The Cerebral Mum

Meg from Dipping into the Blogpond, Andrew Boyd from On Blogging Australia and Snoskred from Life in the Country, all of whom I like and respect, have gotten together and created a community space for us!The Aussie Bloggers Forum is now open for registration and the group blog will be launching on January 21st.

I won’t wax lyrical about it here. Go and read Meg’s announcement (my, I’ve been bossy these last couple of days!) and get the lowdown. I hope a few of you will sign up. Even you guys who aren’t Aussies. All are welcome.

Oh, wait. I’ve changed my mind and will wax lyrical. I have a tendency to do that.

I’d just like to say that there are a couple of groups* which have made blogging a wonderful experience for me. One is those I’ve met through Megan and the Carnival Against Child Abuse which Marj runs, and the heart of the other is these guys. A lot of the people I’ve met since embarking on this journey have been because of their community spirit and I feel very fortunate to have crossed paths with them.

I’m already signed up, of course, but under my real name so those of you who know it will know who to look for. For the time being, I’ve decided to keep The Cerebral Mum and that new project I’ve coyly mentioned separate. At some stage I will make a firm decision, but that’s for another post.

Either way, I hope you’ll come to the forum. There are already a lot of great bloggers and great people connecting there. If you don’t know them yet, I promise they are worth meeting.

*NB: There are of course some individuals too. You know who you are.

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It’s too hot.

I don’t know what the temperature was today but this house I live in is a sweatbox. A couple of days of sun and it takes a least a week to cool down to human levels. I am light-headed and my brain is sweltering. I used to love the heat but I haven’t been able to tolerate it since having heat stroke in the first few days of my pregnancy.

So my day was spent lazily on the couch, watching television while Caspar played with a big salad bowl full of water in the middle of the living room floor. This is a great new amusement I’ve found, and he gets to keep cool without me having to take him out to the tiny blow up pool in the yard which I have only twice been able to justify (to myself) putting water in. There’s that pesky little drought, you know.

Besides, the sun is too harsh for his not-quite-baby-anymore skin.

So. The couch. And one of my favourite television shows which I had gotten behind on. I watch pretty much all my television on my DVD now because Big Sis downloads everything I like (and a lot of things I can’t stand). I can’t imagine going back to watching it “live”, wading through the commercials and having to remember what channel and time it’s on so I don’t miss an episode. I always missed episodes and then gave up. I don’t have room in my head to manage that sort of thing.

And the show? ReGenesis.

It’s possibly my No.1, but at the very least it’s in my Top 3.

They’ve completed 3 seasons already, and I just finished watching the 3rd today. They have been signed up for a 4th now but I don’t think it airs here in Australia at all yet. If you see it advertised, I promise it’s worth making the brain space and watching it. In fact, don’t wait. You can buy it on DVD. Go out now and get it.

What? You want to know what it’s about? I don’t think I can do it justice. It’s a science drama, dealing with biotech and genetics and epidemiology at a global level. If you like watching shows like House, you’ll love it. If you like watching shows like 24, you should love it, but it is way smarter than 24. One of the things that sets it apart (besides the absolutely electric cast) is that there are no moral absolutes. It’s sci-fi, but contemporary and plausible, dealing with some real cutting edge technology and all the ethical questions the science we’ve let out of Pandora’s Box raises.

Here’s a review of ReGenesis Season 1. Go out now and get it. Seriously.

I can’t believe I just wrote a post about a TV show.

But it’s too hot.

Er. Edited to fix all the typos and add a post title. Yes, it was that hot. If there are any errors left, I don’t care. Brain still sweltering.

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Dear Blog,

I know that I said I wouldn’t write until after New Year but the days seem to be getting longer. I don’t think I realised how much I would miss you, even though it was I who went away.

A lot has been happening, and I’ve been keeping myself busy. I’ve found other rewarding ways to occupy my time. There have been some awful days and some wonderful days and some dreary, nothing days in between. It’s not that I feel the need to tell you all about them: I have never been a good diarist and my thoughts have always taken priority over the events of my life. But I miss the anchor you provide, that space at the end of the day when my time is yours alone.

On the days when I feel like I have achieved nothing, when I have no motivation at all, I force myself to take care of you and it overrides the purposelessness of all those hours which came before. On the days when I am overflowing with ideas, or words, or pains, or joys, you give me a place to pour them out yet hold them safe.

Often my life lacks a sense of reality. I am not a grounded person. It seems odd that you, living such an abstract existence, are the thing which keeps me earthed. I thought you would be the place where I would take off on those flights of fancy I miss so much. I was wrong about that.

I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.

I’ve worried about the shape you take, I’ve worried about the face you present to the world. I’ve worried about your lack of coherence. Sometimes, I haven’t even liked you.

It turns out that you are not a mirror held up to show me who I am. Just like a person, you are a hall of mirrors. I cannot make you whole and make you Truth. I cannot choose which reflection I will look at: I may see from the corner of my eye something that holds meaning, or something unrecognisable.  I cannot choose what others will see reflected. Some aspect of light may catch them, or they may move on.

So you will be what you are. Just pieces. I cannot write myself like a book. I cannot read myself like a book. I think I asked too much of you and I wore us down. I am an exhausting person. But that’s okay too.  I do not need to worry about how our story ends.

You are a very special medium, and new to me, but you have taught me something. You cannot analyse an unfinished text, like a blog.

Or like a life.

And I miss you, so I’m coming home.

Yours (truly!),

cerebralmum

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Okay. So picture this…

Big Sis is making coffee. She gets the milk out of the fridge. Caspar points at it then walks over to the microwave. She calls out to me that she thinks Caspar might want a bottle. I go into the kitchen and kneel down and say, Are you ready for bed? He nods, then waves at Big Sis and me and says something that sounds a lot like, Bye, before turning around and walking towards the bedroom.

I say, Wait, we have to change your nappy, which I do and then he sits and reads a book while I get his bottle ready. When I’m done, he comes and gets it and toddles off again to wait by the cot so I can lift him in. He waves bye-bye before I’ve even tucked him in.

Is that kid normal? He’s only 14 months old.

I don’t have a lot to compare him to because it’s been a while since I’ve had children his age around me but seriously? I’m pretty sure he’s smarter than the average bear, but he’s more mature than I am!

Definitely a changeling.

Now about those other items listed in the title… At the moment I have a cold; the burning throat, leaky nose, ache and fever kind. Cas does as well. It’s his first one, which I think is fairly impressive. He must have a good immune system and he wasn’t even breast fed.

Also, at the moment I feel swamped. (Or lazy. I’m not sure which.) I haven’t posted any brilliant writing for a while and with Christmas coming (which I’m still not ready for) and a few other responsibilities, I just don’t think it is going to happen. I’m horribly behind on heaps of things, and certainly haven’t been giving the bloggers I love the attention they deserve, so I’m officially announcing that I’m taking a blog break until January 1st.

It’s possible that I’ll be inspired to write something in the meantime, but that can’t be counted on so I’ll just take this opportunity to say thank you to all the people I have encountered through this blog. To all my friends.

You make my world brighter and I really can’t find the words to express my gratitude. You can tell I’m not at full strength by the use of those two clichés in a row, but I mean it sincerely regardless of the phrasing.

So Thank You, and have a wonderfully Merry Christmas. I’ll see you in 2008.

(Seriously… Caspar must be a changeling.)

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“Hey Mum, I need a haircut. This is just a little too Emo.”

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When the time to leave was nearing some of the usual panic set in. I scrabbled around trying to tidy up a little and trying to make sure I had everything I needed. Those voices just wouldn’t shut up; the ones that say everything needs to be perfect before I can do anything for myself, the ones that make me feel guilty for not crossing more things off the lists in my head. In the end I just left, Caspar’s bag well stocked and me without a jacket.

Ms. S, who I would be visiting on Friday, lives on the other side of the city, not far out but far enough to make it a daunting journey. My cousin lives in Elwood, not far from the suburbs I love living in and will hopefully be living in again soon.

Melbourne, in terms of size, is a massive city. The area it covers is roughly equivalent to urban New York but in comparison to New York’s 18.5 million inhabitants, Melbourne is home to only 3.5 million. Here, with so much distance between people, we rely heavily on our cars. And I don’t have one. Public transport is great if you live within the tram network but outside of that, you’re pretty much on your own.

By car it would have taken me 40 minutes at most to get to my cousin’s apartment. By bus, then train, then another train, it took me 2 ½ hours. That means a 5 hour round trip with a toddler in tow just to have a cup of coffee with my friends. It’s not feasible. This, along with my previous working life, goes some way to mitigating my sense of guilt about the way my friendships have dissipated over the years I have lived out here in this suburban wasteland. Now, with my limited energy and depressive exhaustion, at the very least I can be proud that I went anyway.

By the time I arrived, my cousin had gone out for the evening and I was too tired to go across the road and have some dinner at one of the many cafés. Caspar had fallen into a deep sleep anyway, not even waking when I took him from the pram and tucked him into bed, so I was left to my own devices with nothing to do but watch a television 4 times the size of my own and wait until my cousin came home or I felt the need to go to bed myself. Unsurprisingly, sleep wasn’t on the cards so I waited, studiously ignoring the voices which made me feel abandoned and alone and unloved.

My cousin arrived at about 11:30pm and I got Caspar up to see him and we had a long talk about where my life was at. It was then that my cousin told me to stay the weekend, to have a little bit of the life that I want for Caspar and me before travelling back to the suburb I feel so trapped in, both physically and mentally. And then I slept.

Well, I think.

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I’m back from a few days away, with so much to write about, but I really just need to get everything under control again. There are only 60 unread emails and 261 posts in my feedreader, and I think I’ve managed to reply to all the comments here already, but still feels a little out of control.

I need to clear myself some headspace. I need to clean up.

Obviously there isn’t going to be a Sandbox Sunday post this week because for the first time in a long time I didn’t spend Saturday night at home on my computer. I had hoped to write a [Fiction] Friday piece while I was away but didn’t have internet access in time. (Something to do with my cousin having a few too many knockoffs after work to remember to bring the laptop home with him.) That’s okay though, because Friday’s theme was Skeletons In the Closet and I couldn’t come up with any ideas that didn’t seem trite or tired.

In other news, you might vaguely recall me mentioning a while ago that I’d had a “stellar idea” for a new blog, a resource rather than a personal journal? Well, I’ve been working on it a little and today I came home to an email proving that I must be the luckiest depressed person on the planet.

Thanks to All For Women and their 12 Days of Christmas promotion, I have just won a new domain name, a year’s worth of hosting and assistance with the initial set-up of the blog. (That’s on top of winning that $250 recently from the Imaginif team!)

All for Women put together a wonderful collection of giveaways and they still have one prize left to give: $100 cold, hard cash. Entry is open until the 20th so stop by for a visit. Aside from my prize, my personal favourite was the Bright Star Kids Wall Graphics (which was won by KateF over at Picklebums), a wonderful and surprisingly affordable product which I will definitely be investing in once I get somewhere of my own to live.

If my good fortune has inspired you to leave a comment or three in hopes of some Christmas gifts, Imaginif is giving out another cash prize this month: Christmas Competition: Child Safety Tips. Or if you’d rather win an iPod, toddle over to Outfit Inspirations and take part in The Great Online Christmas Scavenger Hunt.

I’ve already solved the puzzle, of course. I’m annoying that way. (I still remember with sadness the day my mother said that she wouldn’t by me any more for Christmas because I solved them too quickly. Didn’t she realise that was part of the pleasure?) But I’m not going to tell you the secret. Because it’s about the journey, you know. It’s possible, however, that one of the links in this post contains a clue.

But back to my prize… I’m still not going to mention what the new site will be about, but I’ve got a busy year ahead of me and I’m hoping that it will be very successful. I’m even hoping that it will bring in a couple of dollars to pay for hosting once my year has run out.

And while I’m handing out the linky love (and, believe me, it’s genuine linky love) , I know as I set to work I’ll be spending quite a bit of time reading Andrew Boyd. He’s writing two interesting series at the moment: Get A Real Blog, for those thinking of moving to selfhosting, and the Flagship Blog Project, which is all about setting up new, quality blogs. It’s one blog a month for those involved in the project, a task I wouldn’t even consdider tackling, but so far the content has been really valuable and I hope the process laid out can help me achieve my goals.

But that’s enough for now. I need to do some serious cleaning to get my cyberlife back to almost manageable proportions. And then tomorrow I will begin to tell you about my long weekend.

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