I know a place you will love, says my friend Tinks- she’s tiny and blonde, fine features and delicate hands; it’s… amazing. It’ll be a little bit like that urban exploring thing you do, only different.

She was right, on all counts. It was amazing. And I loved it. And it was just like urbexing… only different.

It’s actually a business, Tinks explains as we drive there, forty five minutes away, the Doctor accompanying us- two tiny women on one vast, desolate lot in the middle of urban farming land seems not only irresponsible but almost gothic. The man who owns it, he just likes.. stuff. He’s a natural hoarder, but he sells it off again. Some things have price tags on them, most don’t… you just ask him what we wants for it. And it’s never much… fifty dollars for a knee length mink coat last time I was there.

So there’s clothes there too? I’m surprised- most junk dealers, no matter how reputable, bother dealing with clothes or fabric that soil and mould easily.


There is everything, replies Tinks. Just… everything. Clothes, books, shoes, furniture, crockery, records, trunks, electronics, toys… the shed is an eighth of an acre and the whole thing is full, there’s stuff stacked everywhere.

The theory is that there’s been some deal going on with skip bin companies, that this man allows them to dump their load with him rather than pay the exorbitant tipping fees… then he salvages. One’s man trash is another man’s treasure, as they say… this guy not only recognised this, he reveled in it. He took his treasure, and fair salvage for others as well.

The block of land we’re looking for is massive, typical of urban industrial market land- big ugly corrugated sheds; brambles and spiky blackberry bushes twined up and amongst stringy ropes of overgrown grass. There are abandoned cars and trucks, farming equipment that is not ancient enough to be vintage but still has that used-up look, powdered with rust and snared with dead growth.

We pass the driveway four times, and if Tinks hadn’t have been navigating we may not have found it all. We drive in, flanked by a rusty carnival food van and a house that seems out of place. There is no one here, not a soul, and we keep driving, past a row of sheds that seem to contain a hundred cars stacked on top of another at strange angles, compressing them into a single melted entity.

That’s it, says Tinks, and we park in front of one long, silver shed in a row of five. It seems different from the other sheds in some way that can’t quite be quantified. While the other sheds have junk piled in them, next to them, lining the informal driveway that led to them which is two foot thick with squelchy mud- for one of the first times ever I actually use the that A/T in my Subaru; Shed 5 has an air of organised chaos. In fact, as your mind adjusts, picks out the aesthetics amongst the rubbish, you see that Shed 5 has a discernible courtyard…

In fact, you could even call it a garden.

Shed 5 feels like someone has lived bits of their life there. That’s the difference. Rather than a desolate dumping ground, Shed 5 has the essence of people, of conversations and laughter, and the things here feel warm, as if they still have life and use and purpose in them.

There’s a small demountable room at the front of Shed 5, and the area surrounding it is fenced off with pieces of scrap metal that are elegant and delicate- gates and fire guards locked together to form a boundary for a garden that suits it’s surroundings perfectly. It’s all spiky, hardy cacti, succulents and aloe, growing rampant from a dozen mismatched pots. It seems to have spread out from the water tap on the outside from wall of the shed… it’s thicker, there, as if someone began by placing a few salvaged plants- hardy ones like cacti, that could take a ride in a skip bin and still come good- around the dripping tap, using a few salvaged garden pots he had stacked out front… and the garden grew from there.

Closer to the demountable room there’s been a walkway left that leads to the massive corrugated tin sliding door that protects the trashes (treasures) behind it. We knock, yell, peer in the crack in the door… I can see a vast expanse of space filled with… things, a veritable Aladdin’s cave protected not only by the tin door, but also a mesh one behind it. We knock on the door of the tiny demountable room, and I get distracted by the detritus that lays around it. Garden ornaments… buddhas and fairies and mushrooms, elephants and hanging pots. There is a whole display of heads, decapitated, ceramic and pottery, colored and neutral; and I don’t think I need to tell you just how damn creepy a severed head collection is. I don’t care what the medium, or the intention.

There is no one here. Not a soul responds to our calls, although we can hear faint voices and the occasional diesel engine from the shed furthest down the line. It was exactly like this last time I was here, say Tinks, all closed up. Nothing has moved in a month. He’s normally always here, somewhere…

The Doctor wanders away to investigate, and Tinks and I look further, fascinated. Between Shed 5 and the next- last in line on the opposite side of the voices, and empty bar a few rusty car parts and deteriorated spare tires- is an alley of junk, real junk, rubbish… the actual garbage, probably, that was left after the skip bins had been cleared of anything worth rescuing… anything functional, beautiful, practical, or necessary, even if the man who salvaged this stuff couldn’t see it himself… he realized that other people might see value in this, even if he couldn’t identify what exactly it would be. The alley of junk is somewhat divided into drifts of crap- tiles here, toilets and bath tubs there, old bike frames and nonfunctional prams here. It’s depressing.

The Doctor returns with news we didn’t expect… the hoarder, the man who owned this mess, he’s dead. He died two months ago, and his shed has sat idle since.


What happens with it now? asks Tinks, and I can feel her worry… for some reason you can sense that the bloke who curated this collection cared for it, wanted it to
be reused and passed on. Skip bins, replied the Doctor. The guys down there say they’re bringing in skip bins to clear it all out.

All this stuff, bits and pieces that this man saw could have value to people, objects and ornaments and fittings and items that he could see hadn’t quite outlived their usefulness, rescued from becoming rotten, broken landfill… only to be returned to ugly skip bins, and sent to a vast stinking dump anyway.

It seems pointless. Sad. Like someone’s been messing with an electrical circuit that used to work just fine, despite being held together with tinfoil, and they’ve re-routed the current back the way it came, bypassing any good that energy could have done.

It feels OK, now, to take things.. they belong to no one, and it feels as if their temporary guardian would have wanted people to take them, use them, appreciate them… There are things here that would hide just perfectly in my fairy garden- gnomes and cement toadstools, a fairy in a tiny tea cup. I select carefully, taking only the things I know I will adore.

It’s feels unfinished, but there is not much else to do…. we leave, knowing we’ll be back. There is a whole shed full of secrets here to play with.

Wheeee!!

A most wonderful, awesomeness thing happened to me recently. It may not sound like a big deal, but believe me, gentle Google Reader, when I say- it is.

I have re-discovered the simple pleasure of swinging.

Before anyone closes the window or deletes me from the Reader, please, do scroll down another paragraph or so. I promise, it’s not what you may be thinking. Oh, and get your dirty mind out of the gutter.

Our local council recently decided to upgrade our tiny local park (not the same one where the cows where a’roaming) from it’s mouldy, mildewy, spider-invested play equipment that, unsurprisingly, no one really played on; to an uber-cool, fire-proofed, funky new set with a slippery dip, net climb-y thing…

… and a swing set.

I used to love to swing when I was little, what ever happened to that? I think I became a teenager, maybe. And then swinging just wasn’t cool anymore.

I’d forgotten about pushing yourself back and forth, pumping your legs to gain height and speed. I’d forgotten how the fluid motion of swinging feels like weightless flying. I’d forgotten what a freedom it was to have your toes pointed directly at the sky. I’d forgotten the sheer exhilaration of your stomach dropping as the chains on the swing go lax.

I’d forgotten, I think, how it felt to be a kid, to have all your troubles stripped away while the breeze rushes through your hair.

And I’m hoping it’s quite a while before I forget again.

Because it’s given me something back, those few minutes at a time on the swing set. A few minutes of reprieve. A few minutes where I remember exactly what it feels like to be a child. The importance placed on the moment, on the how-things-feel-right-now. It doesn’t matter, you see, if our electricity bill is late, or if I’ve forgotten to take the meat out of the freezer for dinner again, or how on earth am I’m gonna get this kid to sleep in her own bed? For a few minutes there, all that matters is the act of swinging. Of flying. Of touching the sky.

And of not letting my worries touch me.

Mushi mushi,

What’s your favorite time of day…?

Mine’s.. well.. you’ll have to come on over to Lucy’s to find out. See you there!

…it’s a secret…

…but if you tiptoe over to You, Me and Georgie, you just might find me posting there.

Maybe.

I’m guest posting today over at The Things I’d Tell You…. about my name, my daughter’s name and… erm… Oprah.

One post at a time.

***

I go through periods of mourning my own parenthood. I didn’t expect that, to reminisce and yearn for years as they pass. I thought- for the longest time- that parenting involved ticking off boxes, being excessively grateful every time a new milestone was reached. My daughter is toilet trained? Mega bonus. My son can finally pour his own cereal in the morning? Total win.

And it is like that, to a certain degree. The older my kidlets get, the more independant they are, the easier things become. The more time I have to myself.

It is like that, and it’s not. Because even while I am grateful for every day older they grow, every task they can successfully complete themselves; I’m also sad. Sad in a place I only vaguely knew existed before.

I miss them being little. Tiny little. I miss having two sweet, grubby toddlers. I miss days at home with them. I miss cooking cupcakes and watching Play School. I miss cuddle toys and midday naps, dummies and playgroup.

I miss having the knowledge that these little people are mine to shape and grow. I mourn for the reassurance that if I’m fucking this up- and I alays feel like I am- I have time to rectify it. That I have years to turn things around, should they inevitably go awry.

I don’t have that leeway anymore. My children are growing like… children. The Chop is almost seven years old, the Bump just shy of five. She’s at school next year. And while I’m looking forward to that– to days of freedom, to slightly more independant little people– I’m sad, too.

My rose–colored nostalgia glasses insist on it. I wear them often, and they cloud most things with their sickly sweet pink tinge. It’s easy to mourn for things past. The future’s so unpredictable. It’s easier on the soul to hurt just slightly for things that have already happened, rather than think about what may come.

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Everything is simple biology.

Finding someone– falling in love– is nothing more than a primal urge to reproduce. Women are driven to find men powered by underlying testosterone- tall, dark and strong, for reasons of producing healthy, virile offspring. Men find large eyes, large breasts, full lips and curvy hips in the opposite sex appealing- all indicators of youth and fertility, the ability to bear many children.

Life makes so much more sense when you break it down to biological urges. Loving the people you bring into the world is no more than biology– if you didn’t have that amazing rush of oxytocin, you wouldn’t fall so desperately in love with your baby; and you may just be tempted to eat them instead of breast feeding them at some point in the early hours of your fifth sleepless night. Other species, untainted by moral considerations and legal ramifications, have been known to do just that when that hormonal rush fails and there are parental instincts go awry.

Of all human relationships, it’s the bond between mothers and children that is powered the most by simple biological reflexes, ingrained urges that are difficult to ignore. The cry of a newborn baby exerts an attention-pulling hormone rush in woman for years after they’ve had babies of their own, and is enough to cause a spontaneous letdown in woman who are lactating. All women, whether they have had children or not, wake far more quickly to nigh pitched noises than to low pitched tones; all females, without even realising it, raise their voices by an octave or so when in the presence of small children, to accommodate for the high range of hearing tiny babies have.

When your children reach the age of about 30 months, most parents, mothers in particular, begin to feel an almost irrational irritation with their behavior. It’s the ‘terrible two’s’, and the guilt that comes from wanting to be nowhere near your own children is not something we discuss in any depth, except to acknowledge that two year old’s are, in fact, all of kinds of disgusting.

I know I’m currently feeling not-so-awesome about the fact that my daughter is currently annoying the living patience right out of me. And I bet a lot of you know what I’m talking about. Here’s the good news– it’s not our fault. It’s just that simple biology. At somewhere between the ages of two and three, instinct pushes you to begin to separate yourself from your child– because, biologically, they need to learn some independence, to think for themselves, to survive in a cruel world without such close, constant supervision. And at some point their biology lines up with yours, and instinct prevents them from wandering too far from your side.

I mentioned a while back, some Native American women cut their hair once they become widows, and are only allowed to remarry once it regrows. If you think about it, it’s a logical safeguard to fertility.

People are fascinating creatures.

Men in groups bleed testosterone into the air. Their voices drop, their shoulders lift and their chests come forward; aggression is a natural consequence. Sometimes I think the most primal things we have left are sex and fighting.

Women who live together find their moods and menstruation settle into a similar pattern, all of their body cycles aligning with the cycle of the alpha-female.

Our hair and fingernails grow faster when we feel appreciated. Physiological stress can manifest itself into cancer. Mental health facilities report a greater intake of schizophrenics during a full moon. Owning a cat or a dog reduces the risk of having a heart attack.

Bodies are impressive things, and we seem to sync them to our Earth without even realising it’s happening.

Simple biology is a complex, amazing thing.

*Some links in this post are sponsored.

I am so many kinds of messed up.

In my mind, most everything leads to suicide. The Most Amazing Man and I have a disagreement, and the thought sneaks in that he just may kill himself. Stressed about money? Surely someone will die soon. Work not going great? Suicide may be imminent.

It’s a difficult way to live. I have to constantly catch myself; remind my subconscious that it’s not going to happen. Things aren’t going to go down that way.

We pass happiness back and forth between us like a hot potato, twin batons of hope and despair. I am miserable, he is optimistic. I get back on my feet, I feel him beginning to slide. This is hard. Blending a family like this is difficult. Neither of us ever give ourselves the kudos we deserve for doing something so complicated and potentially emotionally explosive.

Six months in, and there is no yelling, no violent arguing. We don’t throw guilt at each other. We work out any little snags, smooth things over with words until they no longer threaten to catch on our clothes and cause resentment.

We- all of us, kidlets included- adapt and change and settle in to our new life. The Most Amazing Man continues to be patient and supportive. I work on getting my head together, on feeling better. On not missing my ‘old life’ quite so much.

And I remind myself to take a step back occasionally- like I’m doing right now- and take a deep breath. To be proud of me, of him, of the kidlets. We are doing something good for all of us. And we’re doing it together.