Light and Love

There is beauty in chaos sometimes....

And there are always flaws in highly ordered systems...

Random Stuff

So, tomorrow they come to pack our stuff.  Friday it goes on a truck in a crate or two, then on a train to Aldelaide, and then on a boat to home.  I am pretty much ready for the packers.  I have a few last minute tasks to keep me busy while I oversee the packing.  In true Aussie style, I have no idea when they will show up, or how many packers will come.  No one called to let us know like they said they would. Oh well, I'll be up and ready for them bright and early.  No worries!  I think I have the hang of this laidback life. ;-)

I would like to blog more.  I had said that I would blog all about our adventures down under before we got here.  I tried, I really did.  But, it felt mostly like normal boring life and not like an adventure at all, after the first bit.  There just wasn't that much to talk about.  Well, there was a ton of stuff I wanted to talk about, it just wasn't appropriate for the blog.  Some of what I want to talk about is still like that, but I am also brimming with ideas and projects to share, when we get home.  Of course, we still have Sydney and Cairns and Hawaii to visit, so I will share that.

I'm tempted to reflect on our time here, but I know I should wait till we are gone so the fullness of it all can settle in my mind.  Right now, I would bitch about the crime and the lack of recycling and the remoteness and loneliness, or things like that.  I want to get home and let the negative stuff fade away, as it does, and then I can focus on all the good.  There has actually been a lot of good to come out of this crazy year.  I would not be who I am today without having spent a year in the Alice, and I know I will always be grateful for this experience.

Queenstown

So today we flew from Auckland to Queenstown on the South Island. It was such a beautiful day that we decided to jump right in and use our gondola and luge passes that were open ended for one of our free days here. We were going to go another day, but it might rain later in the week, so we thought it best to make hay while the sun shined. The view from the top was soooooo amazing. Wait til you see it! We had a lot of fun racing down the luge tracks together and watching the people parasailing off the mountain. It was freaky how steep the gondola ride was, almost straight vertical. So steep that the platform for the bungy jump at the top only had to cantilever out about 15 ft or so. Couldn't PAY me to do that, no sir. Afterward, we headed back down and had some dinner. I'm still not so happy about the cost of eating out so much, but, *sigh*. I am trying to stuff my frugal self deep down in my psyche, and just enjoy the break from cooking. Anyhoo, after dinner we walked around town, window shopping and looking for icecream. We went in one shop where the employee was a young Japanese woman. E, of course, glomed right on to her and followed her and another Japanese couple around the store, listening to them speak Japanese to each other, seeing if she could understand them at all. She could, a bit. Then she started a conversation with the young woman about her impending trip to Tokyo and how she is learning Japanese. She tried out a few of the phrases she has learned and the woman was impressed with her accent. E was so stoked! She has asked many times tonight if we can go back to the store to see if she can find her new friend!

We got back on the search for ice cream and what do we find? Not one, but TWO couples from Alice Springs here on holiday in NZ, just walking down the street. Seriously, what are the odds! Found out from one of the husbands that the Milford Sound blew his mind and trumps the Grand Canyon by a mile. I'm so excited to go tomorrow for our Milford Sound cruise! Speaking of which, it is late and I have an early wakeup call, for our bus in the morning. Night!

Kiwi Land

So here we are in New Zealand. We left Alice on Wednesday and flew through Melbourne to Auckland. We had to leave the building to get from domestic to international terminals, so can we say we were actually in Melbourne? We had an uneventful trio, other than the sound not working on mine and Cary's built in TV for the flight to Auckland. Oh well, I did not want to watch a movie anyway and the flight attendant gave us drinks on the house for our trouble. Not that they charge for alcohol on international flights, but hey, it was the thought that counted, right?

All went smoothly through customs and immigration, and we grabbed a taxi to take us to our hotel. The guy took us on the scenic route, we suspect, because after driving us all over kingdom come, we asked how to get back to the airport and how long it would take. He assured us we could just hop on the highway and it would only take 20 minutes. Ok, then why have we been driving for a half an hour on every back road in town, hmmmm?

We did finally make it to our hotel, and after shelling over an obscene amount of money for the taxi, we got settled into our room just after midnight. Since the time in Alice was only 8:30, I was not tired like I wanted to be and did not sleep very well. Oh well, nothing like adjusting to a new time zone.

This morning, Cary called the rental car place to see if they could come get him so we could get our car. Of course, our hotel was a smidgen too far from the city center to qualify for the free pick up, so we had to make another plan. Then, he called the whale tour place to verify where we needed to go, and they told us that we had to cancel for weather. Bummer. Ok, I did not want to ride on a boat in the rain anyway, right? Plan B time. Not that we had a plan B, but we adjusted and grabbed a bus to take us to the car and then hit the Auckland Museum instead. It was a good rainy day plan and we had fun exploring. The park that the museum was in had a bunch of awesome old trees and cool plants to check out as well. We had a nice dinner down by the waterside and did a little shopping for souvenirs. And now we are tired and ready to crash. Wait, I think I hear the sound of a log being cut coming from the bedroom. Looks like my husband has beat me to it. More adventures tomorrow. See you then!

Full Monty

Rather than clutter up facebook with my complaining, I'll do it here, if you don't mind. You don't? Oh, good. If you do, stop reading now and go find something better to do with your time.

I'll just come out and say it. Life sucks right now. I can't see a way up and frankly, I don't want to get up right now. Wallowing feels, if not good, then needed. I see people posting pithy positive crap on fb and I just want to scream. My husband can't stop being a man from Mars and offerring me solutions for all my problems. Do I have to tell you how that feels? I do? OK, it feels like shit. Like not only am I doing everything wrong, I am a bad person for not wanting to help myself. Can't I just have a bad day, week, month, year without the whole world trying to fix me up so they don't have to deal with me and my pain?

I don't know if this is making me feel better or if it will make it worse.

What is the problem you ask? Everything. I miss home. I miss my friends and family. I am not here long enough to make the kinds of friends I need. Don't get me wrong. The people I know here are lovely and I really like them and wish we could be friends. But you gotta understand, it takes me years, years, YEARS to feel close to people. Until then, I am alone in a crowd. I don't know why I am so stunted. I just am and even if I could change it right now and feel close to my new acquaintances, that would just mean that I made friends I will have to leave again. My heart breaks at the thought of having to do that again. I will never do that again.

I am not the kind of person who can have a hundred friends. I can't handle the feeling of being spread so thin. I need deep connection with a few people. The problem here is that there are sooo many new people in my life I can't keep up. I want to dig in and deepen with just a few, but how do I choose? I feel like in order to survive down here I have to be a social butterfly, flitting from party to coffee to social event, when I am more like a hermit with a couple of best friends for life. And even if I do choose, do they choose me too? It is worse than dating, I tell you. It's kind of like if every time you moved, you had to find a new husband.

It might surprize some of you to learn that I assume others don't like me, and wait for proof that they do. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of proof for me to trust. That was hard to say, but it needed saying. I figure I am getting old enough to speak my mind now. My full mind, not just the tidy, positive, inspiring parts. I'm tired of stifling myself for the sake of others and to maintain the image others have of me. I'm not even sure who that Miranda is, but I know she is smarter, stronger, and a whole lot better person than me.

Ok, I gotta get this posted before my computer shuts down on me (some issue with my cooling fan or something, I suspect). Sorry to be such a downer. Meh.

Billabong

Ellery Big Hole. Purty, ain't it?

Uluru

To celebrate my 40th birthday my sweet husband took me to see a BIG rock. Sounds good to this rock hound!

The whole family got up at 5am to meet the tour bus at 6am for our grand adventure. It was still dark when we got on the bus. This picture was taken at the roadhouse about halfway down the road to Uluru. We can highly, HIGHLY, recommend this tour company. They were great!!

True to the tour company name, we got to see some Emus at that roadhouse. Do you know how hard it is to take a picture of an Emu's eye through a chain link fence? If you do, you know how chuffed I am with this photo! Look at me, sounding all Aussie!

When we got to Uluru, after a pit stop at the visitor center in the little town, we headed for the other big rocks there, Kata Tjuta, or the Olgas. Did you know that this outcrop of rocks is actually bigger and more varied than Uluru? We were only allowed access to one spot around them, since most of the area is used for ceremony by the aboriginal owners. We got to hike a short trail in between the first and second domes, from the right. I was totally geeking out over the cool conglomerate structure of the rock.

Then it was on to the cultural center at the base of Uluru, where we could learn about Uluru from the indigenous perspective, and a little about their culture. It was fascinating and convinced C and I not to attempt to climb the rock, which we had planned to do. The tribes feel very strongly about us not climbing it, and after getting a look at the very steep and precarious trail up to the top, we opted to skip the climb.

So, instead we stayed with the group and got to do several walks at spots along the base, and hear the stories of the creation of the features of the rock, both geological and aboriginal. The girls loved the stories and finding the pictures in the rocks that went with them.

This is taken from inside a cave, at the base. There are paintings on the cave walls and if you look closely you can see the Emu tracks painted on the upper point above.

One of the walks took us to a waterhole. It was so lush and green and peaceful, I could have sat and soaked it up if we had had more time. But by then it was getting on in the day and the grand finale was calling.

So, off we went to our champagne dinner while watching the sun set on Uluru. It was yummy and fun and a great way to top off our day.

This shot was taken just as the sun was going down behind me.

And this is how we celebrated 15 years of marriage!

Don't worry, when you come visit, I will take you to Uluru if you want to see it, no matter how many times I have to go! I could spend a year there and still not see all that those big rocks have to show us.

Kangaroo Sanctuary

We went to the Kangaroo Sanctuary today to meet the roos. The main focus of the place was education about how to care for orphaned kangaroos. It is the law in Australia that if you rescue a roo, you have to try to release it back to the wild if at all possible. The kangaroos there could not be released to the wild for various reasons and would be destroyed by the government if the sanctuary did not exist to care for them. A full grown male red kangaroo, raised by humans and not afraid of us, is a dangerous animal. They can disembowel you if they decide to have a little kickboxing match with you. A wild one would just run away and find another male roo to play with.

It was great to get up close and personal with animals you don't get to get close to in the wild. Everybody got to hold a joey. His name was Fidget and he was very cute.

A likes to impersonate whatever animals she meets. Here is her joey impersonation:

We went on a walk around the 50 acre enclosure that houses the 20 roos that live there. The guy who runs the place had a bucket of food and the roos followed us around. He'd throw down some food and we could pet them as they ate.

Some of the joeys still need to be bottle fed, so we got to help with that, too. All in all, it was a great time!

Simpson's Gap

Today, we headed out west of Alice to hike at Simpson's Gap. It was beautiful and we had a nice time climbing gum trees and the rocks.

Can you see A in this shot?

Water in the desert!

E and I want to go back and bring our watercolors! So pretty.

Unschooling in Alice Springs

As many of you know, I have over the past many years either helped with or outright ran support groups for unschoolers and homeschoolers in the various places we have lived. My speciality is the park day. This time-honored tradition of homeschooling folks has been the backbone of our unschooling experience. It is more than just a chance for the kids to get out and play.

Park day is the day of the week we most look forward to, when we have good friends to be with and time to develop those relationships. The kids have fun and learn from one another and the other adults, as well. We establish a true community of people, who are there for each other for homeschooling help and help with life in general. Some of my best friends are the people I have met at our park days. The kids can say the same!

As we get settled into our new lives here in Alice, I have found a local homeschooling group (alas little to no unschoolers to be found) that has been open to my help getting a park day going. The Downunderhomeschoolers have a small group of people so far and I would like to see that increase. Since when you google "unschooling in Alice Springs" or "homeschooling in Alice Springs" my blog is one of the first that pops up in the search, I thought I would put out a post that would set me on top and give all the folks looking to find a support group the info they need. I am planning to get some flyers up at the library and even on the newsletter for the facility C works at to attract the American homeschoolers here. Hopefully, we can nurture and grow us a great group here to support us in our unschooling and have a lot of fun with as well!

A few years ago I wrote this on the email list of one of the groups that was just getting a park day going: "I wanted to say something about these park days. In my experience, as a group gets up and running, you will have lots of people interested, but not able to attend. Classes, other plans, etc. get in the way. Ideally, what will begin to happen is that everyone will set the day aside as “sacred” for our Park Days. You will come to see the time spent together forming relationships and playing will trump anything else you could possibly plan for that day! Well, that is my vision, anyway. ;-) No pressure, btw. This will happen naturally and I am prepared to be patient as it does. If you all wonder why Miranda and her girls are ALWAYS at park day, now you know what we are committed and waiting for."

Now, that said, where are all the unschoolers!? In such a hippy alternative lifestyle place like Alice, there has got to be some natural learners around! Come on out and play. Click that link above and join us!

Frilled A

I'm going to do a series of pictures of A looking like the local animals, like she did with the wallaby. This time my daughter has embodied the essence of a Frilled Lizard!

Perspective

This gorgeous ghost gum tree lives in Trephina Creek, where we had a picnic Easter Sunday. To get a sense of scale, look down to the right of the trunk and you will see a little circle around E, who was standing nearby. And for a little fun, A helped me get this shot:

Same tree, different perspective!

Staying Green

That our move halfway across the world has put some dampers on our lifestyle and our efforts to live sustainably is putting it mildly. The carbon footprint of the flight alone is frustrating. I can't recycle much of anything here because of our remote location and the lack of local processing facilities and markets for the raw material. While the Aussies are better about keeping their food close to it's natural state than the Americans - no corn syrup in everything! - and they don't seem to use as many pesticides and favor more sustainable farming, most everything has to be shipped in. Talk about an oil soaked diet!

I have lucked out on a source of eggs that makes me feel better about what they have in the grocery store. I can't get many right now, but hopefully that will change. I know a lady who lives up in Ti-Tree and teaches at a bush school where the kids are raising chooks for eggs to sell. She's got a bunch of us down here in Alice eager to buy the eggs, and the kids are excited to get more chickens to meet the demand. Yes, they have to travel 190 kms to get to me, but she has to come to town anyway to shop and see family, so it is a wash. And the price is right! At least until we get around to getting our own layers. One neighbor is a soon to retire contractor who has offered me help and scrap materials to build a coop/ark/tractor for them. And I would have plenty of people, between base folks and neighbors, happy to help take care of them when we travel in exchange for the eggs. So that is going well.

Composting is a bit of a funny story. When we first got here, I could not bear to throw away any of the food scraps we generated, after so many years of collecting them for composting. Of course, I had nowhere to put them, but I saved them anyway. Where did I put them? In the freezer! After a week or so, as I was running out of space, I came up with a solution. I took one of the boxes we had from shipping our stuff down here - can't throw those out! - and layered the scraps with shredded paper from said boxes - ditto! - and some coir mulch (like peat moss, but more sustainable). Stuck the box out under a tree and I am gonna let mother nature work her magic to get me some compost. All I should have to do is keep it moist and be patient, since I can't really turn it without wreaking the box. I have even been able to add to it as more food scraps build up and the composting ones shrink down. Once all our stuff gets here, I can use my worm composter to handle the food scraps.

One thing we were warned about in advance before getting here was that paper products were limited in selection and expensive. Good thing we do not really use much in the way of paper products, between our rags for messes, cloth napkins, cloth TP, and cloth menstrual pads! We do use some paper towels for things like bacon grease cleanup, but they go in the compost, so they end up being a source of brown carbon inputs there. We have not made the jump to cloth TP for #2, so we still need some toilet paper for that. The cool thing is that the recycled TP is actually cheaper than the stuff made with virgin pulp. Which only makes sense and I cannot understand why they charge so much back in the states.

One thing I am pretty dedicated to doing is growing as much food as I can for us. I was gifted with a whole bunch of pots soon after we arrived and I have started a ton of seeds for basic fresh salad veg, like lettuce, arugula, spinach, carrots, scallions, snap peas and some herbs. Even though I don't know if they will produce anything before it gets cold, I have some bush beans and scarlet runner beans going as well. A few strawberries are always good and I am trying some garlic and onions. We have a citrus tree in our backyard, but I am not sure what it is. The fruit are kind of lime sized and colored, but if you cut one open, it smells like an orange and is orange in color. The fruit is not ready to harvest yet, so it must be some type of orange. Whatever it is, it will give us lots of fresh fruit in a few months and that makes me happy!

Tomorrow, the base housing folks are coming to install solar PV panels on our roof. Not that it will help us financially, since the housing is provided here, but it will help our green sensibilities a ton! The house already has solar hot water as do most houses down here. Makes too much sense not to! So, those bases are covered quite nicely and are a fine addition to our normal conservation habits. Even if we don't pay for the energy with our own money, it is paid for with taxpayer money, so we will do what we can to save as much of that as we can!

OK, that is all I can think of right now, but I am sure you'll hear more from me about this kind of thing in the future.

Lizards and Geckos and Spiders, Oh My!

More wildlife has been spotted. This guy was sitting on a rock in our front yard just sunning himself.

A identified him as a Bearded Dragon. E got within a couple of feet to get this picture. He just sat there.

Most nights, if you go in the girls bathroom and turn the light on, a little Gecko or two come to catch bugs attracted to the light through the window. The picture is not great because it was taken from inside the bathroom thru the wavy glass. But, the cuteness shines through! I mean look at those toes!

E just looooves her reptiles. This is one of the geckos outside during the day. Usually we don't see them then, but I was separating some flower pots out on the porch to do some planting and this little guy was hiding in one of them.

And last and most hair-raising of all sightings, was this:

A and I were at the garden center looking at plants, and she was squatting down by this urn, looking at some cacti. She turns her head and hello! Redback Spider, one foot from her head. Mama spider was very busy with her huge egg sack and was no threat to us, but still!

A's reaction? "I thought they were bigger." Someone is outgrowing her phobia, for sure. She couldn't even look at the Black Widows in Vegas.

Golden Orb

While out shopping the other day, we spotted something amazing above us on the grape arbor. Can you see it?

Here, a closer look:

That there is a Golden Orb spider and she was huge and gorgeous. We have heard about the Huntsman spiders that are even bigger and fuzzy like a Tarantula, but have yet to see one. Not sure I am eager to, to tell the truth! In the airport in Sydney, they had a big poster on the wall that showed the 1000 spider species in Australia. We did not have time to stop and look and A was probably happy to pass it on by. She does seem less phobic about the spiders lately. Good timing, I'd say, now that we are here!

The Gap

Imagine being able to talk a nice leisurely stroll out of your neighborhood and to this beautiful spot. We can! This is Heavitree Gap and we are only a few blocks away. Over millions of years, the Todd river cut it out of the MacDonnell Ranges. Now, the Stuart highway and the railroad run through it as well. The hill on the left is the one the wallabies come down off of to be fed, just on the other side from this shot.

A Town Like Ithaca

I feel like we have travelled so very far, only to end up right where we started from. This place is so much like Ithaca in so many ways, we feel right at home. On Sunday we went to the Todd Mall market with our wonderful sponsor family. It did not have much in the way of farmers and produce, but the crafts and art were worth a look. The girls got some cool stuff and we enjoyed people watching. All the hippys made me feel right at home, too! Some differences are the presence of the aboriginal population and the cool artwork they did on the trash cans, er, rubbish bins, I mean.

I loved some of the aboriginal art and will definitely be purchasing some. After the market, we went up to the top of Anzac Hill to check out the view. This is looking North-ish:

And this is looking south, towards the MacDonnell Ranges and our neighborhood: The pictures really do not do the view justice. The area is so green and beautiful, but since we were up there in the middle of the day, it looks washed out. Oh well, take my word for it, it is a lovely view. Click to see it bigger.

Joey Licked Me!

Last night, our sponsors took us to see the local wallabies that come down the mountain to be fed. That was the coolest experience ever! I don't know of any place that let's you feed wild animals like this in America. The wallabies were so tame, you could pet them: A looking like a wallaby herself:

The cutest thing ever was when a joey poked out of the pouch of it's mama:

This joey was the one that licked my finger when I went to pet him! He was so cute! We loved petting the wallabies because they have very soft fur. They would grab your hand when you held out the food for them. And they chewed it very thoroughly before getting more.

I can't wait to take our visitors to feed the wallabies!!

A Few Pictures

This is the freaking HUMONGOUS plane we flew over in, the A380. The girls had the window seat right about over the last 'a' in Australia on the top deck. C and I were in the center next to them. There was so much room to move around, I could walk over and look out the girls window if I wanted to! With their seats in full recline even! A and E having their breakfast at about 5:30 am Sydney time, pitch dark and about 13 hours into the flight. Note the Quantas PJs they gave us. Too cute with a kangaroo on the shirt and very comfy!Sunrise over the East coast of Australia. The flight took us over the land, down the coast to Sydney. I thought we would be over water until we got there, but we came inland quite a bit. Maybe the flight path out of the country is straight out over the water.This is C and me all happy to be together and about to land in Oz:A took this one out the window on our descent into Alice. So green! They have had a lot of rain this summer and the desert has come alive. But in addition to all the grass, the area has so many trees, I guess it is pretty green even in a dry year. Much nicer than the Las Vegas desert! A said it made her think we were in Africa on the savannah. I feel like I am living in Zion National Park, with the green and the red rock all around.

You know you are in the tropics when this is the kind of bird you see out in your palm tree every morning! It is called a Galah and there are whole flocks of them sitting on the ground in the park by our house, just eating the grass. It is so weird having pet store birds living in my backyard!

OK, no wallabys yet. That will be tonight. We now have an internet connection dongle thingy for my computer, so expect to see more of me around here as I document our time here. Loving it so far!

The Alice

Here we are on our first full day in Alice Springs. We arrived at noon yesterday and were picked up by our sponsors at the airport. They took us right to our house and showed us around. Then we had a little time to ourselves to settle in a bit and explore the house, unpack some of our APO boxes, and freshen up after our 27 hours of travel. Thank goodness for business class on the flight over. It was heaven. I didn't want to land! Anyway, later in the afternoon, we went over to our sponsors' house for dinner. Since we were all so wiped out from the trip, we did not last long and had them take us home before dark. E was in her bed asleep by 7pm, with the rest of us not far behind. I was wide awake by 2 am, but I managed to sleep a little more until 5:30. After that, there was no point in trying to sleep any longer, so I got up and got a shower. We scrounged a breakfast together and then I got out and drove our car for the first time. I managed to get us to the grocery store without running into any oncoming traffic! Fun. We got some groceries and came home to put them away and have some lunch. Now we are hanging out at our sponsors, checking email and waiting on the men to get home from work so we can go do dinner out and then we are going to go feed the wallabys. I'll get pictures and try to get them posted soon. Please be patient with me until we get our internet set up and I can take my time getting stuff posted.