I've considered starting a special blog about our neighbour's building project. but I would really have had to have started way back when they first came up with the idea to get the full thing - the smarmy architect, the neighbour having a fit in the tribunal hearing, the long wait for them to find a builder, etc. but I must say I enjoyed today's instalment. the Wall is going up where the Tree used to be. I went into the yard and the bricklayers said "good morning". so I had a pleasant chat with them about finishes and we agreed they could come into my yard to clean off the mortar later.

when I went to leave, I opened the gates (of course the brickies' truck was blocking access, despite various calls to council and the smarmy architect, not to be confused with our annoying architect). someone who I suspect was the actual builder came racing over, probably in deep fear of my expected burst of temper. I went straight past him and had another pleasant chat with the brickies while their labourer cleaned the wall and they moved their truck, no problem. then of course I had a committee of stupid building types watching me back out - including the builder, who in that quintessentially male patronising way, felt he needed to "guide" me out. so I rolled down the window and said "I've done this about 200 times. but thanks". if he was the builder, I kind of enjoyed doing that in front of his workers. after all, he has declined my invitation (via smarmy architect) to make contact so we can sort out all these access/early start etc issues properly. it was nice to deal directly with some sensible workmen, and to demonstrate to myself as much as anyone that I'm not actually an insane homeowner hellbent on stopping their project.

in fact, after 2 1/2 years waiting, it's kind of a relief to have the wall finally there. it's red brick and solid and I can now get on with erecting giant trellises (trellii?) to grow creepers up. the sooner the whole thing is done the better. then I only have our unspeakably arrogant and unpleasant neighbours evil-eying me every time I come and go to worry about.

must type quickly, baby sleeping but threatening to wake up.

hve discovered advantage of being a "new mum". when your annoying architect responds to your queries about why he's sent a final bill when he hasn't finished the actual work with a very lame and vaguely threatening joke about "well, we could arrange a meeting in a carpark at midnight with headlights", you can plausibly respond "what? I'm a bit vague at the moment, I don't understand, what do you mean headlights?".

and when he further suggests it's your job to write up yet another list of what's not been finished (get a clue mate, it's the list you had last year minus what's been done, plus final documentation), you can further say "I'm a bit too busy to do that right now."

architects are very clever people. and frankly, I adore this new house except for the bit about noise travelling in it. but client handling skills? Zero.

it seems that every time I ride up the Merri Creek I see something new.

this morning (yes, it's still possible to go for rides with a 2 1/2 month old baby), it was a man with his little girl. he looked, well, foreign; possibly Iranian or thereabouts, with darkish skin, a high forehead and a silly moustache. she was four or five, chubby, dressed in a floral frock with thick long black hair tied back. she was riding a pink bike with training wheels, instructing her Dad when to hold onto her bike - for instance when crossing rough terrain or a scary (though safe) bridge. the last glimpse I had of them was them feeding the ducks in Coburg Lake. and whether it's close to the truth or not, I imagined him to be a refugee from some horrible conflict, with images no one should have in his memory, savouring the peace and beauty of Sunday morning walking by a quiet, semi-deserted lake with his lovely daughter.

so I'm trying to sell my sportscar, for obvious reasons.

today I got a msg from a potential buyer. I called back. it went like this:

"Yo."
"Hi, this is Jenny with the MX-5, I know you said call Saturday but I've got a little baby and I just had a moment to call you back and ... hello?"
silence
"Hello, are you there?"
"Yo"
"have I disturbed you?"
silence
"Is that Adam?"
silence
"Yo"
"Um, I think I'll call you back later, it doesn't seem like you're with me right now."

if he has the $$ to buy a late model sportscar, I suspect he got it either by being a rock musician or by dealing drugs. weeeeird.

this looks like a new language. I think the author might be Indonesian. it was the title that got me: "Lets Rock dicks and bebs!!!!!!!"
to me, it would be harder work to invent all those misspellings - 4get, tat, rite - than to write it correctly. but this has a voice

I've met one seriously misogynist gay guy in my time, but plenty of straight ones.
mostly tradies. you know them when you see them: no eye contact, short answers, lots of head-ducking, literally. this could also describe a lot of geeks, but they can avoid female contact, whereas your average tradey deals with women at home all day, so comes to resent and scorn us.
my strategy, which I've had to use twice today already, is to just speak slowly and clearly and stick to the practical details. but by the second one, a very young plumber who blundered around our yard instead of just asking me where the gully trap was, I was over it. so I proceeded to sit in the lounge room breastfeeding the baby while he walked in and out running taps (and running up a bill at $2/minute!). he hated it. I didn't care.

blogcrusing still has its moments, you know. randomly from Blogger's front page, a young man muses on love, faith and really cool toys.

on the CD player: Aaron Neville singing Summertime, one of my favourites whether it's sung by him, by Janis, by Big Mama Thornton or anyone else. It reminds me of a hot night in New York City, down in the subway: a man was sitting on the platform across the tracks singing that song and calling out for donations - even New Yorkers were amused and throwing cash.

but a second later a man holding a gun ran along our platform, and from nowhere came what seemed like 15 plainclothes cops (think agents swarming in the Burly Brawl). the busker was up the iron stairs in a flash and I hid behind a girder whle the cops literally covered the guy with the gun with their bodies. that was ten years ago, when New York was still dirty and dangerous.

a few nights later at a Nick Cave - I won't say concert, because all he did was read from his bad novel - I got chatting to some guy who walked me up Broadway to my hostel. halfway there, a street vendor suddenly lunged across in front of us at another man on the kerb, his knife flashing. and me, the naive little Australian girl, I was the one who grabbed my new friend and steered him around the scene as if nothing was happening.

but Aaron Neville: it's occurred to me that like many of my favourite things, I'm not sure how I came to know of him. I just love the guy's voice, and even though he's from Nawlins and I'm in Melbourne, I've seen (heard) him and his bros. five times. but why? how did I know to start listening to him? with Massive Attack, for instance, it was in Dan O'Brien's car on the way to a photo shoot when I said "who's this playing"? but the Nevilles? I have no idea.

maybe it was that same summer visit to New York when I went along to a free park concert and grooved to them in Central Park in the sun. but I think I must have had an idea I liked them to even turn up there. Syd Straw, on the other hand, was serendipity, the support and saving grace of the annoying Nick Cave performance.

do good things find us somehow?

I'll probably never see Aaron Neville again. the last time was on a hot Vegas night at a poolside show under a full moon - only a few hundred people there, so I could go and stand front and centre. that was, I know, enough.

remember snail mail? (actually, at our house, there are real snails in the letterbox).

today I received: a note from an old friend who suffered a loss 11 mths ago but is now doing OK, with her new business card.

a calendar of views from a friend living in devon.

signed notes from his liitle girls thanking me for xmas presents, including the information that they were used to wake daddy up (they were toys that made Australian bird calls)

and a very late xmas card from my sponsored child in Zambia, with a tiny stick figure of a girl for signature.

all of which are now displayed around the place, taking up visible residence in my material world.

when we bought this house, there was rising damp in the walls.

we spent $7000 on damp treatment and plastering. there's still damp in the walls.

batgrl is too kind.

of course I haven't been blogging much; but these are the things parenthood is teaching me:

why women are better at multitasking, and picking up where they left off.

that you can achieve things with a tiny baby around, it just takes five times as long.

that perversely, what you really need in extremis is other people doing it just as hard.

that when people tell you that the moment you see your first child, the ground shifts beneath your feet, they're right.

that it's possible to read complex novels with a small child; as long as it's really small and latching on well...

that six hours' broken sleep is not a bad night, it's an unacheivable dream.

that naps (and I already knew this) are Good.

and that it certainly can be worth crying over spilt milk, if it teaches you not to let the baby chuck up the next time.

blog? who has time to blog when my fulltime job is walking around the house slightly jiggling my right shoulder, and nervously watching a baby monitor? he does sleep. sometimes.

anyway, as you can see from the "recent updates" list at weblogs.com , about six million words a day are being added to the blogography, so the blogsphere does not need my humble contribution any more.

btw, has Hotmail done something new? my spam has dropped to just a few a day...

(tired parents)

a massive oversight: Alexander does not yet have a football team. Fitzroy died years ago with the dreaded merger, so my footy heart is broken. and his dad couldn't care less. he can't be a real Melbourne baby, can he? maybe I'll auction his affections. any bids?

someone asked how I was going. I said: complete joy interspersed with desperation. (forgot to mention the bit about propping my eyes open with matchsticks to feed/change Alexander at 2 am).
she said yep, that's how it goes on from here on in.

he's 13 days old today and I think we have the basics - food, changing - under control. there's still no real pattern to his life, but I made it down to the North Fitzroy Village this morning, just to prove I could, and we survived the outside world. after the caesar I was very restricted - first five days in my room at hospital, then a week here without leaving the house and garden. not feeling much urge to do much else, and now that Alexander's dad is back at work - a whole two weeks off - we're into the serious stuff.

new car comes this week. poor MX-5 Must Go. still dreaming of keeping the motorbike, but I know it's a dumb idea.

With the raw materials in my blog, she could actually construct an accurate picture of who I am. This is fucking serious."

as a mother, I resent this. not.

yep, Alexander is here. too tired to say much about it. ended up bringing him out through the sunroof. oh well.

will post pix soon - there's an amazing one of the ob. holding him up seconds after the birth.

and of course he's beautiful.

Jon Sullivan has a spoiler-filled comments area on the new Matrix movie discussing what it all meant. only go there if you've already seen the movie.

well, our builder was wrong. he said that the neighbours wanted to build their horrid flats too cheaply and wouldn't get someone to do it. they either found more money or a dodgy builder, because they've spent the last week knocking down their garage and jackhammering a yard full of concrete up. not very peaceful for this overdue mother-to-be, I can tell you. and soon the lovely tree (in the pix down on the left overhanging the "garden thing" which is now thoroughly established) will be cut down, and there's nothing I can do about it. we hates them precious, yes we does.

speaking of which, the new Matrix movie (which I saw at a 10 am screening on the first day, 100s of seats, no waiting!); not bad. some of the scenes were very much recycled from earlier movies, and the climactic fight didn't do what it should have. plus watch out for the scene where Trinity says "oh yes I can". I can't decide whether it's in character or just plain cheesy dialogue. but I enjoyed it enough. and there were previews of LOTR 3, which no doubt I'll have to see on video, unless they do "crybaby" sessions.

just hangin' around here waiting, really, four days overdue. nothin' to see, move along...