Remember joy? It was a thing we used to have a lot of, and we talked about it heaps, back in the day. Then over the last year or so; not so much. So many new words and phrases have jumped into our vernacular that it seems we have forgotten some of our old faves.

And we’ve stopped writing and posting about our favourite things too. At least I know I have.

Things have gotten so serious and scary and strange, that telling you a story about how yesterday I thought I’d like to move to the country, so I drove for over an hour, some of it on dirt roads, to get to the old Kandanga School, a property that I thought I’d buy. When I go there, I realised: it was IN THE COUNTRY. Which meant there was country things like flies and dirt and cows, and not so much non-country things like cafes and homewares shops selling pinch pots and Witchery stores. It turns out that I don’t like the country quite as much as the romantic part of my brain thinks, and Country Road is really nothing much like country roads.

With the world doing weird-world stuff I feel a bit frothy talking and telling about the millions of things that go through my head (why does Woofa the shitcat sit on the back of the couch instead of on the couch, how did that wispy white cheek-hair grow to five centimetres when I only plucked it yesterday, should I start a combined chiro-cafe-bookstore called Crooked Spines, or should it be Aligned Spines, or should I also sell records and call it A Few of My Favourite Things and be done with it?)

So on my drive to the country I played Dan Zanes tunes on the way there (from when the kids were little and Hayls was alive) and Hamilton on the way home (now that the kids are older and Hayls would have loved the MadKing songs) and I remembered a little of who I was before the crazy stuff began. I remembered that I liked to go to cafes and drink coffee (only one or I can’t sleep) and write stories. I remembered that I liked to breathe deeply, to look a the sun shining on peoples’ faces and to talk to strangers about unimportant issues. I remembered that I am not a scientist or a researcher or a biochemist, I’m just a Mum with kids that I want to hold close for as long as I can, and take care of them the best way I know how. I remembered that I like it when people are kind.

So no, this blog doesn’t tackle the big issues. It doesn’t tackle any issues. But it does carve out a little space of joy for me, and so that’s what I’m doing from now on. Bringing back the joy.

Joy to the world.

What brings you joy? I’d love to hear…

…From The Ashers

You know that poo baby I told you about yesterday?

Well I eventually went back for her.

I know, I know, I’m crazy, but I’d kind of gotten used to having her around.  Plus, curiosity got the better of me, and I started to wonder just how much poo a baby could pump out.  Turns out, it’s A LOT.  Turns out that when your baby dissolves all her internal organs and ejects the liquefied remnants out of her habitus and into her holder, it is enough to fill one third of a baby capsule.  This is a precise measurement and a scientific fact.  Which means if you are the baby still residing in that capsule,  you won’t drown, but you will have poo in all the creases of your umbilicus.  You will have poo in between your toes, and you will have poo in your ears (this last one is only true if your mother has been vigorously swinging you to and fro in an effort to look nonchalant and groovy in a cafe she really should have left twenty minutes ago).

So how did we clean her up?

We went to the baby change room in the public toilets.  We went there because there was no way that THAT chocolate milkshake was getting into my car.  We considered our options carefully, weighed up our choices, and we simply tipped out the poo.  We left the kid in the capsule (What?  She was strapped in remember?  I told you that yesterday) and just tipped.  I even sang the tune “I’m a little teapot”, tipping at just the right moment.  It was like Play School Halloween or something.  Luckily most of the poo-brew tipped out.

Kind of.

Then we put the job lot, child and contraption, in the REALLY BIG SINK that they always have in baby change rooms- now I know why- and turned on the waterworks.  We rinsed through the equivalent of the Wivenhoe Dam until the water coming through was almost clear*.  And then we went home.

Eventually that baby capsule got clean.

Eventually that baby got clean.

And eventually that baby grew up, stopped crying quite so much, learned to walk, talk and operate an iPad, got addicted to Sylvanians, started fights with her brother, got transfusions, left fairy costumes strewn around the house, ate Ben and Jerry’s and carrots as often as she could, made cubbies out of towels and blankets, wiped boogers on her clothes, learned to swim, read The Wishing Chair and sang herself to sleep most nights.

Tonight we could hear her singing Joy to the World followed by Say Hey- I Love You until she drifted off to sleep.

I like her style.  From some of the stuff I’ve seen and heard today, the world could use a bit more Joy and a bit more I Love You. And maybe a few less shit-splosions.

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*This is a craftily inserted lie so you’ll think I’m a good Mum