if only

When I was 7 I got one of the best presents ever.

Having bashed my little fingers away on a little plastic toy typewriter with my growing love of words and language Santa clearly saw that I needed a better way to get my words down. On Christmas morning my delight at unwrapping a big shiny real typewriter was indescribable. This was going to be the way I would become the next Enid Blyton.

Quickly I unwrapped the typewriter from its package eagerly awaiting the first hit of metal against paper.

Such precious cargo was wrapped securely and the family gathered undoing and cutting, then BING, a loud sound as mum snipped a piece of plastic. That plastic was not protection but was the tension thread which made the whole thing work. Now before me I had the present of my dreams, rendered completely inoperable. I cried so much my nose bled.

For the next 3 weeks as we waited for a typewriter repairer to come back from January holidays I spent every moment regretting that one snip.

In year 8 I spent weeks preparing for the one casual day of the year. In Year 8, what to wear on casual day is a big thing, the careful balance between looking good, having the latest trend, but not looking like you tried hard.

I thought I had hit the mark perfectly with my stretch, zipper jeans, aqua shirt and hot pink tie (yep it was the 80's). I was walking on clouds for the morning, right up until the start of lunchtime when I chomped into my tuck shop salad roll and beetroot tumbled down my front. Pretty hard to look cool on casual day with beetroot splashed all over you.

My life is full of little moments like this where you think, "what if". If only I'd looked at the instructions for unpacking the typewriter, if only I had not had a salad roll that day. If only I had been concentrating walking down those stairs, if only I had not driven that road that day, if only I had not had that last drink....

But nothing compares to the if only's that dominate my days now. Are there if only's that would have meant Thomasina would not have had a heart condition.

If only I'd taken her to the doctors that week would have they picked up something that could have saved her.

If only I had not been so tired would have I noticed some deterioration.


If only, is there some if only that could have stopped a little girl who looked like this being dead within a week?

You know there are still days I regret what I did and didn't do on that typewriter Christmas morning. Still regret that beetroot roll. But that is nothing compared to the "if only's" I am confronted with every day for the rest of my life now......

Stuff Sharers

I love to shop.  I actually think I am quite talented at it too!  I pride myself on finding new and interesting brands, cute just released things, shops hardly anyone knows about yet.

I shop because I enjoy it.  I shop because I love the thrill of the purchase - that feeling as you head home with something shiny and new in a fresh and crisp bag.

I shop as a hobby, I shop as a stress release, I shop online and I shop in person.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't shop to a ridiculous level.   I just like doing it, the way some people enjoy bush walking.

The flip side of enjoying shopping is I also love organising and neatness.  I love having everything in it's place and a place for everything.  If I go to bed at night and the house is out of control untidy, I don't sleep well.  Do a 15 minute clean up before bed and I will sleep like a log.

The combined effect of all of this is I also love decluttering.  I love moving things on when they reach the end of their useful time, so they can make way for something I need now.

This used to mean that every few weeks I would have a few bags lined up at the door to go to the local charity bin, they'd sit there for a while.  Then they'd travel around in the boot of the car for a couple of more weeks before being dropped at Vinnie's.  I'd always be a bit anxious about whether my bags of goodies were wanted there or was some older lady I would run into at mass muttering under her breath about my junk they had to send to the tip.

That was until this past week when I was introduced to the a local "stuff sharers" facebook group.

Set up by a friend about a year ago, it is decluttering gold.  With 214 members, living in about a 25km radius of central Bendigo it is a resource for sharing information and goods available "free to a good home".  It looks like nearly 400 items have been exchanged this way - the "gifted" posts a picture of the item, it shows up in the group members facebook feeds.  First person to say they want it get it.  The giver and the receiver then make collection arrangements - often the collection arrangements being I'll leave it at X nominated place at my house for you to come and collect.

With my cycle on buying and collecting I don't have a house brimming with things I have horded.  But a clean of the boys wardrobes identified some shoes that never fitted at the right time, there were toys they had outgrown, things I had purchased as gifts and never got around to posting.  It's pretty easy to take a photo on the ipad, upload the photo and see if anyone wants it.

I was hooked.  I started with a couple of things that had been hanging around for a while but it was the reaction of the community of stuff sharers that kept me going.  24 items I have posted in about a week, most of them in one Sunday afternoon clean up.  I have been blown away by the reaction.  I thought I was just dumping things out there.  I was not at all expecting how thrilled someone can be when they get something that otherwise would have been binned.  How exciting it is to hear the story behind why someone wants something.

Some of the philosophy of the stuff sharers sight was also about reducing waste and landfill.  It feels good to know things can move on and that we can be a little less disposable.

No surprise that some of this is pretty emotional.

I was fairly detached from our cot now as Raff had long graduated from it and Thomasina never made it out of a bassinet, so it was never a cot that she slept in.

However, I was still a bit concerned about getting rid of it as it was a bit of a symbol of what she never did.  I didn't want it ending up on a rubbish pile somewhere.  So to know it is now going to a new baby who will now have a beautiful cot when the parents were worried about what they could afford gives me so much joy.  It has turned what could be a very sad event into something that warms my heart.

Lots of things I have passed on through stuff sharers has some connection to Miss T.  Whether it be toys that the boys have outgrown that she would have been playing with now.  Or things I purchased when she was alive that are now tinged with sadness, even things purchased long before that remind me of the hopes and dreams.

There's even a bit where I feel I need to clean and put things in order physically in order to make sure my thoughts and sadness are clean and orderly as well.

If I had just thrown those things to the tip or in the charity bin, it would have just been sad.  Instead, I have the delight of seeing people enjoy those things, find uses for them, adding some brightness to both our days.  The pleasure of making new connections.

So, for those of you who are part of stuff sharers, thank you.  To Nicole, thank you for setting it up.  To others, I recommend setting up or joining such a group - another wonderful part of life in this village.

4 months

Today marks 4 months of living this life that I hadn't planned, a life with a great lump of sadness, of something missing, of something that can never be made better.

4 months since we became the family that had the baby that died.

4 months of empty aching arms.

You know I thought it was getting better, but I think I may have just learned to not scrape the surface too much.

Sure, there is no longer that total numbness there was in the first few weeks.  And that terrible taste of constant adrenelin has dissipated.

Life goes on, we work, we play, we eat, we laugh.  But always there is something missing.  As time moves on, what I am missing now is the things we never had.  No baby trying to stand and trying to walk as she might have been doing by now.  No little girl learning to stack blocks, we knew her cry but we never got to know her voice.  As Raff said, she never got to go swimming or eat chocolate.

It's 4 months of hard work.  Weeks and weeks of being strong, being positive, being mindful, living in the moment, looking after everyone.

Even though it is only mid February the season is starting to change.   Their is a tinge of colour on the trees, some sting gone out of the sun.  The days are feeling a lot more like when Miss T's arrival was immenient, her first birthday is nearly upon us.

I still have a few thank you's to write and finish, Christmas and holidays saw the flow of writing these go off track.  However, I can see that box of unfinished business means something more, I know I keep finding other things to do as once that is done I feel like a chapter will close.  While there are still Miss T jobs on the list, she's still partly here.

As time continues to march on there is more opportunity for the "if only" and "what if's".  I'm sick of the highlight reel of the last week of her life playing in my head.  Thinking of things that I might have seen, something that could have saved her.  I'm sick of the sheer terror of hearing an ambulance siren.

I search for meaning, I find myself doing more and more things to help others, some sort of strange deal where I am out to prove we are good people who should not have had such a bad thing happen to us.

Everynight without fail when I walk to my car I have a split second where I panic that I left Miss T in the car.  I'm still finding little pink socks in all sorts of places.  I deliberate as to whether to pin things I like for her on pinterest.

There have been amazing times in the past 4 months too.  Of acquaintances who have become close friends through their support, of old friends who have become closer.  People who go out of their way to remember Miss T, to think of us.  The random email or text, the invitation.  The incredible love and support of our little family that has worked so hard when we went from 4 to 5 and now 4 and one in heaven.

There's incredible disappointment too, the awkwardness of people who can't handle us, of people who don't know what to do.  People who can't see how they could help make things a little bit better.

As sad as I am, my heart sings as well.  I had my little girl, I got to dress and cuddle her for most of her 7 months.  We know how strong we are and how much love we can share.

I just wish she was here.

The daily dinner battle solved

Wow! It's week 3 of term 1 already.

Is it just me or does everyone seem to be drowning in wave after wave of permission notes, dates to remember, homework schedules and the like?

The other day I had a fleeting thought that I might have to turn off my addiction to "organising" blogs as the thought crossed my mind that I may be spending a little bit too much time staring at photos of other peoples organised cutlery drawers and mudrooms.  Was it causing me to feel woefully inadequate or was it stealing from me time that could actually be used getting organised?

So instead I thought, if you can't beat them join them - I'm going to expand my blogging to include some of the little things we have implemented around here to make our busy lives run a little more smoothly.

Google "menu planning" and you will find a million mum's out there sharing there ideas for running the nightly dining table.  If you click on the American ones you will probably be inundated with a heap of ideas as to how to mix a few pre-made dishes together and call it dinner.  Ouch!

Since Remus started school we have been running a menu planning exercise during term time and boy does it take the pressure off, so here's what I do in the hop it might help someone who is going through the terror of "what's for dinner" regularly.

Prior to the beginning of each term (or on the first weekend of term this time round, the end of the holidays seemed to come quickly) I sit down with our folder of favourite recipes and a few new selections from my ever growing collection of cookbooks.

I quickly draw up a table of Monday to Friday for each week of term and mark out any special occasions I know are already scheduled - BBQ teas at school, birthdays and so on.

I used to not include Friday's but have found including something simple of a Friday means that we can limit the amount of take-aways if there is some small amount of energy left.

Wednesday is the day our cleaner comes (life saving) so I always make sure Wednesday's are assigned dishes that are pre-made and frozen as that leads to only a couple of dishes and one more day of the kitchen remaining clean.  With 2 young boys, there is no objection to spaghetti bolognese, lasagna, tacos and fajita's being on high rotation so they are rotated through Wednesday's.

In winter if I do a slow cooker meal of a Thursday that means the kitchen gets another night of minimal use and hopefully staying orderly.  In summer, a BBQ or weber meal can do the same.

Then for Tuesday's I try to plot in things that are favourites so we get them once or twice a term.

For Monday's, my theory is that either meals can be pre-prepared on the weekend or there is more energy earlier in the week so I will put in a new recipe.  I make a point of trying to include one or two new recipes a week to maintain interest and expand the repertoire.

This all goes in a spreadsheet.  Then to really minimise the hassle during the week I photocopy the recipe so there is no digging around looking for it.  This term I really excelled myself by then getting the spreadsheet and recipes bound.  This means sitting on our recipe book stand is the meal schedule for the term and all the recipes.  When it is time to do the shopping list it is just a matter of grabbing the bound collection and putting the list together.

Hopefully this is also a good way of keeping on the straight and narrow - if dinner is planned and ingredients are there much less chance of take-away or sneaking down to the pub for a parmy.

Being on a bit of a body-overhaul kick at the moment means most of the new recipes for this term have come from Michelle Bridges and Jane Kennedy - which also inspires me to do the really creative cooking from my more gourmet books on the weekend.

Plotting out the menu plan is only the first part of the organisation.

The second is the big freeze up.  I cook up a massive pot of bolgnese sauce and freeze.  I also cook a big batch of taco sauce to freeze.  I recently glanced at the ingredient list on those supermarket packs of taco mixed and was horrified to see the first listed ingredient was sugar (ah, yes feeling the influence of Sarah Wilson).  So, now I'm using a combination of inspiration from Thomasina Miers (fond of her for many reasons) and Melbourne's wonderful Gewurzhaus to come up with my own taco sauce flavouring that is still acceptable to more junior palates.

I also freeze up bags of chicken breasts cut up and marinated in oil and garlic ready for pasta and stir fries - freezing in the marinade really intensifies the flavour.

With all of that we are set for the term - and Pete then keeps a score-check of how closely we stick to the plan....

However, I can promise you the bit of front end effort this requires leads to massive reductions in during the term stress!