I'm Late, I'm Late

I think I have well and truly missed this week's deadline. And the only thing I can blame is 'Winter'. Since Sunday evening it has been bitterly cold at night in Canberra. We have finally turned on the heater. The hot water bottles have been taken out of the cupboard and are being used consistently. The car windscreen has been covered in a thin film of ice in the morning. Now, when Mr M asks 'Is it winter?', I have begun to say 'yes', instead of trying to explain what autumn is. And the result of all this is that I have been far more tempted to stay in bed with Mr M when I lie down with him to help him go to sleep (and probably that is something all the books tell you not to do - but it works), than I have been to get up again and spend a chilly hour in front of the computer.

Tonight, though, I have decided to put my middle-of-the-night wakefulness to use. Instead of lying in bed in the warmth, I'm up and at it. I have written my to-do list for tomorrow's/today's working day. I have folded the washing (the thing I really hate about winter is how difficult it can be to get the washing dry but I'm not going to give in and buy a clothes dryer. Not having one is the small thing I do to help the environment). I have sent an email I meant to send at 8pm. And I'm finally sitting down to blog. When I do go back to bed, which should be soon, I'll be doing so with a terrific sense of achievement.

Isn't it amazing what you can get done when the household sleeps?

PS If you are interested in the experience of the 2020 Summit, Alison Croggan has written a terrific piece about being a member of the 'Creatives' and posted it on Sarsaparilla. It's a great insider's view of the day. I'm sure the 2020 Summit was an event full of faults and a huge question remains as to what will happen to all the ideas, but I do think the summit was a very bold, very big idea itself and at the least it has signposted that the times are changing. (Maybe that's 2am optimism creeping in. Perhaps the times aren't changing, they are simply being dressed up in new clothes. I'm still hoping, though, that the Emperor won't be discovered wandering around in 'his all-together'.)

Father and Son

Amongst my favourite photos of the wee man is an ad hoc series taken with his dad. The first was taken when Mr M was only three months old. We were at the beach. The day was very grey. The sea was the colour of lead. But in the photo, taken in the days before we had a digital camera, there is J standing up to his knees in the water with a tiny, behatted boy peering over his shoulder.

This is the second in the series. It was taken on a visit to Adelaide on Father's Day 2006. We had just bought the hat Mr M is wearing as a Father's Day gift for J. I don't know who was proudest: Mr M to be wearing the hat or J to have a son who wanted to wear it.


And here is the third in the series. I took it last weekend at the Toy and Rail Museum in Leura in the Blue Mountains. The two boys are watching a pair of electric trains run around a little track. They are both entranced.

I think I'll keep taking photos of the two of them when they aren't looking. We'll see how long the hand-holding and arm slung casually around a shoulder lasts. And we'll see how long it takes for the wee man to tower over his dad.