Lately I have become aware that I am not receiving blog notifications (via email) from bloggers I follow. Is there a WP problem or is it just me?
If I haven’t commented on your blog lately, this is the reason (well, apart from the neglect factor ha!)
Well the three ducklings have grown so quickly that they are almost too big to squeeze through the fence of the yard I put the gang in at night. They free range with their ‘minders’ all day.
Here’s a picture of Seli and Godfrey guarding the Twins.
And here’s one of Ola watching over a sleeping Michael Jackson (the dancing duckling).
I took a whole lot of better photos of all of them but had to delete these because Ming’s smashed ute (truck) was in the background. The gang + ducklings tend to hang out underneath it because it is near the pond. We have covered the smashed-in front of the ute with a blanket so that visitors, especially family, won’t be upset if they see it. The rest of the ute looks normal, with the tray intact. I wish we could get rid of it but we are stuck with it in the back yard for now until we try again to claim some insurance. Every morning and every evening, when I let the gang out, or put them into the yard, I have to walk past the ute.
There is also a clear view of the ute from the kitchen window, a constant reminder of the accident and everything since. And when I frolic in the dirt, and offer prayers to the sky, and watch the pea-chicks climb the avocado tree, or cry until my body is cramped like a dead leaf, I am always right next to the ute.
Ming brought Ants home for the afternoon yesterday and I (rather dramatically) threw myself into his chest and soaked him with some of these endless, futile, enormous tears. He held me and said nice things to me and then asked me about the ducklings.
“When are we eating them?” he asked.
I stopped crying immediately. “What the hell are you talking about? We are not eating them, Ants!”
My previous post published itself before the brilliance of its second paragraph – oh well!
Of course the second paragraph wasn’t brilliant at all – it was just something about how I enjoyed sitting, even scrambling a bit, in the dirt near the chook yards the other night. I was wearing my best white trousers because I had just come back from town, so I hesitated, not wanting to get them dirty.
Then, a swirly sort of thing happened and, without any hesitation, I plonked myself onto the ground and, yes, copied the dust bath antics of some of the birds. Well, I tried! I need a bit of practice I guess, but it was a hell of a lot of fun learning.
I am very glad Ming was out because he might have gotten the impression that I had gone mad. Not at all! Now that I am no longer worried about my clothes getting dirty, I am going to join the birds in more dust baths; it’s quite refreshing to get right down on the ground like they do.
What I like best about this dust bath thing is the way (if you are a human) you just have to let go of your uprightness, your inhibitions, your idea of ‘clean’, and every shred of your self-consciousness.
And once you are thoroughly dusted, you can lie on your back on the grass and look up at the sky and hope that one day Godfrey will love you back again. But, just in case he doesn’t, you say a prayer.
Dear God, I offer you my sleeping, so that you can rescue me from my nightmares and find me a small comfortable cave where I can rest.
Dear God, I offer you my eating, so that you can help me to swallow the fairy floss that tastes like lemon peel, so that you can help me to swallow the boringness of grated carrot, so that you can help me to climb the avocado tree for that one last piece of fruit.
Dear God, I offer you my walking around, so that you can help me to stop circling myself, and build a new path with lots of daffodils and maybe a few trees for the birds.
Dear God, I offer you my heart, so that you can help me get it off the treadmill and beat normally again. I offer you all of the ugly horribleness of me, so that you can help me to be beautiful again and, if isn’t too much trouble, I would like my freckles back please.
Dear God, how did you do all of that so fast?
I’m a little dusty!
I realize I am overblogging today but you will be relieved to know that there will now be a few days of silence because Ming and I have to go up to Perth at the crack of dawn tomorrow for his first post-op. appointment.
Sorry to blogfriends to not be reading your posts lately – can’t seem to keep up, a common predicament for bloggers! For friends and family who read this blog, if you don’t want me to crowd your email inbox simply unsubscribe/unfollow the blog please. If you do so, I won’t even know and it would be a great relief to me if nonblogger friends and family just got me out of their email faces haha!
Catch up on Monday. In the meantime, have a good weekend!
It is nearly the middle of the night here, down in the southwest of Western Australia. There is a gentle breeze outside, which just turned boisterous (as if insulted by being called gentle), and a strange crackling of distant thunder. The humidity is the kind that makes you feel like your whole face has melted off but, when you check the mirror, your face is still there.
It doesn’t exactly look like your face though; it looks like a sad person’s face. Strange.
What you have to do is to schedule the tears so that they don’t disturb other people. The best place for this is in the bathroom late at night, or else outside under the moon, or else in the car when you are going to the shop to get milk.
In the shop you have to smile and be jovial and sociable – quite easy when you are a seasoned actor. Your eyes are moist because of your hayfever. You can even carry the act home with you and smile at yourself in the bathroom mirror, and put your hand up to join your reflected hand just to say hello.
When you finally go to bed with your book, and your new reading glasses, with the fan breezing your skin, and the light on, you know a little bit of happy. But you also know that, at exactly midnight, you will have to move over in your bed to make room for the black dog.
It is nearly the middle of the night here, down in the southwest of Western Australia.
This evening I sat outside from around 5 – 7pm as Queenie began the ritual of taking her kids to bed up in the avocado tree. First, she wandered around with them following her, digging into the ground with her big feet to give the chicks insects, showing them how to drink from a shallow bowl I’d put near the avocado tree, finding the wheat always there for all of the birds. At first I was a bit alarmed to find the little family out of the pen as early as 5pm but I guess they are now a bit beyond the pen and like to wander around the yard and back paddock freely. King (obviously the dad) stayed with them for ages, protectively.
I have maintained a respectful distance but they all come close to me anyway; they trust me and seem to rather like the flash of the camera. The photos I have put here show their long, but enjoyable, journey to bed but this is the first time I have seen the finale. I was amazed to see how the two peachicks can actually fly quite high now from branch to branch, up and up, and until they reach their mother. Queenie clucks until they get to her.
Of course the two peachicks are still extremely vulnerable; they might be taken by crows, they might drown in the pond (now that they are out of the yards), but I am hopeful that wise Queenie will prevent these possible catastrophes and King is right by her side for much of the time.
In watching this beautiful bedtime ritual, I remembered how much the birds helped me cope with the misery of Anthony’s illness, the nursing home process, Ming’s spinal operation and so many other things. Now the birds are helping me to cope with a whole new set of miseries which I blogged about yesterday, then trashed because it was all too sad. In trashing the post, I guess I also trashed the comments and I apologize for this and am grateful for those comments. Now I think the best thing is to get back to these beautiful birds for awhile.
As usual Gutsy9 became really jealous and insisted that I took her photo too.
Tonight, I would love to be one of Queenie’s peachicks, up high in the avocado tree, under her gentle wings.
But I am a bit too big!
One of the unexpected bonuses of blogging for me has been the very real friendships formed, the mutual support, the shared humour, the shared grief. The lessons of life that I have learned through other people’s stories, and interactions, have taught me how to better do empathy and sympathy, and forced me to feel the difference.
Thanks so much for those of you who have commented, ‘liked’, and given me your friendships. For those of you who are bloggers, I am struggling at the moment to keep up with your writings, so please forgive me for that. For Facebook friends, same thing really!
Ming goes to court in three days. Apparently he and I simply appear, his charges will be read out, and the case will be adjourned by our lawyer until the end of February. So I really need to concentrate on all of this at least until the beginning of February, and blogging will go on the back burner for the time being.
Hard to believe now that when I began blogging it was all about the birds.
For a couple of days now my hands have been painfully itchy (apparently there is a myth that this means I am coming into some unexpected money – ha!)
I noticed that on the sides of each of my fingers there are several miniature blisters so I thought I’d google the condition and here is what I found:
http://www.pompholyx.co.uk/your_experiences.html
Yes, it would seem that I have pompholyx which of course I have never heard of before. It’s a form of eczema apparently, and the causes include everything from humidity to stress (both of which fit my situation). I’m a little alarmed to find that it may get worse but I’m also relieved that it may simply go away of its own accord. As diseases go, it certainly isn’t serious, but the itchiness is driving me slightly crazy because I want to scratch my hands to bits.
Changing the subject: I wrote a post about Ming yesterday but I trashed it soon after because it seemed a bit disloyal to a son who is, after all, only 10% evil haha! But I realize it will already have been seen by some so, just to reassure you, he and I are once again on the same page, and my new nickname for him is “90%”.
Another update: even though I briefly sighted a couple of the peahens the other day, I haven’t seen them again and five are still missing. Nesting season is well and truly over so I think I will have to assume that they have either flown away (to get away from the peacocks’ attention), or have been killed by foxes. I am hoping it’s the former but I will never know. My peacock-knowledgeable friend, Mike, came over to see us yesterday because Anthony was home for the day and I asked him if the males would be okay without their ‘wives’ and he reassured me that they would, but it is still sad to have lost the girls. I guess, you never know, they might come back. That’s the risk with free-range but I never wanted to pen them in.
I’m off soon to go into the nursing home for the afternoon. It is only one street away from the beach so much cooler than here on the farm. Pompholyx is not contagious so that’s okay; I just hope he doesn’t notice that I have taken my wedding and engagement rings off because there were a couple of blisters underneath them. My ring finger feels really naked as, except to clean the rings, I have never taken them off.
Here are some photos of the peahens (much more pleasant than a photo of my blistered hands):
Western Australia has already had a pretty severe heat wave, causing bush fires in the northern part of our capital city, Perth, but now the heat wave is on the eastern side of Australia with temperatures in the 40s. This is particularly frightening if you live in a forested area (which we don’t because the farm is cleared land), but I feel so concerned for those who have lost their homes and lives and/or have been evacuated or else told it is too late to evacuate.
Over here I think we are in for another hot weekend after a semi-cool week. It always amazes me how a 40 degree C day can be followed by a 25 degree C day. And while we broil downunder, people are freezing in the northern hemisphere. I know several bloggers are suffering this severe weather too and it scares me.
Our figs began ripening a week or so ago only to have shrivelled now and, today, the moonflowers came out but, a few hours later, quickly faltered.
With whatever weather you are experiencing I wish you the best.
It is nearly 9.30pm here and I just got a phone-call from the nurse-in-charge at the nursing home who wanted me to calm Anthony down because he had, once again, become aggressive and was very confused. Ming and I tried, on the phone, to talk him into going to bed but he just kept ranting and mumbling incoherently and Ming gave up. I then tried, over and over, to convince him that nobody was trying to hurt him and that the staff just wanted to put him to bed, but it became impossible, so I hung up and rang the nurse back and she said she’d never seen him like this (she is his favourite nurse).
I asked if I should come in but she said no and not to stress and they would sit him down in the foyer (where he was apparently standing and yelling) and wait for him to become too tired to resist going to bed. When I apologized to her, she was so reassuring that it would all be okay that I nearly burst into tears, and, when I said “I can’t bear it for him that he is becoming so distressed so often”, she said something comforting about how she and the staff knew him, and knew that this was different behaviour, and that they were sad too.
Once I’d hung up the phone, I marvelled that I had taken Anthony to a special friend’s 80th birthday party today and he/we had had a great time, despite him being in a wheelchair and not quite ‘with it’. In her speech, the birthday girl even thanked Ants for coming to the party and that really touched me (she and my ma have been friends forever).
It has been suggested to me that taking Anthony out might not be a good idea because, when I take him back to the nursing home, he seems more confused and exhausted than before, and he is, quite obviously, becoming a difficult patient/resident. But, what the hell – I WILL continue to take him out, and bring him home, because I love him and miss him and I want to hold his hand. (I have always found couples that constantly hold hands slightly nauseating – ha – but now I don’t!)
PS. If anyone calls me wonderful or amazing I will bop them! This is just how it is – how it is.
This photo is of Ants three years ago, on his 75th birthday. He turns 78 in a few weeks – quite a survivor!
jmgoyder 