father-son moment they were sharing, when Harrison burst out at the top of his voice with "Stop singing, Donkey!" (a la Shrek 1).

Health houses and handbags

Mum and Dad have both been keeping the Toowoomba medical fraternity busy lately. Dad with his diabetes (he's now on insulin), and Mum getting tested for a hereditary thyroid condition that it seems most of her family has. Dad also has to go back to the sleep specialist as his sleep study showed up some issues.

Paul and Anna have moved into their house, but their blog doesn't yet show the updated photos (see the link on the side bar). Madonna and Peter are also in their new house, which apparently is beautiful (they raised an art deco home and built under it).

Simon's marking exam papers at the moment, as well as looking at final proofs of his admin lawbook, and doing the update on his native title book. Plus he's going to Brisbane in mid July to teach an intensive Masters class at QUT. The good news is that he has a fairly light teaching load next semester, and those books should be finished once and for all in the next month. So we look forward to seeing him at dinner and on the weekends. Harrison is starting to think Daddy is just someone who visits occasionally!

I bought two dresses for Denis and Tracey's wedding (a girl needs choice, after all!), and I'm going to try my hand at making a handbag for them. Might have to ring Rosie for advice.

Mothers Day

Had a nice Mothers Day - Simon has been working very long hours including all day on Mother's day, but he did manage to buy some exquisite orchids for me on Saturday evening. Marg also bought over some tulips when she came for dinner on Sunday. Harrison made a card at daycare. He drew pictures of each of his grandparents in the respective mothers day cards for Grand-mum and Grandma. He's getting quite good at drawing people - he does eyes with pupils, hair, smiles, and very long arms and legs. He takes it all very seriously.

Simon's mum arrived on Sunday afternoon, and I cooked roast pork, as it's her favourite dish. My first time at cooking roast pork (being vegetarian and all), but it seemed to work out well. Marg brought dessert over via Herdsman - the most delicious summer berry crumble and Connesieur icecream.

Funny thing happened on Sunday morning. Simon spoke to his mother before she got on the plane in Brisbane, and afterwards said to me that she seemed a bit disappointed that he was going to be working long hours during her visit. I asked if he remembered to say happy mothers day to her, and he hadn't - so he called her back. He had a 5 minute conversation, during which she said she didn't think he'd forgotten to wish her a happy mothers day. At the end of the conversation she said "bye Dan". Simon pointed out that he was her OTHER son - so she said "well in that case you did forget mothers day!". Simon calls me back to report this conversation, and gets off the phone. 5 minutes later he calls back sheepishly and says... "I might have kind of forgotten to say happy mothers day to you as well..."

And to continue the saga of Youngs working far too hard. Marg has also been working until 1am and all weekend in her new job (which is supposed to be less onerous than her old one!). I had arranged that I'd pick her mum up from the airport and drop into Marg's house for afternoon tea on the way home. We arrived at 3:30ish, and Marg comes to the door still in her pyjamas. She'd been working all weekend, and hadn't showered or eaten at all that day... After a while at her house, Mum whispers to me - "do you think we're getting a cup of tea?", so I make one. We take one mouthful of tea, and realise the milk is off! It's a week past it's used by date. But she did bring a fabulous dessert and wine that night, which more than makes up for the tea... And she gave me wonderful flowers and said beautiful things about my mothering.

Simon's book

Simon's native title book is now being advertised on the Federation Press website. He's in the "proof" stage for both books, and consequently pretty busy at the moment. But hopefully it will all be over soon.

Shut the door!

Yesterday afternoon Harrison heard a car arrive in the garage and got all excited at the prospect of Leah arriving.  I told him I thought it was Dad home, and he was insistent that it had to be Dad AND Leah.  Harrison opened the front door to see his Dad getting out of the car, and said "Hi Dad, is Leah there?".  When he got a negative reply, he simply shut the door on his poor old Dad and went back to whatever he was doing.

Birthday

It was Simon's birthday yesterday, and there were lots of celebrations. Harrison proudly got Simon's presents out of their hiding spot first thing in the morning and helped him unwrap them. Then we had a nice fruit platter for breakfast (better than Simon's usual Up'n'Go in the car on the way to work). We had a "special" dinner of pan fried snapper with a caramelised potato and tomato salsa side dish. I had made a gluten free mud cake for his birthday cake, but the ganache hadn't had enough time to cool and solidify, so it was more of a sauce. Leah took some photos of a chocolate covered Harrison looking decidedly drunk, and one where he looked like a vampire with dark chocolate sauce dripping off his mouth. I'll add one to this post when I get a chance. After H had come down from his sugar high and gone to bed, Simon and I went out for coffee while Leah stayed home with Harrison. All in all a nice day.

Visitors galore

Leah is staying with us for a couple of weeks while she finds a house. It's lovely having her to stay, and Harrison is having a ball with her. She's fabulous with kids and seems to have endless capacity for playing games and doing silly voices or actions. That's what comes of having a "theatre person" in the house. Marg and Neil leave on Sunday for their drive across Australia. They should arrive in Perth on Easter Monday and they'll stay with us until their house is ready for habitation. They already have the lease, but they'll need to furnish it before they can move in. And finally, Simon's mum arrives in mid May for about 3 weeks.

Amidst all this excitement we have Simon's birthday tomorrow and Harrison's on May 7th. Harrison and I have done our shopping for Simon's birthday, but he's struggling a bit with the concept of keeping a secret. He told Simon this morning - completely unprompted - that he has a surprise for him AND that it's a DVD. I'd better remember to make the birthday cake tonight.

Book launch

Last night the UWA law school had a book launch for books published in the last 12 months. There were 5 already published, and although Simon's two (the Admin Law one and the Native Title one) aren't yet published, he got a mention as well. We went to dinner to Soda Cafe afterwards (Rachel was babysitting). Still can't quite get used to the price of eating out over here. Everywhere seems to charge like a fine dining establishment. You seem to jump from Subway or suburban Chinese to paying $30 for a main.

Marg's move

Marg and Neil are visiting this weekend - looking for places to live. Marg has given up on the law firm lifestyle (or lack there of), and taken a job as general counsel for a company over here. (Good on her!) She and Neil will be long distance lovers for a while until Neil is able to sort our his business and move over. She's looking at living in Leederville if she can find somewhere nice. As a consequence we're going to dinner perhaps to Anna's Vietnamese tonight... it's to be negotiated as we have to bring Harrison and we're not sure how well he'll go to sleep in his stroller. Simon's voting for Hillarys because there's lots of space, but I'm a bit over the food there. Nothing very interesting and the couple of "real" restaurants are really noisy and expensive. Plus it's very overcast and drizzly today, so walking around the beach and boardwalk isn't very appealing. And of course, it's not in Leederville!

Bread incident

We're back in the swing of things. Work is pretty busy, and I can't decide whether to sit in the library or in the law school (my instincts tell me the law school). Harrison is happy at daycare, but we did have an incident last week where he was given a piece of bread, which triggered some diarohea and vomiting. Not too bad, and it was a genuine accident - the staff have altered some procedures so that it doesn't happen again. It was our first experience of Harrison eating something with gluten in it. We are trying to teach him to ask "is this gluten free" instead of "is this alright for me", but with a toddler it's risky relying on him to be alert enough to avoid the wrong foods just yet.

We recommenced our Pilates/swimming routine on Sat morning. It was actually cool and windy (as opposed to 40 degrees), so Harrison didn't get his paddle. He and Simon played bear caves instead while I exercised. Harrison was the bear - he had a kitchen in his cave and made Simon muffins and cake. Simon's having a bit of a snooze in front of the cricket as I type. He did the vacuuming and cleaning while I pushed H around Lake Monger this morning. Speaking of H, he's just woken up from his nap, and we're off to the zoo shortly.