Author: Isolde

We have been sorting and packing with increasing intensity over recent weeks, leading up to spending nearly all of the productive parts of the days sorting and packing this weekend. While initially intending to bring it all along, I have culled and sorted some things, and so have the girls and Steve, so satisfyingly, I took two trips to Vinnies. Our landfill bin is overflowing. I even sorted out many of my papers in the filing cabinet, so the recycling bin is full as well. We had the bathroom re-tiled because the grout was mouldy and not salvageable. I don’t…

I got a call from Duncan yesterday to say that his and Becky’s baby has been born! A very cuddly, peaceful-looking, good sized boy. The girls are overjoyed. When asked what the highlight of Christmas day was, Rhea said it was seeing Becky and Duncan. In February last year, she asked me who I would most like to meet in the world. I said I would have to give it some thought and asked her the same question. She replied ‘I would most like to meet Duncan and Becky’s child.’ On the same night that Becky was in labour, with…

The end of a strange year of restrictions for a couple of months, busy at work, wet weather, a quick trip by plane to Melbourne for niece Ellie’s 21st, I was caught while running in a hail storm which resulted in half of our small gum tree falling on our neighbour’s roof. And then last week a colleague, Kylee, died suddenly, from a heart attack. She was not much older than me, exercised regularly and wasn’t overweight. She sat near me for the past year and we would say hello and have a chat, and her son would come in…

Dad turned seventy this week. As Lara said in the joke she found, what goes up but never down? Your age. We marked the occasion with a dinner at a nice Italian restaurant with all of us except my nephew, who celebrated with mum, dad and uncle Roger the night before, on his birthday, with a family dinner at Maggie, Peter and Oli’s house; and Duncan and Becky, who sang Happy Birthday with us over the birthday cake back at Maggie and Peter’s house after the dinner. I think milestones are important: they give us an opportunity to reflect on…

This weekend things have opened out, and we made the most of it. With our town’s vaccination rate at over 90% for two doses and 95% for one, we are allowed to be outside without masks, and shops are open again. At the Farmers’ Market, the girls had all of their favourite things: pancakes with sprinkles, a milkshake, macaroons, and biscuits. I bumped in to my good friend and we talked about whether we might meet up at the coast next weekend, and then a friend of hers saw us and we chatted about our childrens’ experiences in lockdown. I…

It’s the sixth week of quarantine/ lockdown. It’s been a good distraction to be so busy at work. The girls have enjoyed the relaxed timeframes with just a zoom lesson at 9.30 am then a few exercises that they tend to have completed before noon, so they read or play computer games for the rest of the day, apart from a game of tips we play for an hour or more at the end of the day at the local school or oval, and then playtime for half an hour at night, their choice of game. Mum had her 75th…

We had one day at Thredbo of our planned five, and then had to return home because there had been a COVID case in our town so Thredbo didn’t want us. Back at home, we had to quarantine for 14 days because we had been in regional NSW. I won’t detail the mix of sunshine, connection, tantrums and conflict that is the backdrop to our day-to-day lives with our high-spirited, sometimes anxious children. Apart from that, here are the key events that punctuated our days. Saturday Day 1: COVID test in car – 4.5 hour wait. 4,500 tests done in…

Middle of winter, bleak and cold: the daytime temperature here has ranged from 6 to 11 degrees. Tokyo 2020 is a welcome distraction from the cold, the grind and the challenges. Is it going to be the worst super-spreader event on the planet? Olympics with masked judges, officials, assistants and competitors, some of these wearing a mask that matches their uniform when they’re not competing. This morning we watched Australia play Japan in first round men’s hockey. Australia is World no. 1 ranked, but with no international competition for the past eighteen months, anything could happen. In the second quarter,…

This year, the girls’ birthday coincided with the first day of their school camp. Rhea: When we went to camp, we went on a bus for three and a half hours to Sydney. We had to arrive at 7.40 and the bus left at eight. Dad just dropped us off and drove off but all the other parents stayed until the bus left. About halfway through the trip, the bus driver pulled over because Luke was stuck in the toilet. He went in to the toilet and he locked himself in and then he couldn’t get out. The teacher came…

Perhaps partly in response to the uncontrollable sneezing I’ve had for a couple of months, and partly because I got up to the next book in my pile, Marie Condo’s The Life-changing Magic of Tidying, I’ve been doing a bit of decluttering and damp dusting recently. I have achieved a cull of the girls’ summer clothes, with their help, and of my own clothes, ruthlessly giving away some that I’ve had for years, even though they’re not worn out yet. I liked her advice to throw out items that ‘don’t spark joy’ and I agree with her that this can…