Tuesday
I love creche day. Fred goes off in the morning (sometimes I take her in on the tram, sometimes she goes on Martin's bike. This morning I think Martin has caved to illness, fatigue and the snap freeze and taken her in the car) and the house settles into quiet. Una is still happy to lie around alone on the floor and kick and have unfettered access to Fred's toys (life with Fred is somewhat dizzying for Una). Some Tuesdays Martin has a placement in a school and Una and I are alone for the day. I work. She sleeps. We go for little walks to the supermarket or we visit. It's funny though because Undine doesn't like Tuedays:

Undine straggled down the stairs to the bathroom. She felt a lump of something, starting at the base of her spine and working its way upwards. It wasn't a physical something, though it belonged inside her body, under her skin, trapped inside the fine network of muscle, tissue, nerve and bone. She knew what was happening because it had happened before, and even though she felt a little shiver of fear, mostly she was annoyed, because it was Tuesday and Tuesdays were - on the whole - not to be trusted.

After I wrote that line about Tuesdays I found a long essay online about Bad Tuesdays in Jane Austen novels. Apparently Tuesdays really aren't to be trusted. I don't know about Austen but I picked the day fairly randomly, though here's Undine's case against them:

Tuesdays were just badly designed, she thought crossly, as Lou danced in front of her with a piece of burnt toast and a coffee. They didn't have the anticipation and freshness of Mondays,when you woke up with the weekend still singing in your mind, and made resolutions to be more organised for the rest of the week, and looked fofrward to school so you could hear who wore what to Nick's party and the various assorted minutiae that coloured other people's lives. By Tuesday the weekend was well and truly down with - old news - and the next weekend felt a long way away.

But here we are all big fans of Tuesdays. Hooray for Tuesdays!

My favourite part about Tuedays? It's when Fred comes home, if she's on the bike she starts shouting halfway down the laneway 'Mama, we're ba-ack, Mama, we're ba-ack.' She runs in and kisses me, if she's tired she hugs too, collapsing into me. The first thing she always says is, 'Where's Una?' (this is what she always says to me if we talk on the phone when she's out too). Then she tells me about her day and I tell her about mine. It's great being three, having news of your own. She seems to have a lot of friends, but there is one special one - Mali. Mali is 4 and an all important half, she speaks German and has a sister called Lily. Fred loves her the best and Mali loves 'Freddie' (creche is the one place she is called Freddie, to distinguish her from a little boy, Frederick, who has the nickname Fred).

So it's almost 9am and I have a whole Tuesday stretching out in front of me. Time for coffee, and then to work.

One day when I'm bigger
Fred (who turned 3 in April) just saw the picture of Breathe in the corner of my blog and shouted 'There's your book mama!' Then she asked if she could read it when she's bigger. I've told her a few times that I write books but I was never really sure how much she got it. All the critics in the world and there's only two little girls I really want to impress. You know, like really. I just want them to think I'm cooool, like any good gen x-er mama.

Knitty McKnit Knit
Look what I made. Isn't she cute? I made the hat too.
xx

Reading and Writing
I am reading a fantasy manuscript at the moment and it's making me think about why Undine isn't fantasy. Magic is there, but the magic is more of a metaphor (a metaphor of becoming, on many levels, of transformation), whereas in true fantasy, magic is a scaffolding, both in terms of world-building and in holding the whole structure of the novel together - it's the glue that makes the fiction work. In fantasy the internal logic very much depends on the fantasy. Whereas in Undine, the internal logic almost resists the magic, the magic is a kind of absurdism, like in a dream where suddenly you're naked and you're carrying a fish, and it all just kind of makes sense. It brings these strange elements into Undine's life that she has to somehow incorporate into her real life - which of course is ultimately impossible, leading to her central dilemma - is she the magic or is she the girl - is she the dreamer or is she the dream? In the dream you just keep carrying that fish. Often you don't even wonder where the fish comes from. That's the way a dream works and in a way it's how magic works for Undine - Trout wants to know the wheres and the whys and the hows. But for Undine, the questions are different. The science of it doesn't interest her, it's more about the way it intersects with the girlness of her, she is curious about the girl inside the magic, even more than the magic inside the girl.
I used to say that Undine wasn't really fantasy, it's a magic book and it's true, it's not genre fantasy. But I don't have anything against fantasy and Justine Larbalestier once said in a talk we did together that all fiction is really fantasy and this is true too. All novels deals with their own self-contained worlds which though they may mimic the real world perfectly, they still have their own gravitational pull - in an Anne Tyler novel for example, the entire world may revolve around the experiences of one American family. Although the rest of the universe is implied, we see only a small part of it and it might seem that suddenly the six people who occupy the content of the novel are grotesquely huge while everyone else seems infintesmal in comparison.
Fantasy writers seem to garner a very loyal following who become deeply entrenched in the world the author has created - perhaps more so even that the authors themselves. I think it's fascinating that readers can become so absorbed in a world so alternate from their own. Are they looking for difference, or are they looking for sameness in difference, seeking to recognise themselves amidst dragons and warlocks and magical acts?
I'll write more about this later, my mate Kate Constable is a fantasy writer and we've been talking a bit lately about kids books and magic. There's a lot to say.

A little personal blog tour
So anyway, I am slowly reaching out into the world of blogs.
I started, as many do with  loobylu a fantastic Melbourne based craft-blogger who makes, amongst other things, really gorgeous soft toys.
I then ventured off from her site, finding an amazing array of other incredibly gifted souls. Somehow I wended my way here Wardrobe Refashion and since doing so have taken the pledge - I will buy no new manusfactured clothes for 4 months. This will be a piece of cake since I can't sew, can knit in a straight line (sometimes) and don't know how to cast off (so will knit forever) and have no 'stash' to speak of (this is a term pertaining to the many accumualted materials sewing and knitting types seem to store under their beds, not a drug euphemism, though I have none of that sort either, cos drugs are bad mmkay?). Anyway. I shall try it out.
Lastly I wandered into sarsaparilla which is a endlessly interesting australian based literary blog with all sorts of fabulous people.
And I've also been knitting. I am a busy mcbee.
Now the brave part - to press publish post and see if all my html links have worked...fingers crossed...

Oh So Quiet
It's quiet today. Fred is at creche. Martin is at "ooni". Una is asleep. The only sound is the tap tap tap of the keyboard like jazz (the bad kind) - I am a terrible typer (typist? Sounds too much like I know what I'm doing). Anyway, quiet day...perfect for writing? I suppose. But I am feeling reflective rather than writerly.
There goes my quiet. The baby's awake and a plane just landed on my roof. If I ignore both perhaps they will go away.
I wonder what Eglantine is doing today? I think she's a dizzy-whizzy girl. Fred has started spinning when she's angry. It seems a strange way to express herself, to communicate frustration but there you are. She turns in circles and stamps her feet.
Una says Mama. Not mamamamamum, not babbling. She looks me in the eye and says 'Mama'. It must be a survival instinct because the very first time it happened I decided we were definitely keeping her. And just think, one day she might become an angry spinner too. I love them both, the angrier Fred is the more I love her. Every night I want to slide into bed beside her, rub her back while she sleeps (but she would just push me out and say 'go go go'... She likes to listen to music in bed at night and the second the cd goes on we have to leave. 'Kiss!' she says. Then 'go go go!').
There you go. The baby sleeps again. The plane has passed by.
Can you believe it, Una is 8 months old and I am clucky again. There is a reason for this, I make these incredibly beautiful babies that grow up to be angry spinners (and if you are going to be angry then at least make it into a dance). Another baby...one day. One day.
This time the baby truly wakes. No more quiet.

Two more cakes (finally)
I have sorely neglected my duties here (though I think I've only told four people about the existence of my blog - anyone else who is reading this has either stumbled here by accident - you must look where you're going or you'll hurt yourself! - or has followed my sig link on the Thorn Tree, the place I go when I need to procrastinate the most). Still when a writer neglects other things you can be fairly sure there's some writing being done and I feel like I am over a bump in the Rise road, Undine 3 will live. It's taken some surprising turns for me, I am very interested in where my characters are going. Phoenix is remembering fire, Undine and Grunt have found each other again, Trout is attracting interest from a nice, relatively normal chick. Prospero is dying in two halves...in one world he has Undine, but does not know her. In the other world he is surrounded by people who care about him but he longs to see his daughter one last time.
I am also putting in an application to do a Masters at Melbourne Uni - though I have left it rather till the last minute unfortunately. Also put ina literary grant application.
Since I last blogged I went to Sydney for the presentation of the Kathleen Mitchell awards (congratulations to Marcus Zusak who won for his expansive novel The Book Thief, it is in my pile of books to read...I am looking forward to getting stuck into it.) Part of the presentation was a panel discussion about being a young writer in Australia - absurdly Marcus was the only one on the panel who actually IS a young writer in Australia. Alex Miller (he had his first book published at the age of 50), Fiona Inglis, an agent from Curtis Brown and Linda Funell, a publisher at HarperCollins Australia were the other three panellists. The discussion was fairly pedestrian unfortunately, centering around the faintly patronising assumption that most young writers are not actually very good - they don't read, nor proofread their own work, they aren't technically proficient. In my experience (not just as a writer but also as an editor and reader of unsolicited manuscripts) few people finish writing a novel if they don't read. Most writers do read, most writers are driven by their love of books and the written word. I'd say that writers who don't read are an exception rather than the norm. I was disappointed overall, I felt like all they were doing was perpetuating stereotypes and reaffirming the (actually quite wrong) notion that publishing is a closed shop.
In other news, we bought a sewing machine and I plan to make lovely little toys like loobylu and all the other amazing bloggers out there who make softies (look up softies and blog in google or softies on flickr and you'll find a whole incredible universe.) I have also FINALLY taught myself how to knit. Cast on and knit anyway, I am a casting on fool. Casting off is yet to be mastered.
Peace and love everyone (all 4 of you).

And if you've stumbled here by accident, stop and say hello!