The Speed of Change

Change can happen quickly. Or at least appear rapid. Over a fair number of months Jenny and I have been discussing the possibility of moving to Melbourne from our home near Canberra – yes, we have lived in Melbourne a year, but I am talking selling up and moving the last of our possessions. This process was slow, sedentary, having its own yawny pace. Then my company tells me that we have to make the decision early, and we bit the bullet – and in the space of several weeks, our home is about to go on the market, and we have already put down a holding deposit on a block of land and a new house – in Cook’s Point, Melbourne. The sad bit is that it wont be available until February 2011.

Still a lot of things to do (I wont even begin to explain about the finances), but we have now cast the dice.

A Poignant, Pregnant Pause

Wow, just a few observations, mainly internally focused.

Last night I was doing my usual Twittering, and one of my followees retweeted something that shocked me to the core. A woman who Tweets, asked for everyone to pray for her baby who just died. I needed to know more, but I could barely make myself click the relevant links. It turned out she was in the back yard of her home and her two year old son fell in the pool and died in seconds. It absolutely killed me and I wept – hard. I can only barely imagine what she went through.

I know that since having my own child I can barely see or read about children who suffer. It wrenches my soul, because I can so easily superimpose what it might mean for me. This is what got me more than anything, but also the immediacy of it. This woman used Twitter to impart her grief, and perhaps, seek some sort of solace. I am sure it had mixed results for her, for surely nothing can give her solace, and if there is some comfort, it would be from her own family. Also, the negative side of social networking tools is that weirdos and downright evil people come out of the woodwork, and I believe this woman was hounded by a few such despicable individuals.

I suppose this blog is more about me. How I react. Tragedies occur every day, and this poor woman is one of many parents grieving due to tragedy or worse. But it showed something about me. I have become sensitive – super-sensitive to child suffering and death, and this is because I love my little daughter to bits.

I know I would trade my life for hers without hesitation.

Personal: My Little Annoying Curse

I have a rather nasty condition called angioedema – a lot of people think it is related to the heart – which it isn’t. It is related to hives, but is a lot worse – it manifests itself a lot deeper and in weird ways.

I have had it for about 20 years, maybe longer, and the first time it happened I didn’t know what it was. I was doing some gardening and then one of my feet swelled to about 130% normal size. Could hardly walk and took a bus to the doctor. He thought it was a spider bite and gave me cortisone, and it went away over the next day or so (not before the other foot swelled). Then, periodically, my feet, my hands, my face, my tongue (or half the tongue), lips, or localised areas almost anywhere (and I mean that) would swell. For a while I thought it was some lingering poison from a spider bite. Hmm.. you can convince yourself of everything.

Eventually I got to see an immunologist and he diagnosed the condition within minutes – that was about 5 years ago.

My immunologist is great, and a leader in his field. He was a mixed blessing for me – he got me to understand what I have, but at the same time realise that it was nigh impossible to know what causes the allergy, and so I had to reconcile myself to drug therapy to control it. And over the next year or two that is what he did for me.

Over the last few weeks I had a nasty batch of attacks. It turned out that my lovely little child gave me a virus, that turned into a throat and ear infection, which crashed and burned my immune system, causing the angioedema to win the day against the normal drug therapy. So I had everything – including the thing I dreaded the most – throat swelling. I spent 7 hours this morning at Royal Melbourne Hospital casualty, getting pumped with hydrocortisone and IntraMuscular adrenalin.

I still hope this is the after effects of my infection-hit. If not, I have to carry an epi-pen with adrenalin nearby. Not good.

Sanity Fifteen Minutes Away

I live in an apartment in Southbank, very close to South Melbourne. It has huge advantages – I can walk to work, and pretty much stroll to any convenience under the sun. Our apartment is reasonable in size, on the twenty-third floor, and offers an incredible view of Southbank’s skyline, the "Gee" and Rod Laver Stadium, Albert Park, and a breathtaking view of the coastline – Port Melbourne, St Kilda, Brighton etc.

When you have a nasty flu, and a bout of angioedema, it is like being in a small birdcage, and a cooped-up four year old girl doesn’t help – no siree. So I can praise my wife for suggesting, despite our battle scars with health, that I struggle out and go to the beach at Port Melbourne. Great idea – and it was.

We were only there around two hours, but it made a world of a difference. It was sanity. Recuperative. And best of all, fifteen minutes drive down the road. Another advantage of where I live.

As it turned out, this was the first day since last summer, that a hot day magically appeared – admittedly a little too warm on the beach, but hey, for a four year old to paddle in the Bay’s water, fantastic. Now for those of you who don’t know Melbourne, because we are on a Bay the beaches are simply not like Sydney’s – no competition, and probably most of the coastline. Australia generally has vast numbers of perfect, fine, white sand and wonderful waves – not so the Bay. But, the little one didn’t care at all (water – that is all it has to be), and frankly, the return of Sanity was all I was focused on. Hallelujah!

Our beach shelter at Port Melbourne’s ‘beach’ Erin having the time of her life

Erin enjoying a paddle in the Bay Our shelter on the beach, dodging the dead jellyfish

A Welcome Time Out

Boy oh boy have I had a nasty 10 months, in terms of work, and I needed to recharge my batteries, even if it is only partially. Jen needed a break too (having to cope with me being crabby some of the time), and so a few weeks back we booked for two nights what appeared to be a nice cottage in Lorne, Victoria (on the Great Ocean Road – facing the prodigious and windswept Southern Ocean).

We left on Friday morning and came back Sunday afternoon – two nights and essentially two days, and despite the short nature of it, and pretty horrible weather, it was absolutely wonderful. Nothing refreshes me more than the smell of salty air, and the sounds of waves breaking on rocks and on the beaches. I will one day live on the coast, I swear it!

Erin loves water of any kind, and particularly beaches, so she was in her element – perhaps too much so! Our first visit to the beach was without any appropriate clothing as it was windy, rainy and cold, but yes, she insisted on paddling her feet in the shallows, and yes, she fell over backwards and got soaked and sandy! Fun nevertheless.

Lorne is a pretty nice place, but expensive – as it is close enough to Melbourne (2hrs) to have a steady stream of clientele (such as my family) and far enough away to ask for premium prices for everything. Having said this, they had great fish and chip shops, bakeries and restaurants, which really do go well with the type of break we wanted. By coincidence, Lorne was having what Bondi has been famous for – a large sculpture exhibition running along a long stretch of the beach front, as well as among the beach-facing shops. Fifty of them, and some were massive! Not all the artwork was stupendous, but there were enough that were pleasing to the eye or thought-provoking enough, to add value to our trip.

I promised myself that I wanted to spend more time with my family and do ‘family things’ than writing, and I kept it. In fact, I spent no more than about three hours writing, and I finished a particularly difficult chapter in my YA novel, so it was concentrated goodness. No regrets – my family is more important than anything in my life.

So here’s a few photos for your perusal. Hope you get a sense of our enjoyment in that narrow window of opportunity.

Erin on the beach, playing in the sand