Moments...

... for Knots in the String.

It’s been one of those weeks where I’m grumpy at the world. Not all the time but just occasionally I’ve wanted to yell a four-letter word to let some pressure off. Instead, I’ve looked for the moments that make things better and with less colourful language.

The television is silent, the screen black and the night silence wraps around me. After the TV is switched off, my ears roar with the unusual quiet, the rumble becoming less as peace settles in, a ripple going back and forth on a pond until the surface is smoothed once more.

The quietude is welcome. Just the sound of the heater and the dog sighing deeply in his sleep – probably remembering the flock of pesky maiden ewes he and Mum and Dad mustered down to the yards the other day.

They weren’t at all willing whereas the mob of older ewes were very different. They’ve been round the block once or twice and know the drill. This week is ultrasound scan-time to determine just who is pregnant, who is not and who is expecting singles, twins or even, horror of horrors, triplets. Why horrors you ask? Because it’s hard for a ewe to care for three. As it turns out, the pregnancy rate is 153%, so it will be a busy time in September.

If I had my druthers, I’d have a giant shed capable of holding a B2 Stealth Bomber. Then all our ewes would be undercover, knee deep in wood shavings in their own private little pens with closed circuit TV for monitored birthing. Surely a far better use for a shed than parking aircraft that the world would prefer didn’t exist.

I wrote letters to Australian politicians last weekend, expressing my horror at what the USA administration had done, and making it clear as a voter that I want our nation to have no part in the proceedings. Wasted time of course, as our government, along with all the brown-nosing NATO countries, supported the US raids. As I said in a post after the bombing, I’m so done with the USA believing it is the arbiter of world peace. Please! It is just one of many nations! But ego is everything, is it not?

Give me the plane sheds and let us put our sheep in them and do what is really important in this world – to grow wool, the world’s greatest, most insulating and natural fibre ever.

Anyway, enough griping. Life’s too short. Patently. And so I spend the evening stitching – the wooly Appletons’ thread growling as it is pulled through the ‘tight as a drum’ calico in the hoop. I debate playing Spotify but decide the silence is more conducive to loosening knots and smoothing creases.

I think of books I’m reading at the moment.

This:

Only a couple of chapters in but what an engaging book by an octogenarian who, like our older ewes, has been round the block a few times. She’s also the author of The Swedish Art of Death Cleaning and seems adept at pulling one up and making one think, no matter what age. The current read will be a keeper as I think we should all try and live as exuberantly as possible. As for death-cleaning, I do it constantly. I have no desire to leave my kids with a mess of clearing-out to do, and nor will there be an unclean house. My mother did it for me and I will do it for my kids. Grief is enough to deal with, without the inevitable clearing out. We had to empty Mum’s townhouse and coastal cottage but essentially, they were as neat as new pins. She was that kind of woman. One of Magnusson’s lines really tickled my fancy:

‘Once you turn eighty, it’s important to have the right sort of wrinkles. Even more important though is to start laughing early enough, to spend more time laughing than frowning. If your wrinkles point upward, you’ll look happy rather than merely old…’

I walked on our city’s Eastern Shore whilst in town, with a smile on my face – partly because the Womble was ecstatic about a whole new host of smells. It was a sparkling day yesterday after the chill and snow (I can hear the Canadians laughing fit to burst!) of the day before and the city looked beautiful.

But let’s return to reading. I found another Peter Boland Charity Shop Detective Agency novel – Death at a Dog Show and being a committed fan and a dog-lover, have no option but to read it. I look at my Pupsicle as he sleeps in the sun and wonder if he could be as sweet and funny a character as Simon le Bon, the terrier cross who belongs to Fiona in the Charity Shop. So named because of his hairdo. My little chap had his weekly hair cut in the laundry sink today and looked wonderful till I put him on the floor and he shook himself. Looks just like he did before with the added bonus of spiky head hair as if he stuck a claw in a power socket!

So yes, this week we’ve had snow in the mountains, blues skies, the most epic king-tides and the chance to wear the odd winter garment or two. When I walk at night, I roll like the Michelin Man in my layers, which makes the dog’s efforts (on lead) at joining in (again) with Hobart FC soccer training at Sandown quite difficult. He found practice balls everywhere and proceeded to show team members how to play. He’s good! I dare say the club is thinking, thank heaven that woman and her pup aren’t often in town!

By the time you open this, I’ll be back at the cottage, and the Pup and I will have stretched our legs along lengths of fine white beaches or in the bush. I will have toured my garden numerous times to work out where I should plant the new geranium, clematis, white salvias and white delphiniums along with chocolate cosmos, ready for spring. I may have begun to cut and pull the old wire from the berry house and sighed at the fruit trees which desperately need pruning before the sap flows. Or I could be writing. Best to be busy through winter – stops one hibernating. Or getting grumpy (which one is apt to do in the city). I doubt Margaretta Magnusson would see hibernation or grumpiness as part of living exuberantly. Take the moment while you can…

Music? Ella says it best…