Frogpondsrock...

11 April 1945 – 24 June 2009

Today is one year since Mum died.

It has been a very long year.

I am okay now. My grief ebbs and flows but it isn’t as all consuming as it was.

Thank you for holding my hand this past year.

There is only so much room inside my head…

So naturally the overflow has to go somewhere and I either pour it into my work or dump it here.

I’m sorry or you’re welcome would seem to be equally valid responses.

At the end of that last sentence I wandered off and fed the chooks and now I have lost my train of thought.

I worry that our food is killing us and poisoning our children. I look at the number of children with life threatening allergies, with different behaviours and with birth defects. I wonder what exactly is normal behaviour? I worry that our drinking water is so contaminated with pesticides that nothing is safe to eat at all. I think about the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 and that bothers me a whole lot more than the Y2K bug ever did.

I worry about the unexplained deaths of bats, bees and frogs.

I worry that Tasmania has an incredibly high rate of death from cancer and then I wonder if that is linked to pesticides that are still in use in Australia that have been banned in the US, Europe and Great Britain?

I worry about endocrine disruptors in our food.

I see the signs of a poisoned planet in our frogs.

In our native animals.

In our children.

I worry that all the signs are there, that we as a species are hurtling towards disaster and we are too self absorbed to notice. I worry about HAARP technology, I worry about the oils spills that aren’t reported and I worry that the incredible amount of salt in chocolate will make my blood pressure go through the roof.

Luckily for me I have my blog so I can just dump all these worries here onto you as well and then I can wander off outside and look at my terribly neglected vegetable garden and think about doing some work before spring.

I am finding it too difficult to maintain the veggie garden properly in its current state so “The Spouse” cut an old water tank in half for me and I am in the process of filling it up with compost, sheep poo and mushroom compost ready for spring planting. We are going to re-design the garden so that all the beds are raised, which will make gardening a whole lot easier.

The newest chook pen is right next to the veggie garden but the chooks have abandoned it. *sigh* I kept on forgetting to lock the girls up overnight and when I had the piggies, Mother hen decided to move her brood to a native cherry tree next to the pig sty and that is where they are  roosting now.

They are also laying their eggs somewhere miles away down the bush and “The Spouse” is quite grumpy with me. He really dislikes chooks and I am eternally promising that this time, I will lock them up and that I will clean up after them and that their eggs are delicious. Except I forget to lock them up and “The Spouse” finds the chook shit on the verandah before I do and I am sure the eggs are very nice except I can’t  bloody well find them. Sneaky, secretive things chooks.

It is hard being me and “The Spouse” reckons it is even harder living with me.

Luckily I am easily distracted and even though I think deep, depressing thoughts about the environment, little things make me smile.

What do you think the fourth seagull from the right is thinking? Hmm wondering if maybe he could become an accountant?

How do you measure success?

Last week Brenda asked on her blog, Mummytime, “where do you hope your blog will take you?”

This morning I followed  a twitter link to a blog post that asked why do most artists blogs fail?

I commented with Interesting point but it all depends on how you measure success. I am an artist and I have a successful blog as well.

So this morning the ideas have meshed and I need to ask the question,

“How do you measure success?”

This time last year I measured my success by my ability to keep those I loved, alive and safe from harm.

I failed to keep my mother alive. The cancer that consumed her was  too strong and the strength of my love was not enough to save her.

My love was strong enough to let her go peacefully though and Veronica writes about it beautifully here.

I failed to protect my daughter from my brother and in his pain he lashed out bitterly at my girl and wounded her deeply.

I am an only child.

I am an orphan.

I am motherless.

I am successful.

We have survived the first year and my son is alive.

I kept my son alive in those dark months following the death of his Grandmother. It was touch and go there for a while and I watched him like a hawk.

I didn’t restrain him when he punched the walls.

I screamed back at him when he screamed his anguish at me. I held him as he cried like a baby and my tears mingled with his, I fed him pizza and let him sleep and protected him as best I could.

How do you tell a 15 year old that grief will pass when you are so immersed in the same grief and the tunnel is too long for even the tiniest glimmer of light?

I managed to get through this last year because of my blog. I could write out my grief here. When there was a deathly silence after the funeral and only my closest friend rang me, I came to my blog for solace. When my head was going to explode with all the words I needed to say I came to my blog.

And you listened. You sent me chocolate and clippies, classical music and cards. You commissioned my art work and made me think of renewal. You posted photos on your blogs for me and You held me close and let me cry. You filled my inbox with  emails and when there werent any words You hugged me and now we are here together.

My blog is successful and that is down to You.

Field of women.

I have been asked to help spread the word about the Breast Cancer Network Australia’s field of women LIVE event 2010,which is going to be held in Melbourne.

It’s taking place on Friday, 7 May 2010 and will see 14,000 women and men standing together in pink ponchos to form the Pink Lady silhouette on the MCG, reflecting the number of women expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010. The event aims to raise awareness and much needed funds to support women diagnosed with breast cancer (BCNA is a unique not for profit organisation, its sole focus is on providing complete support for women who are diagnosed with breast cancer and their families).

I remember the cold terror that gripped my heart when my twenty one year old daughter told me that she had a hard lump in her breast. I remember the fantastic relief when the lump was just a cyst.

My grandmother had a masectomy in her seventies and is still going strong at the ripe old age of eighty seven. I have had three lumps in my breasts over the years and they have all been benign.

So I am more than happy to help spread the word here on my blog and you can help as well my lovelies.

You can follow them on Twitter @BCNApinklady

You can join the Breast Cancer Network Australia Facebook fan page.

You can register to attend the event at www.fieldofwomenlive.org.au

You can provide a link to the event www.fieldofwomenlive.org.au on your blog and encourage your readers to promote this link on their websites and blogs as well.

You are more than welcome to copy this and post it onto your blog as well.

A new camera.

Last year, Easter Sunday was Mum’s birthday, We had a barbie and then Mum and I went down to the hospital for Mum’s chemo. Mum wrote in her diary…

Easter Sunday, back to the hospital for another session of chemo, made sure I left with plenty of anti-nausea tabs, they provided a roast lunch this time and surprise I was able to eat most of it, made Kim feel a bit teary poor baby, I didn’t realise that my not eating was causing her so much worry.

Tomorrow we are having a barbie at Vonnies and it will be another first, another milestone to be gotten through in this first year of living without Mum.

When Mum was having treatment at the hospital, quite often we would have an hour or so between appointments and so we would hang around in town as it was too far to go back home. Often we would browse away some time  in camera shops together, drooling over the latest DSLR’s. Mum wanted to buy me a DSLR but we decided to wait until we went to Sydney together. Mum died three weeks before we were due to leave.

So it was with mixed emotions that Vonnie and I went camera shopping  a couple of days ago. If I hadn’t had Veronica there to explain the lenses and give me a gentle push, I think I would have kept on dithering and not bought a camera at all. It has been very hard emotionally to spend some of my inheritance on such an extravagence as a new camera. But I could also feel Mum telling me that It was now or never Kimmy.

So I leaped off the cliff and bought a Nikon D90 with a very good 200mm lens.

Time to step it up a notch I think and take my photography to the next level.