Birthday Blues and Land-Lubbing Leeches?

Hi folks,

Another Sunday evening, another retelling of events and non-events of the past week in our lives.

This week has been nice. I figure that life is just better when Tim is around. I hope I always feel that way. I rolled in last Sunday afternoon following the EWB retreat that I was at to find that Tim had polished off a pizza. Yes, an entire pizza. You see, Sundays are usually our 100% homemade, wholewheat, rockin’ good pizza days. It’s been a bit of a tradition for us on Sunday evenings, ever since we pinched the crust recipe off of my Aunt Marylin (won’t hold up to genetic testing), a couple of years back. It’s evolved into a “lets make a better pizza than last Sundays” kind of event. So when I walked in the door last Sunday afternoon I was met with the glorious smell of amazing pizza, only to shortly thereafter find that the pizza was gone. To Tim’s credit, he didn’t know when I would be returning, but after a weekend of starchy camp food, I can’t say that I wasn’t a little disappointed to find that Tim had eaten the whole pizza by himself for lunch. I figure that it’s good making fun of Tim material. That, and the fact that we now get mail delivered to “the pizza lover at 29 Yarranabbe St” from Dominoes Pizza, because Tim wanted to order a pizza online one night when we were strapped for food. So yes, in Australia you can order a pizza and have it delivered without ever actually having to speak to another human. Thank you technology? I reckon that it’s right up there with vending machine french-fries. So, the only real drawback to ordering pizza online is that now Dominoes knows that we live here and knows that we like pizza (or liked it enough to order it online). Ahhh, perhaps I should take it a bit easier on poor Tim. He gets a rough rap from me.

The EWB conference was fun. Reminded me of how much I liked working for the organization in Canada. EWB Australia is a bit different in terms of where the organization is in its infancy, the Aussie group being a couple of years younger than Canada, finding itself with a whole lot of corporate support already and tackling a variety of issues including climate change, aboriginal reconciliation in Australia and sustainable development in Oz and abroad, and facing different challenges. I’ve found that I’ve learned so much already and at the same time have been able to offer some advice from my experience with EWB Canada to those looking for different approaches. It’s been great. I’m looking forward to keeping active with EWB in the years to come. One thing that I learned about Australia when I was at this retreat is that leeches are not only found in rivers and lakes here. They hang out in moist places as well. Like the grass. So as we were in the middle of a huge group discussion on one of the lawns of the camp that we were at, I looked down to see a leech having a snack from between my toes (I was wearing flip flops…the only shoes that fit my feet these days). Talk about freaking me out. I think the words “I hate Australia” left my lips, but I can recognize that it was in a moment of rage against one of the many weird living things that can hurt you here. What a place. Tim and I have both noticed that it seems that on such an uninhabitable continent (so dry and so abundant with nasty animals/bugs), every creature struggles to survive against the elements and each other. It’s easy to see, especially with birds. We’ve noticed that it’s very common to see tiny birds overtaking and bullying birds that are more than 4 times their size, and this is just as common as seeing birds of the same species and size fighting with each other. Apparently this gets even worse during breeding seasons, where birds become especially protective and territorial and will start dive-bombing unassuming humans. And we’re not talking about the humans that are trying to steal eggs from nests or anything, we’re talking people riding their bikes down the street or walking from their front door to their car. I actually almost got picked off by a Noisy Miner (a particularly aggressive type of honey-sucker ) while walking from the lawn up to the front door a couple of weeks back. I think it might have been a case of both of us not looking where we were going, but all I really remember is a swoosh by my right ear, too close for comfort for me. Our neighbors have told us some horror stories about breeding birds and their aggressiveness, including one guy who was repeatedly bombed in the face by a Magpie that didn’t seem to like him very much (this went on for a number of weeks). Apparently September is the time to look out for this kind of behavior. Fun stuff to look forward to.

In all honesty though, despite the fact that it seems like all people ever hear about Australia is that there are many nasty critters that can eat you or poison you, I haven’t seen anything like what I’d expected. It’s probably because we live in the ‘burbs, but really, there appears to be so little threat…I had to go 70 minutes outside of Brisbane in order to encounter a land-lubbing leech…Tim has only seen nasties when he’s been out in the wilderness of northern Queensland. I think it’s safe to say that the dangers are exaggerated. But who knows. Maybe we’re living amongst more dangerous critters than I’ve known about (no doubt), but if this is what it takes to co-exist, it’s not that bad at all. Let’s hope things stay this way.

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that I’ve been working at Griffith University as a research assistant for the past month and a half. It’s been great. I have been working for the Canadian consulting company that I’ve been working for since 2002 even while here, but I’ve slowly been phasing that out of my life since I started at the university. It’s just a whole lot simpler to be working at the university right now. I think it’s the 13 hour time difference that really makes working from overseas a titch more difficult as I’m the type of person that needs regular contact in order to give and receive updates, and that’s just been getting harder and harder (for the company and myself). And I’m crazy to think that I can keep up 2 jobs in my ever expanding state. What I’m doing for my supervisor is basically taking a huge database of environmental data collected from over 150 sites over the past 7 years and preparing it for trend analysis. Sounded easy when I started, but it’s getting more and more interesting and…challenging…over time. I like it! I’m learning all about freshwater ecology again and so much about the catchments in Southeast Queensland. Everywhere we go now I can relate to the streams and rivers we’re crossing, etc. And I have to be thinking about such different things, tying conceptual modeling, ecology, GIS mapping, stats and all kinds of goodies together. I forgot how much of a nerd I really am. Sweet self-awareness.

Tim celebrated his 30^th this past week. We’re going to a rugby match later on in the month to formally celebrate, but in the meantime I showered him with gifts all week long. He won’t spend a cent on himself, so I use the traditional gift-giving holidays to take advantage of him getting new stuff without being too miffed. So, if you know Tim and I at all, practicality wins over flashy. So, a pizza cutter, underwear, a few new sweaters and some kitchen pans were lavished upon Tim. It was kind of fun to pull something new out of the closet every night for him. But I can’t say that the thought that birthdays should be more fun than kitchen wears didn’t cross my mind. When I was a kid I could never hide my disappointment in getting practical stuff over something that I really wanted. I hated getting socks and undies, and perhaps a few tantrums were thrown over this fact. If you ever meet my dad he’d be the first to tell you how true this was. Ask him about a Wayne Gretzky lunchbox incident. He loves to tell that one.

So during the week a friend of ours asked me if she and her husband could take us out to their favorite restaurant for a celebration of Tim’s birthday. I thought it was a good idea, and we decided to keep it a surprise from Tim. So for the entire week I had to ensure that we didn’t make plans for Saturday…Not such an easy feat when married to a planner. But I succeed. So on Saturday morning we woke up and I told Tim to be ready to be picked up at 10am. Again, to Tim’s credit, there have been way too many surprises in the past 6-7 months of our lives, so maybe keeping this outing a surprise wasn’t the best approach. And I’m sure that he was thinking that we’d already done enough to celebrate his birthday (likes to keep birthdays as low-profile as possible), he wasn’t as receptive to the surprise as I’d hoped. But he warmed up when he saw our friends Rene and Noreen pull up. We ended up taking a drive down to the Gold Coast and having lunch at a rotating restaurant located on the 26^th floor of a skyscraper just off the beach. It was a seafood buffet and the food was AMAZING. Such great company and scenery too. It was just a great way to spend a Saturday. Maybe next time I’ll be a bit more conscious of how much I like surprises in relation to how little Tim likes them.

As for an update on the Goob…The little critter is growing like a weed. That, or I have “wind” according to a lady at church this morning. It’s growth. Let’s keep it at that. She/he is moving almost all of the time, and we’re not just talking kicks and punches anymore, it’s full on butt stuck in my ribs on one side to a slither over to the other side in a matter of minutes. I used to think that I had an abnormally large ribcage for my size, since I can’t find my ribcage anymore, that theory is out. And there’s just so much pressure inside right now. I must say that if I could spend the majority of my time in a bathtub or heated pool, life would be so much easier. But, I’m still feeling great, and it’s really fun to feel movement and to guess which side of my belly will be stuck out in the morning. Tim likes to find appendages. So we’re just about a month and a half away from the delivery date and I simply can’t believe how fast time has gone. Or, for that matter, how much has changed in the past 7 months. Because we can only take things a day at a time, it’s not very often that we reflect on just how much is going on in our lives…but when we do, it’s a bit overwhelming. This baby has already traveled more than lots of people that we know, but even more intriguing I think is just how many stressful things that we’ve gone through over this pregnancy that have nothing to do with being pregnant. For this reason I’m glad that at least we’ve kept a loose journal of happenings in the form of the blog. I think that when the Goob is old enough to understand just what we’ve done, he/she will probably think that we were nuts, and we’ll have to agree. Ahhh, what’s life without a little adventure? We can only hope that things will be as good for our offspring as they have been for us.

Time for a lie down. I miss my family lots this week. Friends too. No matter how long we’re here, the distance from here to home is still so impossibly far. I feel like I get a better grasp on that every single day, which pretty much manifests itself as a dull ache. It would feel that way no matter where we were, and we take lots of solace in the fact that we will be back home someday. For now, we’re just hunkering down and remembering to be thankful for the many, many good things and equally tough things in our lives right now. It’s a good time to be us.

Love to everyone!

Laura