Goodbye Bump

Goodbye Bump

Goodbye reflux,
Goodbye indigestion,
Goodbye heartburn, my old friend.
Goodbye hot-foot syndrome, kicks to the colon and river-dancing on my spleen.
Goodbye sciatica, sore tail-bone and needing three pillows to sleep.

Goodbye dizzy head-rush, neck pulsing, strangulation by neck muscles feeling.
Goodbye racing pulse and less breath than breathlessness,
Goodbye bursting bladder, constipation blocked diarrhoea.
Goodbye not being able to sit up, roll over or stand up with ease.

Goodbye 'Twins?', 'God you are huge!' and 'When's your due date?'
Goodbye mood swings, and tearful moments
Goodbye always being hotter than everyone else and needing to sit down all the time
Goodbye painful pubic bone and random twangs or twings
Goodbye bump, hello feet, hello ankles.

Goodbye bump?

Goodbye holding you close everyday, all day.
Goodbye guessing which bit of you that is?
Goodbye your kicking freaking out the Norwegian.
Goodbye bump.
Hello baby.
Hello Boy.

Written the night before I had Lukas when we didn't know what his name was going to be.

Rental Smental

The Norwegian and I had our first taste of the competitive world of the Sydney Rental Scene today. The flat we are staying in is great, but they are selling, so we need to find another more permanent place to rest our heads.

Rental properties are only available for viewing for 20 minute slots between 11am and 1pm on a Saturday. All of them. This means you end up choosing to view places that are close to each other rather than the ones you actually like. If you do like a place you have to fill out an application form with TWO work references and TWO property references. They choose who they like the best. If you REALLY like a place you are advised to put down a deposit – refundable if the owner doesn't like the look of you. We've heard tales of people secretly putting down larger deposits than requested to show willing, and agreeing to higher rents just to secure their ideal pad.

Earlier this week we had cleverly chosen four flats all within walking distance of where we are now in East Manly, but we woke this morning to the heavy rain that Sydney sometimes enjoys. The Norwegian calls Sin Rain. It comes in large and heavy doses and would have Noah racing to the hardware shop. As our flat was also being shown for four seconds to twenty prospective buyers at 11am and we had to clear out anyway, we piled on the gortex and sallied forth.

By chance we have ended up living in one of the pricier areas of Sydney, a little enclave of very expensive houses, but there is the odd apartment block to keep the plebs like us out of the rain. Maureen, the agent showing us flat number one, was a well groomed forty, with a smooth but surprisingly voluminous black bob and a woollen shawl draped over her shoulders. She didn't have a coat.

'Quite some weather hey?'We all take off our shoes. The flat was shabby, woefully out of date (seventies brown bathroom tiles anyone?) and carpeted throughout – which is a no no for us. She half heartedly extolled its virtues without quite being able to hide that the place makes her feel itchy.

'Two balconies. With harbour glimpses.' She opened a door onto one and the sound of a jack hammer from the building work next door drilled into the flat.

'And for East Manly, you won't get cheaper than $410.'

The info on my sheet said $430. The Norwegian asked about the lack of fridge and she told us about a white goods hire place on Pittwater.
'So do you have much furniture already?' she asked.
'No nothing.'
'Well there is a Salvation Army shop also on Pittwater. You can find lounges*, beds. Very reasonable.'
The Salvos! I looked down at my drenched jeans, rat-tailed hair and soaked anorak. One of my socks has a hole in it.

We said our goodbyes to Maureen and young man in a baseball cap who has just arrived and struggled through the sheet rain to the next property, getting slightly lost on the way. As we squelched up the drive we spied a figure through the rain trying various keys in the lock. It is Maureen. She is completely dry.

'How the heck did she get here so quickly, and bone dry,' I whispered to the Norwegian.

This flat was much more popular with at least four other couples interested, but again, no good for us, carpeted throughout and though much bigger, outdated – this time 80s avocado. They are asking $520 a week - $2253 pcm. Much too much.
We were the first in and smiled at the guy in rubber gloves who opened the door, clearly the current tenant in the last stages of cleaning up. The other couples piled in, grim faced and the strangest competative vibe developed as we poked around the flat, all in our socks. Even though I didn't like the flat I started panicking that someone else would get it. It felt like a race.

In one of the bed rooms, the Norwegian and I were peering at the tennis courts beyond the back yard. Rubber Gloves wandered in and the Norwegian asked if his tennis had improved living here.
'Oh, yes. Well not much.'
We all smiled and laughed. A little girl ran into the room, followed by her father. We smiled at her, then him. He grabbed her hand and steered her out of the room without a glimmer of teeth.
'You know,' Rubber Gloves whispered when Maureen was out of earshot, 'This place needs a lot doing to it to be habitable. Mold. That is why we are moving out.'
'Thanks for the heads up,' I said as he pointed to the tale tell green smudges on the wall. It never hurts to be nice.

We skipped the next viewing as I couldn't bear to think what a $350 a week place looked like and headed to a local café, that over looks Little Manly Beach for a coffee to warm up. A group of divers were just disappearing into the blue-grey water. The distant view of Sydney CBD was completely obscured by mist and clouds.

The last place was no better, small, cramped and carpeted and we trudged home, socked to our socks. We made tea and huddled around the electric heater.

Finding a flat might take longer than we thought.

*lounges are sofas.

Crouching Tweeter, Hidden Blog

I've decided it is about time to make my blog private, so I'll be sending out emails inviting you my newly privitised burblings.

If you don't get one, and would like to carry on reading, send me a message and I'll do the do.

Ta

Hard Rubbish Day

In a break from all the visa gloom and job doom, today has been great as it is Hard Rubbish Day. Not as you might think, a hard day that was also rubbish, but the day when junk-burdened Sydneysiders leave a load of stuff on the pavement in front of their houses for the council to take away.

I have just spent a happy hour wandering around my area poking through piles of tat with my fellow junk lovers (aka poor folk) while getting sniffily ignored by posh people walking their Labradoodles and Doodleman Pinschers.

There is a great deal of rubbish, and I do literally mean rubbish; cracked pieces of wood, plastic bags filled with leaves (pretty sure that is not 'hard rubbish' millionaire person) and rusty metal poles, but there was some great stuff too.

If we were more sure about our living arrangements I would have been quids in; sewing machine, firestick, table football, wine rack, plates, cups, bbq tongs, table cloth, curtains, vintage suitcase, sofas, chairs, tables, a box of tacky jewelry, tvs, videos, DVD players, fans and BBQs. Most of it looked like it needed some serious TLC and who knows if the electricals work, but fuck, it's free.

It surprised me how many photographs were thrown out; happy smiley people in faded photos and in one box, piles of albums. The strangest thing I found, carefully tucked away in a plastic folder, was a photo montage of someone's glistening gut shots from all angles. It was accompanied by a medical report (with full name and address details) giving the owner the all clear on his liver. Phew.

Even though we still could be going home, I could stop myself from picking up,

Duffel Coat (Mambo) in perfect condition
3 T-shirts (Billabong and other random makes)
Shorts (Grey)
Patricia Cornwell Book (the only book I saw)
CDs (Basement Jaxx and Café Del Mar)
A tray (for breakfast in bed)
Thermal Mug (for winter walks on the beach)
Silver Ring
Esky

The next one is in 6 months. It makes me want to get sponsored even more.

The importance of a relaxed groom

I went to an excellent, cheap yoga class in Manly Community Centre last night. I like going to yoga classes in drafty community centres rather than in swish expensive ones with tinkling fountains and up lighters. This is not (just) because I am a tight wad. It is because they are usually run by eccentric teachers and peopled by the most interesting, yet also eccentric, fellow students.

I've been taught by a sturdy German woman in a small hall in Stoke Newington, who was the first person to notice and celebrate the fact that I can move my little toes independently from the rest of my toes; a crazy curly-haired Welsh yogi, in a in a Cardiff sports centre who implored on a regular basis, 'How can anyone survive, without yoga. How? HOW?'; and an otherworldly, serene Cornish dude who served chai and taught me how to meditate in Buddock Waters. He – as a pointless aside - was originally taught by the crazy Welsh lady. Apparently the world of yogi's who teach in community centres is a small one.

So I was pleased to have found a community centre type class here in Manly.
The class is taught by the formidable Man Yee. A petite Chinese woman with the body of a gymnast and the kind, smiling face of a particularly happy nun. I spent the first half of the class thinking that her name was actually Man Lee, which gave me a huge amount of misplaced pleasure.

She teaches with skill and compassion, which is more important than you might think as yoga is not just another form of exercise or way to achieve the body beautiful. It is a more rounded, dare I say, holistic form of physical activity.

Throughout the lesson, as she gave instructions, raising her voice for the hard bits, I drifted of into wonderful three-second kung fu daydreams as she sounds, at times, like a female Bruce Lee. At one point I was distracted from my forward bend by the pleasant puzzle of working out what she meant when she said, 'This pose work your groom. Best to focus on your groom and also have a relaxed groom.'
Even though I have been going to yoga for years on and off and am quite good at some of the poses, I have incredibly tight hamstrings. It is a dream of mine that I will one day be able to touch my toes. At the end of the session when I told her how much

I had enjoyed the class, she said,
'You are good in the arms,' and gave me a little wry smile.
'I really need to improve my hamstrings.'
'Yes, yes,' she said, 'you really do have very conservative legs, Jen.'
'I suppose they are,' I said.

Take that Mr Brown.

Dee Why Sealife

Living in funny old Dee Why has had its moments.

I've been lucky enough to capture some photos of the wildlife here include one day after a storm and a number of strange jellyfish and other creatures were washed up onto the beach.






















There were hundreds of blue stingers or blue bottles at the hide tide mark with their long tentacles plastered to the sand trailing back to the waterline. The Norwegian was speaking to a woman who grew up here and she said as a child they used to pop the sun dried stinger bodies for fun like we would pop bubble wrap.
















There were quite a few clear jellyfish as well as these strange creatures that looked like frilly, mini, blue ghosts, perhaps baby blue bottles? They moved occassionally.

The weirdest thing was a small rock that was encrusted with the moving mouths of a number of shellfish. They were opening and closing, dark red creatures, like thick wet feathers, were pushing in and out in a hopeless fashion. If I were the anthropomorphising kind I would say they were thinking, 'oh shit, where did all the water go?'

















It was like the end of the world.

Home Sweat Home

I went to a Bikram Yoga class this week. This is the famous and controversial school of yoga, called McYoga by some, that has swept the globe. It involves doing yoga in a hot room. In a really hot room.

The room I lay in, waiting for the class, to start was 40 degrees C with 40% humidity. It was somewhat smelly, as the large space was filled with other people who were also lying there sweating. This yoga studio has been running for a while. Three classes a day, seven days a week for five years, in a room that rarely gets an airing? You do the sweat maths.

The idea is that the hotness allows you to stretch more deeply as muscles and tendons are relaxed, and the sweating speeds up the excretion of toxins. Hence the smell. I got really dizzy a couple of times, nearly yo-gagged, and had to lie down on my drenched towel. They say that the fact Bikram Yoga is so hard, the very challenge itself, gives rise to a increase in self discipline and self confidence. I say, Hhhhhmm.

It was very hard. If the instructor hadn't asked me, to stay in the room if I felt unwell, 'so I can keep an eye on you,' I would have hot-footed it right out of there. Through the class I heard, amongst the usual groans and puffs, a series of guttural almost desperate i'mgoingtodie moans coming from a brunette somewhere in the middle of the room. I was thinking, 'you go girl, I'd be groaning like a troll if I didn't have this stiff-upper-lip-english-reserve thing going on.' Afterward I saw her talking to a friend in the changing rooms. Turns out she is deaf and those are just her noises. Sometimes I wish I weren't so dumb.

Another older women to my front right was wearing leggings with no underpants. You may wonder how I knew she wasn't wearing underpants. Well I think these may have been her favourite leggings as they were - shall we say - worn in the seat area. During one bending forward pose I could see more than I've ever wanted to see, of a middle-aged woman's rectum.

As well as 'don't look at ladies leggings when they are bending over', my other tip would be not to wear a white top to Bikram Yoga. Mine went completely see through after about one second of intense sweating, so my friend with the leggings wasn't the only one flashing it about.

But it was so hard, and I was concentrating on just doing at least some of the asanas without keeling over, I didn't really give a flying shoulder-stand if the toned and tattooed yogaboy behind me could see my nipples. I don't think he did either.

Everyone was sweating. The water bottles were sweating, the walls were sweating, even the curtains were sweating, but I have never seen a person sweat so much as this uber-bendy woman in the front row. At one point she was standing on one leg, hands in front of her chest. Her elbows were pointing down and sweat was dripping of them. Actually I think the correct description would be 'running off them.' I don't see how she had any water left in her body. She should have just been a empty meat sack in lycra shorts and an Ohm tattoo.

Afterward I did feel strangely accomplished, though it took three hours of water sipping and melon eating to get rid of the pounding headache once I was back in the flat. No doubt my enthusiastic, kindly, though vague-on-the-science, instructor would say it was the toxins I was expelling. She did also say that by breathing deeply I would release more iron into my blood stream. I'm pretty sure that is not how hemoglobin works.

I paid $20 and can come as often I like for 10 days. I feel compelled to go again, despite the headache and the fact that I was a ravenous hosebeast the following day. I had to run out at 10.30am the next day to get a slice of toasted banana bread as my stomach was groaning like a deaf girl doing yoga and disturbing everyone in the office.

One last tip. Cycling to Bickram yoga on a hot summer day in Australia is almost too stupid to consider. Don't.