unwanted house guests

Since our return to the tropics after hasty abandonment of home and hearth during the floods, we have been joined by some welcome imaginary friend guests... and I am afraid some very unwelcome small rodent guests.  I confess a rather unlady-like expletive passed my rather unlady-like lips when I turned on the kitchen light to investigate the sounds of a rave party that were going on in there... only to find FOUR large and healthy looking four legged, tailed friends feasting on a plastic lid.  I had seen their unmistakable evidence and am practiced at ensuring that there was nothing tastier available - but I had hoped for maybe two of the critters... and this after I had already herded one from my office into the green beyond the back door. 
So the buddhist in me had a brief attempt at resistance, which was quickly overcome by lioness mother imagining her angel's toes being nibbled in the night.
Poison was purchased and planted (I cannot bring myself to use the glue that everyone here uses).  And this morning revealed signs of consumption of the pellets... so tonight will be the teller.  I sit now on in the lounge room and the kitchen is ominously quiet.  I rejoice and of course regret at the same time.
Sorry little mice - may you have a far better rebirth...
and PHEW... EWWWW... be gone you rotten foul pooing peeing scampering disease carrying vermin!

good bye princess

So I have finally accepted that my daughter is no princess.  Not that I wanted her to be!  But somehow I guess, as a product of social conditioning, I kind of expected it... I dressed her in pink and gave her pretty things - assuming that she would like that. 
It is with a fair degree of pride and well, if I am honest just a little disappointment, that I realise she is much fonder of motorbikes than dolls... she loves trucks, cars, airplanes and helicopters... She has a lot of pink stuff that I have chosen for her - but when left to her own devices she chose the brown sponge bob square pants floaties over the pink princess versions. 
One look at the glee on her face at riding a "real" motorbike and I know I need to start preparing for sleepless nights when she turns 17  (at least I am getting good practice already!).  And the deal was sealed when I doggedly gave her a pretty pink necklace and bracelet for her birthday.  Her response when she opened it?  "I don't like THAT... where is my truck?".
At least she is really creative - we can channel ourselves into gluing and painting and drawing and work on avoiding death-traps on two wheels for a little while yet.

imaginary friends...

So we have new house guests… Charlie and Lola and Lota have come to stay… mostly Indi likes to play with Charlie, and he is very pleased with her when she does good things, like having a shower when asked, or packing up her toys… and he doesn’t mind at all when we sneak up on him when he is having a nap on mummy’s bed and jump on him.

He’s that kind of imaginary friend.

 

woosh, what was that? time passing??

So we reach the end of what felt like a really long time in Australia but has actually been a rushed, busy, exhausting, blink and you miss it trip to home shores.  Its been quite disruptive and disconcerting to be honest.  It has been long enough to feel like we have lost touch with Fiji, long enough that I feel I should have been able to achieve a lot, long enough to start feel attached to things here again, long enough that, lulled into a false sense of security, I let my guard down and let time pass unchecked.   And now we are at the end and I wonder where the time went - I have achieved less than half of the things I wanted to do here, and less than a quarter of the work I wanted to get done.  It feels like I have been running the whole time and just now I realise I have been running lost in circles.  I know I have been busy all the time, certainly I don't feel at all relaxed.  And yet I look back and cannot for the life of me work out what I did all the time.
Frustrating!

Back in the motherland

So we ran away... we ran away from water and no power and stress and potential illness and the general chaos of it all.  We got caught up in the hype of fleeing tourists and we booked urgent flights. We escaped to parental sanctuary... working internet, nice meals, hot water, sunshine and child care.   So we find ourselves suddenly and surprisingly in the motherland.  We had planned a brief one week trip home that would have been a whirl of socialising, but now have a three week span at home and while the little angel is enjoying the luxury of grandma on tap, I am instead spending my time feeling guilty about not being at work, and working as much as I can from here.  Of course I am seeing friends as well, but we haven't been away long enough to make that feel really special, more a pleasant surprise.
And I miss my home.. I miss our little home, our newly growing friendships, our little plants and the routines we were just settling in to.  I feel dislocated here - everything is very familiar and yet not comforting.  It doesn't feel like "home"... it feels like the place we used to live.
So I work ... I work on gathering donations to freight over to flood devastated families, I work on planning and supporting the teams who are doing the real work.... I feel connected when I am working...
The time is flying and yet it feels strangely bubble-like...
I feel like I am already slipping into what I now think of as my "developing country persona".  I like myself in developing countries.  I am different, I am more real, I care less about my appearance, my hair, what people think of me.  I care more about people, real experiences, personal and mental development, quality use of time, observing and listening rather than talking, experiencing rather than owning, and fighting for what I believe in rather than living numb.  I like myself more in this persona but it also makes me feel disconnected from other people, from my "home" culture.  This persona is more about aloneness, about going my own way, about living my path rather than sharing my journey.
I find myself feeling single for the first time in a very long time - with sadness and relief.  I tell myself that all I need to do is follow my path and everything will be ok - because this is how I truly feel... and I know that I am on my path for the first time in a long time - and it feels good.  Yet at the same time I am slightly concerned for myself as I trudge further into my 40th year of life - single, solo, alone.  Am I too focused on my own journey to allow myself to experience my own family, partnership, togetherness?  By taking this path am I sentencing myself to being a lonely spinster mother?  Will I start to live through and smother my child?  Will I be that interesting but eccentric old lady whose child has grown and gone out to live her own life and who now has lots of interesting stories but no-one to listen to them?  Will I regret these choices as an old lonely lady who had lots of love to give but never quite found a way to give it to a life lover?  Will I become bitter, uncompromising, set in my ways, impossible to be in a relationship with?  Will I continue to chose to live in places and ways that make relationships almost certainly not an option?
These are the questions that bubble under the surface as I sit the lounge room of this very pleasant "old home" of mine... I could have stayed here and chosen a much simpler easier life... and yet as I sit here now I know .... I am doing exactly what I need to be doing, and this is not where I need to be.
I have my fingers crossed that somehow my path takes me to a place where I can have the best of both worlds.

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