Dream a little dream of me

Last night you woke up at 9:30 very upset. I wonder if you had a bad dream about cold milk or a world without Mummies and fingers to suck. I call out to the Viking Gods of the Dreamworld to send you peace of mind. This is their response -

Breaking out of the comfort zone.

Can you see how this diary has changed? I guess it will be this way for a little while as I still find a routine and some energy to keep this going. I find that any down time I get I just want to veg out and watch Deep Space 9 episodes. My biggest surprise so far has been the way your Mum has stepped up and really become the patient one of the both of us. Still for me I tend to get a little impatient if I know that I will be up until late and have to get up to work the next day. But your Mum shows such fortitude and unwavering enthusiasm. She has all this energy and going from someone who cherished sleep it has been amazing to me that she gets up after a couple of hours sleep with no complaints. Not that she necessarily wakes up straight away.

On Saturday morning around 2am I heard you begin your sequence of waking up which leads to crying if you are not on your toes. I heard you first and as it was Mum who was getting up I said her name to gently wake her up.

"Sweets"
"Mmmm"
"Little ones rousing"
"nnnnnwha?"
"Little ones waking up"
"nnnn its ok"
"What?"
"Its ok I have her"
"What do you mean?"
"(getting agitated) I have her, im holding her"
"What are you talking about?"
"Im holding her now its ok"
"Honey what are you on about, she’s waking up"
"What? Oh, ok".

I have had these kinds of conversations with her before. She gets confused with dream and the waking world. She finally wakes up and goes to prepare the milk for you. Apparently she was dreaming at that very moment about holding you. I actually got up myself a few minutes later to just check that she hadn’t remained confused and fed the bottle to Pippy and put you on the girls bed next to Carnie.

You will be very proud to know that you still drink more, poo more and fart louder than all the other babies at Mothers Group. When we burp you it’s the cutest thing to watch. You stretch out your arms and your legs and make a big groaning sound. We call it the 'Superman'. On Sunday night you were very thirsty indeed and downed about 150mls or more of milk. I had you over my shoulder (you can see what’s coming cant you, I wish I could have) and with no warning at all you threw up the whole lot right down my front. I was soaked. You had this satisfied look on your face after that, then proceeded to demand more milk! Argggghhhhhhhhh.

Mum joined in with me singing Frère Jacques while we were changing you. Your little face went into this state of concentration as you were listening to us. You really seemed to enjoy it. I think it must emit some good vibrations. Perhaps your relative calmness can be attributed to our approach to parenting. We are both very calm people and they do say babies just mirror back what they are surrounded by. I love giving both of you a hug. I’m not sure I have properly explained to you yet but I sing to you almost all the time. A lot more than I just speak. Speaking is singing in some way and so I think making it more pronounced can only help you understand language quicker later.

Your Mum loves our bath time together. She was telling me that one of the other new Dads from her Mums group loves to have shower time with his little one. That would be so funny seeing your face as the water hit you. Apparently they just moved the nozzle down so it didn’t get in their eyes. Have I told you that you have discovered my chest hair and grab it with those strong little fingers and refuse to let go? Now that smarts.

I’m very proud of the way we your Mum and I work together. I think our relationship is deepening in some really special ways. We both have made some changes regarding how we handle times of frustration and how to handle each other when this happens. At Mums Group some of the women were saying they have never argued so much with their husbands. For us it is quite different. We keep an eye out for each other and also talk about our approach to looking after you so we can make sure everything is consistent. This means small stuff as well like burping and wrapping and how to wipe your bum. We are a well oiled machine at the moment. I think I am doing a good job of keeping your Mum mentally on track as she tackles what to do with breastfeeding. Sometimes you have to just say “this is how it’s going to happen”, rather than make it a discussion. It is tiring stuff for her and it important to keep her looking at the big picture and counting your wins as well as your losses.

Listening to the John Safran Podcast last night and there was a man who spent time in jail and has since turned his life around. He read a lot of books and worked out what successful people had in common and tried to apply it to his life. Three things stood out to me. Firstly they all were brutally honest with themselves, secondly they denied themselves certain things to learn how to break out of their comfort zones and lastly that they all jealously guard their reputation and integrity. This third point is what is affecting my life at the moment. The way your Mums father and cousin have accused me of being the cause of their issues really annoys me as it goes against the very essence of what I am about. I must learn to ignore these sorts of people who really know nothing about me and not let it get to me. I guess I do think that everyone should like me and get shocked when someone doesn’t. Watch that ego boy.

The title 'Waking World' is a great title for a story. I should try it out.

More holidays to Apollo Bay, less work please

It’s getting real close now. Down to weeks. Your Mum has put a towel on the car seat just in case the levee breaks. "I work on the levee, mama both night and day, I work so hard, to keep the water away. It's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan, gonna leave my baby, and my happy home". My job is my levee too, I resent it enough now let alone when you arrive. I still want to be an at home Dad for you. Your Mum enjoys her job and gets all the holidays whereas I hate the job and get very few holidays. I would love to be around for you as you grow up. Its not always possible however, we shall just have to see. I hope we have given you enough of our time that you don’t feel short changed.

This weekend was another backbreaking chain gang of chores entirely of my own choosing. I have been painting so much that on Friday when I took Nan to the MSO concert I was barely able to applaud. My arms shaking violently as I strained to raise them and provide yet another encore opportunity for the conductor. You’re Mum and I have been to five concerts this year for the MSO. This last one we decided I should take my Gran for a night out. It was at the Town Hall instead of the usual showier venue. Nan told me that the last time she was in the town hall was for the Bing Crosby appreciation society club dance when she was 17 (that would make it around 1946). She talked about all the places she used to go on nights out and for lunches. She went on a date with an English sailor once and was escorted back to the station where he shook her hand and said "Thankyou I had a lovely time, good evening Miss Howie". I told this to your Mum and she just rolled her eyes and went "gypped". She has a dirty mind sometimes. My Nan also volunteered in a canteen in Collins St where she made sandwiches and coffee for the servicemen. She met my Grandad from memory working in Myer together. I will be getting all these stories and adding them to the diary later. I told her I want to video them telling all kinds of stories about their life for you. The great thing about digital format is that we can just shoot for hours and store it on a hard drive. The stories she tells me are so amazing, such a different life to what yours will be, although it is my intention to make sure you experience some of the same things they did. Volunteering at old age homes, tree planting days, things like that.

Grandpa tells me that when he was an underage house painter he used to have to carry all his equipment, including the ladder and paint tins in the train with his bike. Can you imagine that now? If you want evidence for how lazy we have become just look at the beginning of this paragraph. Poor little Dad has sore arms because he has done a little painting for Gods sakes. I milk it for all its worth once I get back upstairs, making wincing noises and rubbing my arms like I just wrestled with Zeus. So by the time you have arrived she has already got a good 15 years Mothering experience from looking after me.

I just read a Blog about a guy whose ear hair was mistaken for a stray bit of clothing fluff. I commented that I have so much fuzz on my ears that if I stand in front of a light it looks like I am growing angel’s wings out the side of my head. I also have either chest hair creeping up to my chin or a beard which is losing the fight against gravity and moving down to my chest. In the last year my eyebrows have established a few rogue hairs which have broken with convention and decided to create an upper canopy, which may provide shade for the shorter well behaved hairs but does nothing for my faces symmetry. By trimming the offending hairs to their regular size begins a vicious cycle that only exacerbates over time. For once you trim that hair the surrounding hairs think this is an opportunity to take over the position of head boy. All of a sudden you have a race for the sun on your hands, as your eyebrow begins to look more like a pair of hairy caterpillars on growth hormones. Give it a few years and I won’t need to wear a capped hat.

Your Mum is having weird baby dreams. She just told me about this one this morning. She went into labour and so I rushed her to the hospital. Then we are sitting in the waiting room and the nurse comes up to us and hands the baby over to her. She couldn’t remember having it though and asked me if she had to take any drugs. I told her no and she did really well. She then uncovered the baby who was all wrapped up including her head. She was beautiful, but then the more she looked the more she started noticing dog features, the eyes got bigger and the face started sprouting hair and the ears got pointy. By the end she said you looked exactly like a Chihuahua.

Christmas is soon upon us as well, a fact that I am sure you are tired of hearing because it will fall so close to your birthday. I was talking to my Nan about how the Christmas spirit of community and group celebration is virtually gone from the workplace because they don’t wish to spend the money on their staff any more. I said that this is part of a bigger issue and one in which will effectively wipe out the concept of loyalty and pride in your work. People are now thinking if they can’t even be bothered giving us a decent Christmas party why should I put in any effort? Cost cutting does not save money for a company. It breeds apathy and resentment which then effects performance and the bottom line. I can remember going to our local social Club when I was a kid to see Santa. It was a venue where people can meet and have a drink, eat dinner, have a dance etc. They put on a great day for the family for all the Club members. Santa would even come in a helicopter (he would sit in my grandparents leather chair which I hope will come to us). It was damn the expense and let’s give them a great time to say thanks for being a member. This does not happen any more. The Club itself is now just another venue built around pokies machines. Well I will try my best to make sure you have a ball during Christmas. I will aim to get the street involved and have a big Christmas party in the park for everyone to come to. Am I an idealist or has it actually come true? I hope that I have risen the occasion and done everything I can to make you a well rounded person.

So anyway, back to Bach. The Friday concert was the best yet, Bach is my favourite music. It just speaks to me and I don’t have to struggle to understand it and I am never bored listening to it. What is different is that his music often doesn’t have any melodies that you immediately recognise or even remember once the piece is finished. It’s those intertwining lines of melody that don’t really go anywhere that appeal to me. It doesn’t really go anywhere, you don’t recall strong repeating themes repeating and then given variations in different keys and tempos. It doesn’t always resolve itself in obvious ways that someone like Mozart is so good at. Its music of the ether, Gods music. It is the kind of music you can listen to for years before it becomes too familiar. The perfect desert island disk would be Bach. We also listened to a new Clarinet Concerto by Ross Edwards which was wonderful and finally Beethoven's 5th which is also one of the most perfect pieces of music ever created. It was a wonderful concert and im glad I got to share it with my Grandma.

Im sitting here on the top floor looking out to the Dandenong ranges. The dark grey clouds are hovering low above our house and lighting strikes light up the sky. Rain has become more precious than oil.

Bought the Definitive Rolf Harris and 'The most relaxing Bach album in the world'.

Listening to music we can play during your birth, here are some I found today -


Shostakovich - Symphony No.9 in E Flat Major, Op. 70 - Moderato
Haydn - Symphony No.22 in E Flat Major, "The Philosopher" - Adagio
Hayden - Symphony No.26 in D Minor, "Lamentatione" - Adagio (Chorale)
Mahler - Symphony No.1 in D, "The Titan" - 3. Feierlich und gemessen, nicht schleppend
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.14 "Moonlight" - Adagio sostenuto
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.8, "Pathetique" - Adagio cantabile
Beethoven No.6, "Pastoral" - Allegro ma non troppo

Body image, rise above it

My favourite dreams are the ones where I can float. I recall one beautiful dream in which I was able to rise about 30 feet into the air and drift around. I can still remember feeling the sensation of leaving the ground, the initial fear of falling and the strangeness of my legs dangling under me. I woke from that dream knowing that I had experienced what it is to fly. Remember I said that the section of the brain that experiences the action as it is taking place is the same part that you access when you wish to recall that action later. So our reality is composed of the actual and the remembered equally. I also had another brilliant dream I which I was at my grandparent’s backyard and I was being surrounded by zombies. I had to fight them all and what was the most amazing thing was that I was using martial art techniques I have never learnt. I can still remember that my brain was telling my body what to do just as if it were learned behaviour. Some of the things I was doing were impossible to do, large flips in the air and such, but my brain knew what to do. I would love to know how that is possible. I have also had similar dreams about vampires as well. Most of my dreams I am battling some thing or other, when im not flying that is. Did you know that you can set a mental alarm clock by visualising a clock and setting the time you want to wake up. You can also tell yourself you want to remember your dream once you wake up. It doesn’t necessarily work the first few times but if you keep it up it can work.

Body image. God I hope we have taught you to love the body you have. I have always hated my body and I really have to work at accepting me as I am. I have even and still do consider surgery to remove the fatty parts that I have never lost no matter what I have tried. It’s a crippling feeling. I hate going to public pools and no chance will I go to a friends house to swim. I even dislike writing about it. My choice of clothes is based around which things hide my body the best. That’s why I love jackets so much and thus cold weather is my friend. To base ones body image as the main determinate of happiness is just stupid, but it’s something I still do. Perhaps I have worked you fairly hard in keeping up your fitness. I imagine that I will probably do this so you don’t dislike your body like I do. The older I get the less of a problem it is. I think when I am older I will be at my most happy. It will all be about the mind ……………… if I still have a functional one.

Writing a diary like this is very confronting. It makes you assess your life, what you have and have not done. I sit here thinking of what to write and when I cant come up with anything it can make you feel like the most boring person alive. People immediately think of where they have travelled but from my experience and from seeing others who have done it more, you don’t come back any wiser than when you left. You experience and see more things but you don’t necessarily go very deep into anything. You come home knowing you have seen lots of great stuff. I have learnt a lot more about myself in my everyday life. Like I have said before, when you go somewhere else you tend not to be yourself. You play with your personality a bit and usually that just means you smoke and drink (and shag) more. You don’t often come back with a greater insight into the human condition. More likely you come back with a shot liver and some weird itch.

Im thinking of buying - Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Complete Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival. Is that going to deep into my post-apocalyptic fetish? I love the idea of knowing practical skills in case of some sort of major calamity.

01st November 2007

The stupid diary

I was about 18, Mum had asked me to go up to the shops to get some things. I took Sadie with me who was about 3'ish I think. It was a warmish day and I wasn’t going to be long so I left the keys in the car and left the window open a little bit then asked Sophie to unlock the door when I came back. I returned a couple of minutes later and Sadie was asleep, I knocked on the window but she would not wake up. I kept knocking and yelling out to her but with the warm car she had fallen into a deep sleep. Can you believe how stupid that was? I tried calling Mum but the phone was engaged so I had to get someone to drive me home to pick up the spare set of keys. Well you can imagine Mums reaction. Sadie was just fine.

Mums hips are hurting from sleeping on her side. She cant find that 'sweet spot'. She is used to sleeping on her back but you cant do that with a little one growing inside you. The poor thing gets up every few hours, but frankly I reckon that is natures way of telling sleepy head whats coming.

I had a terrific dream last night. It was all over the place but near the end I was helping old people into an auditorium and I went down front to chat with some musical people. One guy was playing a song he wrote sort of about me and them my gran came up with a plate of goodies. Then I think Mum did the same. I remember telling this guy that Mum had been sick for years now, I was choking up trying to say it. After that I saw a guy telling all the oldies they have to leave. The Exit was right at the back of the venue and the steps were steep. Near the top I saw my grandparents and they waved at me. Then I saw Mum and I waved at her but she stopped walking, turned to me and put one thumb up, then left. I woke with up and realised what I had just dreampt and had a big smile on my face. I love her messages.

23rd October 2007

I have come across an old Blog post of mine that I have not read since we found out you were coming. Now you know it took us a while of trying and it was not an easy time. But I always had this in my mind, have a read and see what you think of it -:

There has been some history of contact with my mother since she passed away. Not for a while and it has mostly been getting together in dreams and having long conversations. One time she was pregnant, the next time there was a woman in the same room as her and she got up and walked past without looking once at me. I got this understanding then that this was her but a different person, not one im likely to meet.
My feeling is that we can be inexorably led to things when we invest our thought processes on that subject. I came across this site http://www.worlditc.org/ about contacting people after they die via radio, TV etc. Fascinating experiments and one that cannot be dismissed so easily. Anyway, while working i had my headphones on as usual but nothing actually playing. Suddenly i became aware of the background noise because of a few spikes in the sound. Now i am not trying to tell you that i was being contacted or anything like that. It just brought me back to thinking about the subject. I got up and went to heat up my lunch. Whilst standing there I started to think about Mum and was experiencing some of the physical sensations i got after she died in hospital. Im a take things as they come kind of guy, i also keep a balanced head whilst not taking anything as a given. I said hello to her and i then asked her to help me with a particular issue i wont bring up here. I suddenly got this nearly overwhelming sense of hapiness and started to smile and laugh. Nothing in my rational brain could determine why i was laughing, i had no particular thought to trigger it. I shook my head and told her "Ok, ill take that" and got my food and started writing this. I cant shake the feeling that this was all kind of too easy and too coincidental. The most interesting part of all this is the physical aspect. I have not had this feeling in my heart and gut area since the night she died. I wont try to intellectualise this incident. As i told Mum, ill just take it as it is and move on. I had a sense that the answer to my question was yes, so i guess its just a matter or waiting and seeing.

Well here we are now and im sure you have worked out what the question was. So thanks Mum, you rock.

Thinking about big moments also made me think about how people focus on the grand statements instead of the everyday. My Dad is like that, he thinks that as long as he makes the required gestures such as calling on birthdays and coming over enough so he can say he does visit that this is enough. This is not enough, not by a long shot. The same applies to my aunties with Sadie. They occasionally invite her over or take her out to dinner and this is supposed to be enough? Time is the true measure of love and support. If you are not available for a person, if you are not seeing them as often as is possible and taking an active interest in their life, then the birthday card means nothing, the occasional visit will be pleasant but devoid of anything meaningful and deep between you. I am a little hard line about this and I don’t exclude myself. I have been a little brutal at times in culling friendships that don’t measure up to these standards, either because I don’t put in the effort or the other person doesn’t. You have to be a little careful with this because sometimes your lives just aren’t in sync at particular phases of your life. Jan is a perfect case. Its been 10 years or more since I have properly hung out with her but now that we are both in the family way, we have things in common. Before that I found that even when we socialised she was always distracted and looking for someone more interesting to talk to. This annoyed me because I consider myself to be an interesting conversationalist but I do require people to put in a little effort themselves and to keep their wits about them. I also don’t like small talk which is probably why I make certain people uncomfortable. So I have often been accused of being distracted. I think Jan was probably doing the same, it makes me think that I need to give people a little more time, some more small talk until they are comfortable. Then again some people never move past small talk. Boring.