work

this work trip has been challenging. I have been travelling around the country doing interviews with medical staff who work for and in aged care facilities. Doctors, registered nurses and carers who have been involved in a pilot project I have been evaluating on better management and treatment techniques for better oral health for residents in aged care, by way of group interview. Its the culmination of a life time of work of my colleague who passed away a few months ago, so its been wonderful to do this implementation and get such fantastic feedback that the pilot has been incredibly successful and the outcomes for residents have been transformational and improved quality of life for them like the carers couldnt have believed. However, despite such wonderful results from this work, after two work days in aged care facilities for high care residents...Im very certain that i do not want to spend my last days or years in one of these places AND I HAVE EATEN A FEW MORE CREAM BUN THINGS THAN I WOULD EVER EAT IN A YEAR! Been very busy in the hotel gym, morning and night! running, running, cycling, cycling.

Other highlight. Last night I watched the Footy Show after i got in to my apartment. Shower, bed, fell, button, tv, watched. First time ever. Couldnt but stay glued to the show that regularly showcases the biggest mysogynists in Australia who also talk football (yawn)on a regular basis, give lots of airtime to surprisingly articulate and empathic male CEOs who were demanding accountability of their players and refusing to resort to apologising for their demeaning and abusive behaviour towards women. I think we have just witnessed a huge public step forward in football leadership, i dont think we would have seen anything like this level of solidarity and consistency from the media ranks in the past,something has changed with this incident...and a small step toward responsible journalism and away from blaming the victim. The change in language and focus of the leaders of the game showcased, who refused to get caught up in the normal semantic tricks reporting of sexual abuse cases, I found quite incredible and yet believable. Maybe, just maybe, we have witnessed a small watershed...

retrospective weekend

Its been manic, starting on Friday night. Got home avec mallard; breasts only, 'wild' (whatever that really means) from Wild and hit the ground running in the kitchen. I'd done two presentations at work that day which really drained me. Cooking really is my relaxation. My escape, my gourmand meditation. I'd found kale at the market that morning (my nero di toscana kale is ahead of the other, but its still only looking like that trick bunch of flowers the clown pulls from his bag) and knowing there was still a tonne of quince on the kitchen bench, not to mention the trees...it was duck breast with quince something-or-other, kale and potatoes to be roasted using the fat id rendered off and saved for this very notion from the last mallard breast Id rendered down. One of the things i really love about food blogging is how incredibly easy it is to cook seasonally. So many clever people with wonderful sites and recipes that make it so easy to use whats available. Just Google duck + quince.
Viola!
By half eight the kids were off doing their thing (having been already palmed off with home made ricotta ravioli) and we sat down to dinner under low light for a Friday feast of pan roasted duck with caramelised quince ( i really really recommend this way of handling the quince; sweet sour and slightly chewy with a piquancy all its own) sauted kale with garlic and oven roasted duck fat potatoes (there has to be a fancy name for this that disgusies the awful truth, surely?) We topped it off with a bottle of home made quince champagne which was a little cloudy due to the probably highly illegal alcohol content and hence an inability to freeze the yeast out during the second fermentation and corking(another post maybe?).

It was a beautiful night, very connecting, ending with satisfied bellies and very sore butts around midnight. We can get quite stuck at the dining table once we start, especially when we're planning our big adventure. But Id satisfied my craving for some happy meat, duck in particular and to use up some quinces. So that was Friday...

love is...

annuska appearing at our door, matching oven mitts on, bearing a gift of hot comforting porky stuff; delicious caramelised aromas wafting, bread in a bag, a half hour chat, a hug, a smile, a laugh. You yourself were not well. Ahh, chorizo delivered by a beautiful spaniard! What more could one ask for...
It was superb.
Thank you, you lovely one.

be careful what you wish for

I used to say about my ex husband that life would be so much easier if he just got hit by a bus. Not very karmic or Zen i know, but at the time the children were experiencing so much pain and confusion that my rational and 'big' self got consumed by the emotional and insular self that exists within me.

But the guy has gone and driven over himself with his very own mini-bus for hire jam packed to the roof with narcissism, selfishness and a huge lot of emotional baggage! Flattened himself and the kids with so much parental incompetence that they came home shocked, depressed and full of confusion brought about by the huge amount negative feelings towards him that spending a month with him engendered.

What do you do when your child speaks about divorcing their dad? about having no respect left and thinking him stupid and incompetent to the degree that they say they no longer like him? I wasnt ready for that conversation with B1; it winded me, made my heart race and my brain shut down. In these moments of honesty spoken by a child you have to put aside your feelings of rage, hurt, whatever leftovers you may harbour and current circumstances you have to navigate and just hear their words and help them ,without agenda. Its hard. it takes clarity and linearity which just dont come easily when im talking about their dad and his incomprehensible, bipolar, personality disordered ways. But, for them, i have to be detatched from myself to some degree in order to respect them and their relationship with him, which exists independently of me.

Fark!

He has enough rage towards me without having this situation come about, where he will no doubt believe to some degree that i may have had something to do with the current dilemma.

The girls dont want to tell him themselves that they never want to go visit him again, that they were so bored out of their brains and felt deeply disrespected by his lack of planning, interest and maturity that they dont really care if they see him again this year. The guy banned them from visiting the only friends they have in QLD, friends they have had since birth, because their mother is a long time friend of mine. He banned them from hanging out with their step brothers while he went to work as he thinks they are a bad influence, so they stayed home, alone, on weekdays, for 4 weeks and went on out to the movies with him twice. I cant send them back to experience neglect like that. So they want me to do it, tell him they refuse to visit again. Im so unsure about the best way to approach this problem. Im damned if i do and they are damned if they do.

Its difficult when you co-parent with some one who really isn't capable or competent of filling the role.

back on track

well the relief is palpable. After far too long, 'The Conversation' was embarked upon. SIL had returned east, babybean was in bed, and the other 2 beans were happily embedded at friends houses for the night. Chilled wine opened (could have been a bad idea, but it wasnt) and we sat end to end on the couch and waded in to the depths of our fears, hurts, anger and expectations. As anticipated, it was a very fruitful and respectful evening; we both have quite strong opinions about how such conversations need to be managed, self hung on to and dialogue held very much in the present. It just took us a week of acceptance of our sadness, 'innocence lost' (it was only the second big dispute we have ever had) and reflection as individuals to get there. We are both taureans (stubborn as hell) both with the experience of our last big relationship being to Scorpios, so we have pretty much identical patterns of expectations about who is responsible for what when it comes to sorting out disagreement! Laughter did occour.

Being a blended family comes with challenges. In our case B2 is a strong willed extrovert and empathy is not very present in her emotional vocabulary. She likes to argue and argue her point when asked to do something not to her liking. It appears to be her tool for tying you up in knots in order to get you to drop the request. I've been dealing with her since birth (obviously) and am sometimes quite unaware of this behaviour, certainly as a parent who encourages debate and negotiation, perspective on what is healthy posturing can get skewed. So thats B2. Simon brings to the table a very conflicted relationship with his late step daughter, who fell off the rails then into a negative crowd and behaviours, ending with her very tragic death in her teens. B2s apparent similar behaviour traits pushes all his panic buttons and he goes into a tailspin which i am yet to be able to pick. So he gets spooked, reacts innapropriately, B2 gets worse, i get freaked and we all head down into a very murky place for a while, culminating in an argument between them; she gets beligerent, he regresses and then gets beligerent and i blow up at both of them. Pretty. Not.

So this morning i find myself in a place that is a little battered and worn but feeling loved, loving, supported, understood, understanding and a little wiser with a mutual resolve to do it a little better next time, and bloody looking forward to an uncomplicated and hopefully hot week with the boy in Hawaii and Christmas with his family in San Francisco.

eat pray love

apparently its a no 1 best seller and everyone is talking about it - well,anyway that's what the jacket said. Im so yesterday. I love this style of writing; self deprecating, laconic, colloquial, ironic, and funny, very very funny. Its such an honest, naked piece of writing filled for me with moments of extreme identification as the writer takes us with her on her journey of clambering her way out of a messy and hard divorce through a process of self discovery of various means. She eats her way through Italy to find self acceptance, prays her way forward to self realisation in India and finds love in her consolidation journey in Indonesia. Dog eared pages fill my book where i have marked inspiring passages but there's just a few too many. Im going to have to read it again. Its one of those books where i nod my way through amidst the laughter. Not many books have me laughing out aloud but this ones irresistable, effortlessy swinging from the spiritual to the front bar. Not having any divorced friends, i found the book an affirming companion.

what i had waited for for so long was to have an actual conversation with my ex-husband, but this was obviously never going to happen What i had been craving was a resoloution, a peace summit, from which we could emerge with a united understanding of what had occourred in our marriage and a mutual forgiveness for the ugliness of our divorce. This obviously wasn't going to happen. How do survivors of terminated relationships ever endure the pain of unfinished business...you finish the business yourself. Its not only posible, its essential.

i swung that phantom limb of divorce around quite a bit after the amputation. It took a while to feel whole again.

I almost didnt do it

Yesterday was the girls dads birthday.
Yesterdy was my ex husbands birthday.
Can you see the conflict?

Every year since the girls have been small and their dad and i have been seperated, i have always, religiously, made sure they had gifts and cards for him on days of celebration; Fathers Day, Christmas and his birthday. This was my expression of love for the the girls so they were never caught in a position of guilt or sorrow about not having something to gift him. I wish i could say he ever returned the sentiment. After seeing the distress that not being able to organise gifts for me caused the girls, my mother took on the role of 'keeper of the heart' so that when it came to such days, she always made sure the girls had something for me, homemade or bought. So when the girls Dad moved away, i had to get a little more organised in order to make sure something went off in the post to arrive in time. My committment to the wellbeing of the kids in this matter went on through property settlement, divorce and multiple court hearings for custody. I never wavered, until this year, until he moved away and himself failed to send written word or a gift in the mail on their birthdays. When Fathers Day approached the kids said they werent interested in sending him something. i didnt insist. i was shocked but i didnt insist. In the past i would have. I let it roll on and they phoned him on Fathers Day, late. His birthday approached, the window of time for sending something passed, the day arrived, i was feeling pretty guilty. The girls said nothing and i nearly let it pass. Let him stew i thought, let him experience for the first time what it feels like. Im not sure if he ever really realised that in the past it was me who orgainised it all. At half eight last night i couldnt stand it anymore and finally went into B1s room and with a tone of feigned shock and realisation in my voice i declared it to be October 29th.
"Dads Birthday?"
"Yup"
She was dialling within five seconds.

weekend loca

we had a busy weekend. A trip to a local school Strawberry Fair , the local monthly market , lots of friends visiting, swimming at my mums and gardening gardening gardening. I love visiting local fairs and markets. Besides the wonderful sense of community they provide, its a great chance to buy local produce and financially support the local economy. The Strawberry Fair, surprisingly named as i didnt actually see many strawberry goods, provided some bargain shopping
and i scored a great stash of second hand tops for the boy for ten dollars and sampled my lovely Spanish friend Anas' mega paella.

The monthly stirling market always makes for a nice hour or two,

as we can wander there on foot, and it provided some pantry fodder; local olive oil, brined kalamata olives, dried local organic fruits, some (more) pottery bowls (im so addicted to these that the potter and i are now on a first name basis ), and a tres sweet woollen fairy to take as a Christmas gift for my tres sweet SIL in California. It also provided the opportunity for some random fellow blogger run-ins. It was wonderful to see a new kitchen garden stall selling punnets of a wide variety of heirloom vegetables as it called to my past dreams.
a friend and i had a late teenage entrpreneurial flop with a gardening business, with the outrageously pompous name of Hortensis . We planted up and maintained kitchen gardens with heirloom crops for paying customers. I just like to think we were ahead of our time.

Im still processing the visits from friends. One couple are a mixed culture marriage; she's newly arrived from China and he is Greek Australian. They have problems and she wasnt afraid to show it. It was very confronting and it threw me to witness such hostility, disrespect and raw anger. I know she will want to talk to me about what is going on in her relationship and i will have to think carefully about the best way to respond. Its such a full on situation involving internet dreams on both sides. Old friends of Simons brought wine and cheese on Satuday night. I love them dearly; they are inspiring, loving , funny, clever and a dedicated 'still in love after 25 years' couple. I found however i am still dealing with my 'married to your deceased friends husband' and 'living in her house' issues. I have moments of self consciousness and flashes of 'is this weird for you' and im thrown back into insecurities. I thought i had dealt with most of these feelings but obviously i still need to do some more reflection and acceptance. Its a strange gig being married to a widow sometimes. Its gotten much easier but we had some very interesting moments earlier on; Its been quite a journey for us both. My favourite was when simon kindly offered to show me the funeral video to help me with my issues. Big night that one! He still cant quite believe he offerred.