Safe and Sound Meridian joy, bring baby home

On another day much warmer than predicted, your baby seat has been installed and apparently it looks great. I remember just how joyous it was when we went with Pips to pick up Carns together. That moment when they first met in the back of the 4WD. I got a shot of it. Then Mum held them both on the drive home. It was so exciting and you should have seen how excited they both were when we got home. These two tiny little pups running around the house. Carns went nuts. They didn’t cry at all during the following night which was amazing. Pups usually whine away but these two were very happy. You will be quite a different story. I can’t really remember when Sophie came home.

The 'bring baby home' moment is big on people’s lists of cherished moments. I can imagine how paranoid we will be driving in the traffic. I’m bad enough as it is now taking people to task on their driving. Walking to work in the mornings to the station there was this idiot who would come screaming around the corner and down this straight road like a maniac. He looked like a complete tool as well. Big lanky gait and shaved head with tats. I would stop walking and just stand there staring at his car as he went by. Then as he walked past me to the Toyota factory I would stare at him with daggers. It got to the point that I was going to stop him on the street and it might have got ugly. Instead I called up his work and spoke to the manager there. He was actually really good and told me he would speak to this guy and warn him that next time I saw him driving that way I was calling the police. He never knew it was me that phoned from what I could tell and then a matter of one week later I saw him get off a train and walk off to work. Ah sweet sweet Karma, he had obviously lost his license. Idiot. Another time a similar tosser went screaming around the corner in front of our house and he stopped about 100 feet up the road. I yelled out to him to stop driving like a maniac to which he ignored me. Men hate being taken to task on their stupidity and the normal reaction is to completely ignore the accuser. A few hours later I was still out front when I saw him get back in the car. I then grabbed my pitch fork and started to furiously stab at the ground where I was removing a stump. I must have looked like a man possessed because he drove past me like an old woman with cataracts. Up to this point nobody has tried it on with me. I wonder if its my beard or my wide shoulders? Maybe it is an instinctual thing for men to be wary of larger hairier types, a throwback to earlier times. I say this for two reasons. Firstly I only seem to see thin men fight. Secondly, the sound of fingernails down a blackboard is apparently so ghastly to us because some predator used to make the same sound when we were still living in caves. Was there a point to this? It started off talking about you coming home from hospital. Over five years later and we still love just staring at the pups. Imagine how bad we are going to be with you. A blink will be news of the day for us.

I found a post-apocalyptic French movie called 'Time of the wolf'. I cannot work out if I liked it or not. It was like the novel The Road, nothing much really happens and it is very depressing and hopeless. Then the film ends with the young son stripping off in front of a fire and a guy running up seemingly to stop him from leaping in. Then there’s five minutes of a view from a moving train. That’s it. There was no resolution at all. But I still thought it was very well done despite all that. It barely poses any questions and certainly doesn’t answer any. Some reviewers discuss compassion as being one of the big questions asked in the movie. I don’t think there were any big questions at all. I think it just did a great job of capturing a group of people completely at a loss as what to do. Either way I suggest you watch it after reading Paul Auster’s ‘In the country of last things’. It will make more sense I think.

On the weekend Chas said he wished he had become an electrician or plumber. His work is full on with little reward for him at the moment. It actually got me thinking. Paul our plumber is a great guy and he seems to enjoy the work. A change of profession has been on my mind for a bit now. I did promise myself I would not be traveling into the city to sit at a desk at 40. I am thinking of talking to Paul about what he thinks, whether physically it’s a good idea to do at this stage. I just feel like I should learn some practical skills for a change. Last week I was looking at musical therapy for Gods sakes. This job really must be getting to me now. I get a kick out of doing manual labor, its something I should at least consider.

Hootenanny - Joan Baez made the analogy that a hootenanny is to folk singing what a jam session is to jazz.