A fluffy, perfectly-storybook cloud drifts across the sky, low on the horizon, at the perfect angle to get caught up in the top of a formidable gum tree.  I feel that familiar desire lurching in my chest.  I need to live in the country.

The barbed wire on top of the chainlink fence immediately below the picturesque scene reminds me of where I currently live.  Not just in the city, but in a part of the city where a school so routinely gets vandalised that the budget was expended to give it these prison accoutrements.

Depressing, if you think about it, so I don’t.

It’s a beautiful and sunny morning, and the temperature reminds you that it’s the perfect time of year, when a jacket is only slightly too much and a singlet and boardies only slightly too little.  Jeans are fine, shorts are fine, sandals are fine, boots are fine.  The weather is fine.

The short walk to the park involves yet another freestyle song to an original tune.  If I had a guitar and a recording contract right now, I’d change the way you feel about your radio.  It matters little that the song is about my baby boy’s toes and the way his hair curls and that he enjoys sampling the tree bark surrounding our homepark.  The song may or may not involve the concept of a good poo and cartoons too.  To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember.  *Sigh* Goodbye record deal.

Neighbours we recognise are already at the park, and I secretly love when this happens as much as I love it when they leave and it’s just me and the Boo and my writing.

The nice man with the little girl, who is almost Boo’s exact age, comes over.  “Ahhh… babee guhl!” he says animatedly to my little boy.

He gestures to his little girl, “Go… seesteh… seesteh!”

“Uhm… brother,” I say clearly.

He looks at me with surprise, “Bruzzuh?”

Then he shrugs, “My English… not good.”

I tell him it’s fine, and then I remember Wifeage telling me that, in the Chinese culture, they usually start cutting the boy’s hair quite early, and they keep it quite short for a while.  Only girls have long hair, which would explain why Boo keeps getting called “baby girl” by the Chinese greengrocer we love, Jimmy.

The little girl is fascinated with Boo, and frightened by me.  She moves in to kiss him and he runs away giggling.  Quite a pair.

As I’m struggling to learn from the man how to say his daughter’s name, which I still don’t know other than it sounds a LOT like “goodbye” in Mandarin (tze-deyon?), I turn to see that Boo is accosting the little boy on his bike.  The kid isn’t much older than Boo, maybe 3 or 4, but he rides the tiniest of bikes like a champ.  He’s sitting in his little Buzz Lightyear helmet, staring bemusedly at Boo, who is spinning the crossbar pad around and around while staring with fascination at the training wheels.

“Anything with wheels, he LOVES, ” I say to the boy’s mother.

She squints in the sun at me from beneath her headwrap, a symbol of her Islamic faith I’m guessing, and says in slightly-accented, but perfect, English, “Oh him too!  He’s always loved anything that moves, with wheels.  Anything that rolls!”

Her little boy has escaped Boo’s interminable examinations of his bike and is speeding away up the footpath and his mother leans around me to call out to him, “Hockena sheel a la biddy biddy biddy!”

I marvel, as I do, at the way bilingual folk can seamlessly switch, and look on with envy.  As I watch my little bulldog of a kid stomping around the playground, I wonder if I should get better at speaking my limited dirty Mexican around them.  I’m still undecided as to whether or not it will provide appropriate benefit to them to ask someone in Spanish if they just farted, or if they just smell that way.

The cloud has long since moved away, and the new angle I’m sitting at sees more of them coming in off the coast instead of crossing out over the hills.  There are more, and they are beautiful.  My little boy stomps up, shoves my hands off of the keyboard and puts his arms up. Time for a cuddle.  As I hold him close and breathe deep of him, I can almost feel the country life happening here.

I turn him to point at the clouds and for the briefest instant we’re both taken there before the bin truck roars around the nearest corner and the brakes scream in protest of their daily flogging as it pulls to a stop across the street. Something robotic then does what a man used to do not long ago before it roars to life again and travels another 30 metres.

We live in a circle.  Our street, our lives.

And sometimes the bin truck stays for too long.

Just a typical morning here in the ‘burbs.  Older two trundle off to school, littlers with me.  One on my shoulders, chattering happily about how the car in the driveway we just passed has “magic glass” and how it’s made from magic and glitter and sandman’s sand and it takes bad dreams away.

She made it, she tells me, using “glass magic” that she could tell me about but it’s a secret.  Littlest blows raspberries and amuses himself by dripping the juice from his sippy cup onto his vegemite toast.  When I pick him up later, I will get to deal with a soggy, sloppy mess and a hungry child.  He’s happy enough.

Oldest was feeling the usual trepidation, stomach troubles, nervousness and anxiety that has plagued most of his short life.  It’s Thursday, so it’s his guitar lessons that he fears.  He’s the only scholarship student left in the program and feels isolated.  He has also forgotten to practice every week for the past 13 weeks.  Except last night.  I remind him of this, his head lifts, and I remind him as well of the flawless way he performed “Twinkle Little Star” for his sisters, without even looking at the guitar.  His chest puffs up and he announces proudly to me, “Ya know, I think this might be the first time I’m not nervous about going to guitar lessons!”

Oldest girl was running quite late, just one of those days that are all-too-common where I go to bring her a jumper and find her playing with her Monster High dolls.  If everything is going to distract her from her mission this morning, at the very least she is willing to attempt to entertain the toddler while he whinges at my ankles as I make their lunch.

No matter now though, and no unnecessary stress.  They are all at school, lunches packed and ready to be eaten, clothes clean and properly adorned, and I am here, in this cute and quiet park, watching my little brute stomping around an empty playground as if he owns the place.

An icy wind is hiding in the leeward side of the sunshine, but I believe it to be human nature to take a day such as this and say “F*CK YOU WINTER” and soak in as much warmth as is available.  I have just been toddled into for a nice cuddle, the reason for which would appear to be for warmth alone, as the second his fingers had lost their chill he clambered off and scampered away, yelling, “Doh Dah DAH!” at a nearby crow.

It’s moments like this that used to freeze me with anxiety and even fear as I would picture the day, the events ahead of me, even if they were only as huge as “going to work” or “going to a client meeting”.  While I don’t have anything dreaded on my calendar today, this week, this month, and there is conversely nothing terribly exciting either… I still find it incredibly freeing to be able to look at a day like this, a moment like this, and feel appreciative it for what it is.

At some point in your day, take a moment for what it is and appreciate it.  You won’t regret it.

Jade’s going through a phase lately where she makes cards.  At some point somebody, probably me, taught her how to fold a bit of paper in half and then make a “little book” out of it.  We encouraged her to make one or two here and there for Christmas and cousins birthdays, and now she does them all the time.

Every day.  Several times a day.  Seriously.

Like someone turning on a light, her reading suddenly became ‘actual’ reading instead of ‘I figured out what they were doing in the picture and guessed really well’ reading.  About that same time her cards started taking on a real creative quality to them.  Her drawings got such incredible detail that now the fairies have love-heart-shaped hair clips and are clearly winking with one eye (and possible have false lashes on, but I didn’t press the point).

As with most things Jade, it evolved, and did so in way that was completely unexpected, and magical and wonderful and aboslutely f*cking hilarious.

There is a stack of cards near me, too many to put up here, but I thought I’d start this off with her latest and get back on this blogging pony.

The Front Page

The curly-script writing is something her mum taught her, in one of those throw-away-5-second, here this is neat, sessions. As she does, she now does it to EVERYthing. The top apparently reads, “I Made This”.

It really says, “Imad-tres” but if you’re writing to fairies, they’ll understand it. So will meth addicts.

Underneath that is Flying Mummy the Fairy. On her dress is a light, a counter, a candle with some fire and the little blue square thing is her wand that has a lovely spell-helper spirit that lives inside it.

I love that the rest of us have to remain ground-bound while mum flies around in a magically-awesome dress. She’s winking too, as if to say, “Be good to me sugah, or I’ll fix yo’ ass with my little smiling wand of bitchslap.”

Underneath that, is her sister who is so happy to see her cake that she’s screaming. On the bottom right is me, in the kitchen (where I spend a lot of time) with a pan on the stove that has heat coming up. I have my arms in the air and my real-man armpit smell is coming up into my face. I am also screaming “Happy Birthday!” and “Awgawd” about my arms.

I also love that Georgia’s party hat also looks like some sort of alien that’s cheerily glooped its way onto her head to suck out her Life Force. Once again, mummy flies as a Fairy Queen while Daddy slaves in the kitchen. WTFMATE. I was smelling my own armpits only yesterday and telling her that I smell like a man, so I’m pleased that made it in.

The cake… check out the flames on the cake. Jade is FIVE and she drew different coloured/types of candles with the flames in two colours (as you do). Amazing. The picture on the cake is of a cloud with a little white spotty teddy that lives on top of the cloud. The dots underneath the cake are sparkles that spilled off while I was magicking the cake.

The cake is brilliant and amazing and nobody showed her how to do that with the candle flame, she just did it. I’ve never seen a spotty teddy that lives in the clouds, but I don’t smoke as much crack as she does. I’m really impressed that it made it onto the cake though. Smoke away child.

The Inside

The left page has simple little cake, decorated with love, and lots of glittery sparkles going up in the air because the candle is magic.

I had to double check that they were magic sparkles (as in fireworks) because I thought they might be spankings.  I’m going to suggest that for the next card.

The right page has some really interesting stuff on it, because that’s George looking at an array of gifts, all unwrapped. There’s a red ‘Sitting Seat’ above her and the green sitting seat below is decorated like a present, but isn’t really. All of the presents at the bottom of the page are the same ones that were above, but are wrapped now.

I love how Victorian it all becomes at this point.  Like we need designated areas where we just sit.  “Oh not there, that’s not a sitting chair!  That’s a present chair!”

The presents are: a dress, a little round-pantsed costume, hair lackies, a Jack-in-the-box, a picture frame, a Magic Box and another Sitting Seat.

How excellent that they’re all lined up and not wrapped, then they are?  Dresses costumes, hair things, a random-and-unconnected-toy, and seats with only one designated purpose.  Does this kid know her sister or what?

As awesome as the front and middle are, the back really brings it home.

The top has a butterfly wedding. One butterfly at the top is shouting at the other, because he’s mean. The ones getting married are Lilly and Trilly.

You can probably guess what side of the Marriage Equality debate we fall when a couple of butterfly gals have hooked up and are getting hitched.  NO idea why one of the wedding guests is shouting at another one, but is it really that odd?  Nay.

Below them is a butterfly doing a giant fart “BLAP!” and the one above her is shouting “AAAAAH!” because it smells so bad. That’s Jade sitting in the middle of it all, just enjoying the garden and hoping the butterfly doesn’t blap so hard she poos.

Butterflies farting.  I can’t say much more than that.  Seriously.  Say it out loud.  “Happy Birthday!  Here’s some butterflies farting!”  WIN.

It probably doesn’t get better than that folks, I really don’t think it does.

It’s still fairly dark when the first alarm goes off.  Despite it being the classical music station, 7:04 AM is when the news is on, so my hopes for gently easing into the day are dashed with a rumbly baritone voice detailing deaths in Syria.  Good morning.

2 snooze buttons later and I’m struggling into my jeans in the dark, closing the door with an armload of laptop, phone and shoes so as not to wake wife with going in and out.  Mechanically stumble through the house slapping the kettle on and opening the shades to the first brilliant rays of the day’s sunlight, sometimes doing a double-take and wondering which bright light got left on all night before figuring out that, on this fine morning, Mother Nature has the lighting needs covered.

Wake the oldest boy first, as he can be the slowest to rise and it’s best to give him sole attention instead of being peppered with tales of dreams of ponies and fairies were I to wake the girls first.  Doesn’t matter anyway, as inevitably when I am in the toilet for my morning ritual the 9-yo comes and taps on the door, every single time.  The 5-yo joins her minutes later and I hear them whisper conspiratorially before they disappear back into their shared space.

It’s cold this morning.  Asscold.  And the heater is struggling.  Cuddly robes are passed around and are the first search of the day.  Uniforms, socks, underwear, shoes, hairties, jumpers and hats are next, in that order usually.  I’ve just finished making my coffee when a delighted, ear-piercing, squeal comes from the baby’s room, signalling that he’s not only awake, but eager to join his siblings in the morning reverie.

When he sleeps in, I can get the other kids to school and then come back to a quiet house and a gentler morning.  When he wakes up with the kids, it’s nice for all of them and they get less shooshing from me, but it makes every little aspect of readying 3 kids for school exponentially more difficult.

For some reason, today he is in a fantastic mood, and chooses to stomp around chewing on a toy rather than pull his sister’s hair while I attempt a ponytail plait.  He even lets me make all the lunches and drink about half my coffee before I notice that the 5-yo is still half-naked and shivering with one pink sock half pulled-on.  She feigns helplessness as an attention-seeking move against her baby brother.  She knows I know this, yet does it anyway.

Oldest boy gives me a bro-hug and turns to leave before I point out that he’ll need something warmer than his t-shirt.  After he’s zipped up and left, 9-yo girl bounces towards the door with a good-bye before I remind her of the same thing, and also her lunch.  And her homework.  And her shoes.  Jesus Christ.

Olders are off, merrily.  Putting pants, socks and a jacket on toddler takes 7 minutes.  I know because I timed it.  He grudgingly packs into the pram and 5-yo opens the back patio door for me proudly, then stands mostly in the way, sweet thing.  We navigate through the assorted detritus on our back patio and scramble our way, late, across the now-quiet neighbourhood streets on our way the 3 blocks to school.

The same cars are parked on the dirt behind the school.  The same mums (and one dad) wave Good Morning while the same ones don’t.  Breakfast Club is put on every other day in the mornings, a joint effort of the far-reaching church down the road and the Food Bank.  Some mornings it’s a beautiful bacon and egg baked treat and others it’s a stale bit of toast slathered in margarine and Vegemite.  Today it’s both, and the 5-yo gets a cup of milk (she had pink milk at home too) and I lose her in the crowd while finding the softest bit of bread for the toddler’s aching gums.

There she is, sitting with a Malaysian family eating a rice, egg and cheese mixture from a bowl they’ve clearly given her.  Bad enough that the church and charity know that I actually need their help feeding my kids, I don’t need the more-povvo-than-me refugees knowing it too.  With grand smiles and rosy cheeks, they talk to her in simple English and to each other in Malay.  They’re all just noises to my child, I know this.  She believes it’s the inflection that counts, so she joins in the conversation with her made-up words and noises that are so similar to their language that they squint at her in concentration for a few seconds before figuring out that she’s just talking nonsense.

They smile and laugh and I imagine their feet getting cold because she’s charmed their socks right off.  She does that.

A horrific wailing erupts as the school siren announces that the day has begun.  It means little other than put your hands on your ears, but it sometimes gets kids moving quicker to their classrooms.  The same kids are the same amount of late.  It’s accepted.  Most are indigenous Australians.  Misplaced by this society, this culture, a step behind in integrating.  A step sideways rather than behind, perhaps even two or three.

The classroom is half-filled with semi-noisy little ones and a handful of mums.  Some are still chewing on their stale Breakfast Club meals and I realise that 5-yo still has the bowl of rice.  I would know the Malaysian woman if I saw her, so I make a note to find her later.  No need, she’s ambled by with her 2 in tow and I thank her and apologise and she responds with an even bigger smile and says, “She WONDERFUL!”

I know she is.  I know she wonderful.

The toddler wiggles out of my lamp to stomple around the classroom and promptly falls over into the side of the bin.  He gets half up and goes over the other way.  I worry briefly about bourbon in his bottle before remembering that he’s new to the concept of shoes.  He does his angry crybark and starts pulling at them, so I take them off.  He promptly leaps to his feet and struts towards the wooden blocks as if this place were laid out simply for his sake.

The children line up to go to the school assembly but mine isn’t done with her milk and it’s cold enough out that I want her hands in her pockets, not on a cold drink.  The Amazonian South African teacher says something to me in a thick enough accent that I feel tempted to just smile and nod.  The Helper Teacher with her peels away from the double line of little heads and says she’ll take my child up with her when she’s done with her milk.  Pleased that my imploring look worked, I turn to find my smallest troublemaker only to find that he’s sweetly chirruping at a cartoon of two girls stopping at a “STOP” sign.

He has a small wooden bathroom vanity in his hand and his sister explains that there’s a dollhouse at the end of the bookshelves where he must have acquired it.  She says to him, in simple by direct terms, to put it back and points where it goes.  He dutifully toddles over and puts it back.  My mouth gapes in amazement.  He is 14 months old.

3 wet milk kisses later, we make our way home.  This is when the morning feels most alone, and it’s my favourite part, even if it isn’t always very nice to feel so lonely.  Littlest chews on his vegemite toast and occasionally comments on something comment-worthy, “ah-GAH!”  The cold sneaks through my clothes and turn my face toward the sun coming up over the hills of the Scarp.  Steam dances lazily across the steel pipes of the chainlink fence.  I stop for a second, and I feel everything.

We take the other side of the loop home because it gets the most sunlight and we pass no fewer than 7 houses filled with very different cultures.  They are Iranian, Turkish, Indian, South African, Chinese, Burmese, New Zealander.  Inside, they cook and they drink and they have music and clothes.  On the outside, they all have the same cream-coloured brick.  Welcome to Australia.

We take care not to bang the gate when we come home, keeping quiet.  I turn the radio up slightly and make some cheesy toast for the toddler.  I open the door for the cats to come out but only one does, and she instantly nags me.  I feed her but the toddler chases her away and bangs after her before becoming distracted by some speaker wires that have been pulled from the side of a box.  I put on his stories in the playroom and we’re gently greeted with soft voices telling us that today was brought to us by the letter “L” and the number “12”.  He smiles at this bemusedly and I watch him and wonder what he makes of this all.

I sit down and power up this laptop while corralling bits of toast and cheese that are being shoved haphazardly, yet happily, to the edges of the highchair’s tray and occasionally in his mouth.  111 emails start downloading while I am told that Venus in my 11^th House of Career means that I shouldn’t just say random shit today, I should take an extra minute to think about it.  The stars tell me I should also be more patient with the big changes I want to make in my life, they’ll come in due time and forcing them early will only taint their arrival.  Sit and wait for now until big things happen?  Done.

I find that I’ve missed out on a 99 cent auction for a rare and collectable GI Joe ninja that sold for $53.  Guess somebody out there knew that he was rare and collectable.  I’ve won a 99 cent auction for a not-rare-at-all nor collectable swamp soldier and one for an enemy arctic soldier.  Somebody out there knew that they weren’t worth much.  They are to me, and I am happy.

Clients, committees and Facebook spill out of my inbox.  I make another coffee remarking inwardly that I could feasibly spend the entire day going through Facebook and reading and commenting on every article/post/status that I see.

I close Facebook and I open this document, and I begin to write.

The toddler is fed, he has yelled a bit, he has stomped around a lot, and I’ve cleaned his little butt twice from wees and poos.  He’s chased the cats and he’s ran crookedly at my legs to be picked up for a cuddle before wriggling free to once again chase the cats.  He’s eaten some mashed vegetables that come in a squeezable pouch and they lit up his eyes.  He greedily grabbed his bottle from my hands and drink-drinked on it until his eyes crossed.  He is now happily asleep.

Now I sit, in front of this laptop again, wondering about what in the hell I’m going to do with my life again.

Later, I’ll fold that pile of laundry and I’ll probably return at least half of those emails.  I’ll have gone to the shops for milk and bread and I’ll have done the dishes before they start to smell.  I’ll have fed the cats and the kids and I might have even picked up a guitar.  I’ll have paid a bill or two and I’ll have stopped to play with a toy or read a book to a small person.

And I’ll have done all of this without wondering what in the hell I’m going to do with my life, at all.

Who are you to judge me anyway?

I want you to do something for me, right now.  Ask yourself that question above.  Be honest when you ask and even honester when you answer.

Do you really think you’re in a position to judge me?

Do you really believe that you should be free to treat me differently because of things you think you know about me?

What is it that you think you know about me?

Do you reckon there may actually be more to the story?  Can you believe that there are things about me that you may not know, that may colour what it is you think about me?

Are you able to conceive that these things may be none of your business?  Can you wrap your head around the idea that these things might actually be the basis for what you think about me, yet you may never really know the details of them?

Knowing all of this, are you still satisfied with those thoughts you have of me?  Are you secure in the knowledge that your thoughts about me, good or bad, are based in factual experiences with me and not just things that you think you know but have no real supporting facts behind them?

None of this really matters anyway.  Not to me, at least.  I ask you these questions so that you’ll ask yourself these questions, and not because I want to ask you these questions.

We’ve already moved past that, you and I, even if you didn’t know.

You see, you’ve already told me what you think and how you plan on treating me thusly.  You’ve made it clear who I am to you and how that will affect our relationship.  Me asking you to ask yourself questions is just because I wish for the best in people, not because I’m hopeful it will change anything.

Not to sound too cynical, but I don’t really think this will change anything.

When I left my church at 15, you scorned me and looked powerfully disapproving.  You also softened that look and slapped me on the shoulder, wishing me luck.

When I left my home state for far away at 19, you wished I wouldn’t go so far away and you wanted me to want to stay home.  You also swelled with pride and encouraged me to find my own wings.

When I left my top-notch university for an uncertain place with an uncertain direction, you scratched your heads at me but let me go, most of you never finding me again nor wishing to be found.  You also wished me luck and offered to pack me a lunch on my journey.

When I almost made the biggest mistake of my life, most of you stayed quiet and gave insincere congratulations.  When I dodged that bullet, almost none of you said a thing about that either.

When I made the biggest change of my life, I received scorn and ill feelings, had guilt heaped upon me in mounds and got so many puzzling looks that I wondered if I’d grown a set of tits.  I also got huge hugs, sincere congrats, and proud encouragement from places I’d never expected.

When I was new to a strange place, you treated my new-ness with ambivalence and showed more fear than joy.  You also welcomed me in as if I were returning home instead of finding it for the first time.

When things got hard, you sat back and acted as if you’d have it all sorted if it was your mess, and you still act that way this very day, this very morning.  You also showed me that come hell or high water, you’re going to stick around, by sticking around through hell and high water.

Know how I didn’t want to sound too cynical before?  It’s because I’m not.

It’s not that I don’t have hope that you’ll change, or that reading this will somehow make you think and will somehow affect the relationship that we have.  I don’t really think that.

Because during all that shit I listed out above, at all those stages in my life that I wrote out just now, you did those things because that’s Who You Are, and nothing I did or said to you seemed to make one tiny little fucking difference.

You were going to be that person the whole time.  And you were.

And you’re being them now.