what i'm doing when i'm not blogging.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In an attempt to break my writers block into a million pieces I thought I would just write about things that are filling my life in the past couple of days.

I'm Listening to:

At the moment my husband is sitting on our orangish-red couch ($30 on Gumtree!) playing the guitar and softly singing 'Joy to the World'.  He has a beautiful voice and I imagined every one of my married evenings would be filled with his melodies.  When we were long-distance dating sometimes he'd play songs for me over Skype.  I would cyber-swoon appropriately - lots of romantic emoticons.  The rare evenings we spent together usually involved playing music for and with each other.  He played Sufjan's "The Dress Looks Nice on You" but changed "dress" to "shress" as I almost exclusively wore dresses over jeans at that point in my fashion life.  Sadly our ASBFLDSNNTEO ("actual special best friends living daily and sleeping nightly next to each other") existence has produced only about 2% of the music we imagined.  Why?  I'm not sure.  Children?  Possibly.  And there's some vulnerability about music, especially in the creating, that makes us feel shy of each other - it's one of the remaining frontiers left unexplored for us.  I love when my husband does play to himself in the evening, but I have to pretend that I don't notice or care, or he will stop. :)

What else am I listening to?  We have a playlist on our iPod called "Kids Bop etc" and it's our go-to at the moment.  If my son is ever in a boy band I will completely blame his father.  Saf knows a lot of the words to Justin Beiber's "Baby" and One Direction's "Beautiful".  We're not crazy about the worldview being sung, but the beats are pretty party rockin' and the only place we can handle listening to non-stop proper children's music is in the car.

I'm Doing:

As a kid we'd have semi-formal Olympic competitions in our yard with a few neighbours and somewhere between garbage can+brick stack jumping and 'how many seconds long is your best handstand?' we'd have to also create and perform our best Cheer.  Tonight I wanted to do that again but I could barely recall any of even the most common cheers from Friday night highschool football games.  I tried anyway and Saf was my partner, copying all of my arm, leg and hip movements as if I was gifted and authoritative.  Then we did an impromptu dance routine to my own rendition of "Eye of the Tiger", one of his favorite songs.  Chris laid on the couch smiling and judging us.  Jubee army crawled around trying to ingest paper, as she does.

I went thrift store shopping and grocery shopping ALL BY MYSELF.  It was wonderful and not surprisingly very un-lonely (sorry kids!)  I did spend way too long browsing in the hole-in-the-wall-but-packed-with-designer-labels-for-$8 shop and then had to race through the aisles to grab my groceries but it was totally worth it.  I bought denim shorts, jeans, a pair of shorts for Chris, tights for Jubee (for someday) and a necklace for $24.  And it was all loved by someone already.  That makes me happy and Chris uncomfortable.    

I'm Reading:

Parenting for a Peaceful World by Robin Grille.  Whoa.  Blowing my mind.  I picked up a copy in a library bin at the breastfeeding support group (Australian Breastfeeding Association) that I'm apart of.  I'm actually reading it, which says a lot.  Since having children I've only had enough attention span to read blogs - but I'm struggling to put this book down.  I feel many blog posts stirring - if you've read it, what did you think??

I'm Watching:

We had friends over to watch "Pray the Devil Back to Hell" again.  In light of the book I'm reading, which draws parallels between the way we (and our surrounding culture) are parented and our responses to injustice, I have a small stack of questions to ask both Robin Grille and Leymah Gwobee.

Jesus Christ Superstar (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Saturday night we had a couple of friends come over to watch "Jesus Christ Superstar".  Oh my 70's!  I really enjoyed it, especially Jesus' slightly lazy eye and Judas' incredible voice as well as the intense dance moves!  I did fall asleep at the very end, but I didn't want to.  It just happened.  During our intermission for decaf black tea and raspberry-brown sugar muffins we talked about cross-gender friendship, like is depicted between Jesus and Mary.  Dan Brennan's blog on the subject fascinates me. 

We stopped by the beach for twenty minutes today in the early evening.  (Rough life, I know).  We sat on a bench and watched the cold waves crash, the crazy Aussies already in their swimmers (it's barely spring!), surfers and beach roamers - I watched two teenaged lovers make out very passionately.  Chris didn't look, he was too embarrassed for everyone.  That's the difference between me and him.  I almost said something to them as well, except that Chris was right next to me and would have been mortified.  I wanted to say, "don't ruin your life" or something wise like that but I just smiled
as they walked by.  They were oblivious, of course.

I'm Eating: 

Macedonian red capsicum and eggplant relish on crackers.  It's from the little shop up the street and i. can't. get. enough.  I've also had two weekends in a row finding a free-range rottisserre chicken for 1/2 price (don't ask me how long it was sitting there i'm not pregnant so i don't care) and after we devoured the yummy meat (sorry vegetarian friends!!  we are fully back-slidden these days!) I turned the carcass into stock and a very hearty chicken soup ala my dad's recipe.  I'm learning to cook more and more and even enjoying it sometimes.

I'm drinking: 

The most interesting thing I've been drinking lately is saffron coffee in tiny tea cups with my neighbour-friend whose from the Persian Gulf.  We also talked about the oppression of women in her country and mine, misogyny and violence, arranged marriages and advertising.  I love kindred connections between women whose respective media coverage would say it's impossible.  She had me brush up on my Arabic lessons from ten years ago and practice reading like the slowest first grader in the class.  Her 6 year old daughter sat on the floor pointing at pictures for Saf to name.  Jubilee army crawled around trying to ingest paper, as she does.

is this mean?  she liked it (for a few minutes)

first ride in our new (to us) double pram - giggles all the way, although J demanded to be worn on the way home.

The babies are:  sleeping right now.   J has been staying up late this week but tonight she went to sleep soon after her brother.  Last night we only had one wake up between the two of them.  Chris and I were both up at 6:15am with our son because WE FELT RESTED!!!  Usually we have 6-12 wake ups a night although I think Saf is generally waking up less and less.  Maybe.  But whose counting?  (Besides us.)  The good night's sleep was amazing, although we still were late to church and left our house a mess.  mHm.  Obviously sleep deprivation isn't the only thing to blame.  Otherwise the babies are 25 and 8 months this week and just scrumptious.  Saf told me my bobby pins were "buufull" the other day.  All of my mothering is finally paying off:  spontaneous compliments.  

I would love to hear what you've been reading/watching/doing/eating etc - any good blogs I should add to my list?  Any books that you love?  Feel free to leave a comment.  Everyone will be happy then.