I can see our restaurant from here
When CJ and I had been dating six months, we had outdone all our previous relationships by a lot, and we celebrated by going to the Telstra Tower revolving restaurant, Alto. It’s super expensive, but we really enjoyed it, and decided to go back someday, for some major occasion. “Like when I get published,” I said. “Or when we have a kid,” said CJ.
As you may have heard, we recently had a kid. We also recently had a three-year wedding anniversary. And I realised that, since Louisette is partly on formula, we could have her babysat for more than an hour at a time. And voila! We returned to the restaurant. We spent way too much money (sidebar: entry to the tower is $7.50, which must be paid in cash – so make sure you have enough change if you visit), and I had two cocktails (yep, that’s right – two). It was a perfect night.
One of the great things about the Alto restaurant is that, as you drive up the mountain you catch tantalising glimpses of the tower through the trees – and glimpses of the view below too.
In the restaurant, the view is constantly changing as the restaurant revolves, and it’s all beautiful. Canberra is a special city. Believe it or not, the restaurant is quite central (despite all the trees and water).
The food tends to appear as beautifully presented, rich, tiny servings. That’s my appletini on the right.
If you time it right (which we always do) you can also watch the sun set.
The drink on the left is a masquerade, which CJ drank (cream, butterscotch schnapps, and creme de cacao). On the right is mine, featuring Baileys and vanilla vodka.
MmmmmMMMMmmm.
(There are different schools of thought on breastfeeding and alcohol. The middle ground is, “Yeah, it’s okay to have a bit every so often – but try to drink just after a feed so it has time to get out of your system before you pass it on to the baby.”)
Good morning!
It’s my birthday today – traditionally a day when people of a certain age (my age, that is) wonder what they’re doing with their life. Having a new baby certainly answers that question. After eight months of being too sick to do anything but pass the time, it’s great to be so busy. (And yes, I had a birthday party too – featuring a whole lot of soft cheese and takeaway Indian food.) I still sometimes miss Louisette when she’s in another room. It helps that CJ usually takes her when she’s crying.
Pretty much everything a baby enjoys can become a bad habit. For example, babies naturally fall asleep after a feed (have some warm milk in the evening yourself and you’ll see the effect never really wears off). This is fine until the baby reaches a point where it’s impossible for them to fall asleep any other way. Actually that’s how they’re born – unable to fall asleep any other way. They don’t know how to fall asleep. Which is why most people who advise on this sort of thing say that a baby must have a feed – WAKE – sleep cycle (that lasts about three hours, and repeats over and over). So that’s what we’ve been working on the last few days. It generally goes a bit like this:
Feed: Louisette is woken for her three-hourly meal. After five minutes, she’s too sleepy to feed properly and has to be constantly woken up. (Feeding still hurts, by the way.)
Wake: I take a barely-conscious baby upstairs and sing and talk to her. She slowly wakes up, and for perhaps ten minutes gazes around her with interest. Then she gets sick of the world and cries for up to two hours. Sometimes she’s easy to console or entertain, and sometimes she’s not. I often sleep while CJ tends to her (it’s not particularly easy to sleep under those circumstances, but it’s smarter than not trying).
Sleep: Eventually she falls asleep, and the cycle begins again. She now has the bad habit of only falling asleep when someone is holding her – but at least that means both CJ and I (and babysitters) can put her to sleep. So, progress then.
She’s awake more now that she’s a little older, and having more breast milk than formula (she has about 150 Mls of formula per day, but at present I’m not able to reduce it any more because there clearly still isn’t enough breastmilk). Mercifully, the “wake” part of the routine isn’t necessary at night, so she can and does go straight to sleep after her night feeds. It’s also the time of day when the three-hourly feeds (that’s from the beginning of one feed to the beginning of the next – so usually there’s only a two-hour gap between feeds at best) stretch increasingly far. She regularly sleeps four hours in a stretch after midnight, and she’s twice slept for five hours all in one go (she’s too young to sleep any longer than that – if she didn’t wake up, I’d wake her anyway). So that’s good.
Today the three of us went and acquired passport photos – no mean feat for a three-week old (who must have her eyes open and mouth closed for the photo, and be looking at the camera! Plus no arms or legs in the photo, and no mum or dad holding her head in place). I managed to time it just right for that ten minutes of adorable alertness just after a feed and before the crying. Babies – especially babies who will be well-travelled before they’re half a year old – need a LOT of forms. Registration of the birth, medicare forms, tax forms, baby bonus form, passport, visa, etc.
Some of you may have heard of “Project 365” which just means “take a photo of yourself every day for one year”. I’m doing that for Louisette, and will be posting my favourites from the first month right here at this time next week (when Louisette will be exactly a month old). Some days are pretty average, and other days are brilliant – but you’ll see all that for yourself next week.
My new favourite bookshop
Many Canberrans were heartbroken this year when Borders closed. But late last year I entered the magical realm of the Beyond Q bookshop. CJ and I descended the stairs into a giant basement, greeted before we entered by some live jazz and the smell of coffee. There was a sign in the front entrance asking if anyone had seen the parrot that usually resides inside the shop.
Various antiques were scattered here and there among the shelves – rumour has it the shelves would stretch over a kilometre if placed end to end.
I was quite lost, and perfectly content. And then I found the young adult section and – oh, *swoon*. So many of my friends were there, waiting to be bought.
It was a good day.
Where is your favourite bookshop, and why do you love it so?
Letter to my 16-year old self
I recently read a book called “Dear Me” in which various personalities wrote a letter to their 16-year old self. Figured I may as well do the same. Here is the result.
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Dear Louise,
Let’s start with the good news: in the future, you are happily married. You also benefit a lot from your self-control regarding sex before marriage (the ‘stay as far away as possible’ theory is a good one – your husband is even more grateful than you are), as well as alcohol etc. On the other hand, you would be a more balanced person if you were a little less concerned about resisting peer pressure and a lot more concerned with enjoying life – and even fitting in with the crowd. Shave your legs; wear jeans; spend more time on your appearance; listen to secular music until you figure out what you like; show off your legs and waist (both are great, and the boys around you will not die of lust).
Most people are driven by pleasure. You are not. You are driven by meaning. Unfortunately, changing the world takes more than hard work – it takes a certain amount of luck as well, which you don’t have. Make pleasure a higher priority – whatever you enjoy, do more. Stop trying to protect your mum and sister, and protect or save everyone you meet. Make friends with people because they are interesting and mentally healthy and enjoyable company (even if they seem too good for you) not because they’re insecure or you think you can help them in some way.
You’re correct in your knowledge that writing will never make a career. But since it’s fun, keep doing it. Incidentally, it will save you a LOT of pain if you keep these two things in mind: for children and YA books, the protagonist is a few years older than the target age group, and they stay that way for the whole book (ie no epic YA, and no growing out of YA into an adult eg with marriage and babies – it’s just not relevent for a fifteen-year old reader). Children’s books are about 30,000 words (depending on the target audience, of course), and YA is usually 60,000 to 80,000 words. Don’t stray too far from that (a 50,000 word first draft works well for you).
Despite what church culture tells you, God is not your best friend or your boyfriend. He’s more like a boss – a truly excellent boss, who would literally die for you, but one who leaves you to bumble along and figure things out yourself to a surprising extent.
That being said, there are two things God said to you that you should have listened to more. First, you need to keep saying, “I MIGHT become a missionary to Indonesia” rather than, “I will become a missionary to Indonesia” (but you’re absolutely right about that six-month trip you take when you’re 18 – nothing else in life will ever be as hard, and the experience is well worth it). Second, you need to take advantage of your youth while you have it. Travel, spend money on stupid things, drink cocktails, and stay up all night. Learn to live in the present.
Speaking of church culture, you need to accept that people don’t take the Bible as literally as they think they do – and that’s a good thing. Ask yourself why everyone is so pleased with your parents’ marriage (when divorce and remarriage is so clearly and emphatically condemned by Jesus himself), but so angered by gay marriage (which gets a couple of passing mentions in Paul’s letters). God is love, and it actually is that simple. I know how much courage it takes to stand up, seemingly against the entire world, and say, “Homosexuality is wrong.” Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), that courage is based on ignorance of God’s kindness.
Being single gets easier, not harder, as you get older. Even when things get much worse (which they will, and I’m sorry), you will be happier the older you get.
From Louise (age 30)
PS Make sure you go to the Pirate Ball in September 2006, dressed as Jack Sparrow (you’ll know who that is at the time) with Chris Northey (ditto). It changes everything.
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Explanation of letter: To some extent, I felt I had to be careful not to give away too much (you’ve seen the time travel movies; you know why). Other than marriage and a gorgeous baby (each of which changes everything), I feel like my life is a pretty awful prospect for anyone to envision as their future, so it took a while for me to think of what to say.
Ultimately this letter aims to alleviate my own future/past pain – the guilt of giving up Indonesia and wondering if my life has any meaning (or if God is out to get me), the pain of mental illness (perhaps if I’d lived a more chilled out life I’d have turned out okay), and the lack of major novel publication – which would have happened years ago if I’d known then what I know now about basic YA dos and don’ts. But the pirate ball was where I met CJ, so THAT needs to still happen.
And here’s a pretty picture, just because:
Reunite with a food friend
PS: Oops, I posted tomorrow’s entry today. Welcome to the future.
Regular readers will know I’m a fan of home-made lemonade – and that I have a stolen mint plant. I wasn’t able to eat either during pregnancy, but I certainly can now! Plus it’s totally a serve of fruit. Hey, I don’t wanna get scurvy.
Coming next week: Awesomenesses that aren’t to do with food or baby!
Well, maybe. Tune in and find out.
Baby Talk
Wow, it’s been almost 48 hours since there’s been a fresh picture of Louisette. Better remedy that, stat!
Breastfeeding is continuing to improve, and I have the pulsating breasts to prove it (and now you know what having milk come in feels like). The midwife advised me to cut down on formula and “see what happens” (ie signs of hunger, signs of dehydration – that is, less wet nappies – and so on). Since her birth I’ve been keeping extremely careful records of when she feeds (and how long), all her nappies (and what. . . er, type of nappy), and when she’s particularly tired or genuinely awake (and if it’s grumpy or happy wakefulness). She has about seven feeds a day, and it used to be a breastfeed followed by a bottle. More and more of her feeds are breast only now (it is VERY clear when she is still hungry), and there is a clear pattern of one less bottle each day (smaller bottles, too). At this rate, she will be on breastmilk alone within three days! She was weighed on Monday and had gained 200 grams, which clearly indicated she is flourishing, not starving.
Eeeexcellent. . .
On the other hand, she had eleven feeds yesterday – so, not so good. Being used to a bottle, she often doesn’t have the concentration to do a full feed.
My note-taking has really come into its own over the past few days. I can actually see a fairly clear routine developing naturally among the 3/4-hourly feeds.
Louisette wakes up around 8 or 9 at night and is generally a bit grumpy for anywhere between half an hour and four hours (at which point I’m at my grumpiest, so I sleep while CJ looks after her – or if she’s asleep, we watch some TV). She has a couple of big feeds around midnight, then sleeps for a solid 4 or 5 hours (I base my life around those 4 or 5 hours, as you can imagine). She sleeps pretty well most of the morning (ditto, between feeds), then wakes up for a similar period of time in the afternoon, feeding three or four times in quick succession (I’m pretty awake and cheerful then, so I look after her a little). Then she sleeps deeply until about 6 or 7 (while I blog, shower, and maybe even run an errand – with or without her).
Ignoring the fact that she rarely opens her eyes, this routine roughly translates to a morning nap, an afternoon nap, and a single night-time feed. Of course it’s not as clear-cut as that description makes it sound.
She’s also developing her crying skills – the closest thing she currently has to a language. When she’s hungry, her cry is higher in pitch, like a squeak (accompanied by opening and closing her mouth like a fish, throwing her head from side to side, snorting, and kissing noises – it’s impossible to mistake her intentions). When she wants a nappy change, the rhythm of her cry is much quicker – four beats to a bar instead of two. Her bored/existentially depressed cry is the classic “Waagh! Waagh! Waagh!” that you expect from babies. And when she’s distressed it gets ragged.
She’s getting more facial expressions, and reacting in more complex ways to the world. She shows surprise, dislike, curiousity, and concern. I’m still very fond of her fart face and the oddly philosophical look she gets when trying to feed.
She is already able to turn on her side (by the power of sheer squirminess). At any moment the balance will tip and she’ll end up on her stomach, deeply startled.
One of the things I feel strongly about is that children – especially babies – shouldn’t be overstimulated. In babies it just frightens them. (I’m sure Louisette benefited from our careful rationing of visitors during the first two weeks.) I also think the most interesting thing in the world to a new baby (other than feeding time) is the faces of his/her parents. So when Louisette was awake, CJ and I spent plenty of time looking at her, and talking or singing. But yesterday I realised she was over us and needed more. So I grabbed “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” off our shelf and began to read. She LOVED it. I must have read it a dozen times. (And so it begins. . .)
I’m now able to drive quite comfortably, but it’s not wise for me to stand up for long, or walk very far, or exercise at all. It’s also not smart for me to lift anything heavier than Louisette – when I do, I feel muscles pulling ominously in my belly. But as long as I don’t do anythng stupid (like breastfeed eleven times in a day), I feel good.
Turkish Feast
Welcome back to your regular programming: Daily Awesomenesses on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I happen to have several saved up, but I’m sure Louisette will feature once or twice too (and of course she’ll be the focus on Wednesdays until she’s old enough to ask me to stop).
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Food is awesome.
Here is (from roughly left to right) Turkish bread, beetroot dip, hummus, sis kebab (lamb skewers), tavuk gogsu (char-grilled chicken breast), kabak mucver (zuccini puffs with yogurt and dill dip), tavuklu pide (pizza filled with chicken, parsley and cheese), salad, and baklava (filo pastry layered with walnuts, cashews, and syrup).
Nom nom.
Simplify your life
CJ and I live in a two-bedroom flat, and one of us who shall remain nameless (but isn’t me) has a little bit of. . . well, stuff. Uni textbooks and random paraphernalia and so on. We cunningly realised we’d need all the space we could get when we had a child, so when we bought a bed (wedding present) we took a ruler to the furniture shops to measure the clearance underneath. That way we could make sure we could fill the entire space underneath with plastic storage boxes. Cleaning out CJ’s study for Louisette was a moderately epic process last year, and that space under the bed was brilliant.
In general we have a very simple lifestyle designed fundamentally to avoid housework or any unneccesary exertion (for example, we don’t own an iron – CJ’s shirts drip dry on the line, and I avoid buying clothes that wrinkle). Almost the only additional thing I could do pre-baby was to grow out my fringe, thus avoiding the need to use a hair straightener each day. It’s a good thing too, because even brushing my hair was sometimes beyond me while I was pregnant.
And, we bought a dryer. So, so useful on sick or rainy days.
I stocked up before and during pregnancy on frozen meals, and on pretty much any food or household item that doesn’t go off in a hurry – soap, toothpaste, tinned tuna, frozen meat, and so on. Again, very handy.
In January last year I went crazy with my writing and by the time I fell pregnant I was several weeks ahead on the twenty-hour weekly writing quota I’ve stuck to since the beginning of 2006. Those extra hours were meant to cover the early days of motherhood, but instead I used them up during pregnancy. I did finish last year’s quota, however, and decided it was time to finally give up my precious twenty hours a week. Which is not to say I’ll stop writing (hah!) – I’ll just write when I feel like it, and not worry about the amount of time I spend doing it. (Some people would stop writing under these conditions. As this blog shows, I am not one of them.) That takes the pressure off.
I also gave Gimli and the smaller of our two fish tanks to a friend. She enjoys having fish, and I have slightly less pet maintenance to do.
I should probably mention that Gimli is a fish. . .
My friend bought him a harem of female guppies to keep him happy, which they most certainly did.
The moral of this entry is that simplifying one’s life is indeed awesome, particularly when preparing to have a baby.
In utterly unrelated news, I’ve lost another four kilos in the last week as my body says goodbye to all the excess fluid of pregnancy. That makes me feel pretty good. I can wear my shoes (with considerable difficulty) and yesterday I managed to jam my wedding ring back on my finger.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t the greatest plan. I removed the ring immediately after taking this photo (soap and cold water was involved). Presumably this means I’ll continue to lose weight rapidly for a bit longer. I’m certainly not complaining.
And now for your cuteness quota of the day. I like to call this photo “Ninja Baby” and presume that if an enemy approaches her in this position she will punch out their lights before she opens her eyes.
It’s a skill for life.
Observant readers will notice that this entry has appeared only a few hours after last entry. Yesterday I ran late; today I’m running early (like, “midnight plus thirty seconds” early). Tomorrow (Friday) there’ll be another book review, since I THINK I’m now finally finished all my pregnancy/early baby days entries. Or at least I’m up to today.
For now.
Milk and Mental illness: ten days as a mum
I am very, very good at being rational. The odd thing is that it’s a skill I’ve learned because of mental illness. I always work hard to sort my feelings into rational and irrational. For example, I felt afraid I’d never give birth and would be pregnant forever – which honestly had me on the edge of a panic attack at times. But I could tell it was irrational, and that kept it under control. (Usually, rationality isn’t as black and white as that.) I habitually sort my positive feelings into rational and irrational too – for example, I feel that Louisette is the best and prettiest and most charming baby I’ve ever seen and I’m bewildered that anyone could be in the room with her and not spend all that time watching her face. But I can tell rationally that, like all newborns, she looks mostly like a potato – and that the person she most resembles is E.T. I can also rationally say that she is way above average attractiveness for her age. The fact that I know I’m right makes that last statement all the sweeter.
Observe, and judge for yourselves:
I mentioned in that epic labour entry last Wednesday that giving birth wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The real hardest thing I’ve ever done is to endure seven years of mental illness (which, may I say, I’ve done spectacularly well, keeping almost all of my friends and never causing harm to myself or others – plus I somehow managed to snare CJ in there, which is definitely my most impressive life achievement thus far). My anxiety disorder has made me unable to support myself financially (which unfortunately has always been my concept of adulthood, and far less than I planned to do with my life – I was going to devote myself to the poor in Indonesia, and had consciously prepared and trained to do so for twelve years). But I was right: it gave me certain skills.
All of which is to explain the full context (ie my mind and body) of the following journey:
From late Tuesday (day two) breastfeeding was very painful, and something I dreaded. With each suck I felt unpleasant faintness in my whole body, as if someone was hitting my funny bone over and over. By Wednesday it made me feel like I was about to faint and made my whole body shake – an echo of the way it shook with the pain of childbirth.
When the midwife visited on Wednesday (day 3), we discovered that Louisette was dehydrated due to my lack of milk. Apparently it’s extremely rare for a woman to produce so little milk that her newborn is in danger. Not only did this mean we had to give her formula (which I was well aware would make the problem worse), but it felt awful. One of my peculiar foibles is that I tend to think in symbols and archetypes – so much so that I’m unable to give blood, because blood is too powerful as a literary symbol of life itself (ZOMG, the vampires are TAKING MY BLOOD!) So finding out MY BOOBS DON’T WORK AND MY BABY WILL DIE WITHOUT MEDICAL INTERVENTION was devastating. So the faintworthy pain of breastfeeding was accompanied by devastating depression.
I’d heard a great deal about the hormone crash and painful arrival of milk on day 3/4 after birth, and had carefully and repeatedly announced that I’d see absolutely no-one on those days. Thank goodness for that.
I’d been feeding Louisette on demand, and on the midwife’s advice immediately switched to feeding her (or at least trying – she is one extremely sleepy baby) every three hours – twenty minutes of breastfeeding (so my breasts were still getting the signal to produce milk, and would hopefully tune in at some point) followed by a bottle. From that instant, Louisette’s health improved – and I began to live in three-hourly bursts. I’d slept fairly well (between feeds and crying) on the first night, but had been so excited and happy since then that even when I lay down to sleep I tended to have trouble dropping off. I was vaguely aware that this was a bad thing.
On Thursday we went in to hospital for a variety of health checks. I was perfectly upbeat in the morning (still so excited between bouts of sobbing that I couldn’t get myself to sleep properly when I had the chance), and took the trouble to dress Louisette in an especially gorgeous manner (the red dress and booties). The midwives in the birthing centre nearly came to blows over who could claim her as “their” baby.
I saw a lactation consultant who said various useful-type things. Towards the end, I mentioned I’d been trying to stimulate more milk production with a breast pump and with my hand, and neither had produced a drop. I showed her the pump, and she explained it was the wrong type for early breastfeeding. When I showed her my clumsy attempt at hand expressing, I saw a look of, “Oh, how VERY stupid” flash across her face before she caught it – and explained how to do it properly. (The birthing class demo – with an attractively knitted prop breast – apparently didn’t work for me at all.) Within moments, I saw a couple of drops of milk – my milk, real milk – for the first time. This was enormously encouraging, and I went home delighted.
My midwife is aware of how much my bad pregnancy has cost in financial terms, and whenever there is something we need she does her best to get us a free one. She gave us nipple shields to reduce the pain of breastfeeding, and lent us the hospital’s clanky but effective double electric breast pump (double = takes half the time, and electric means it will help stimulate more milk production rather than simply taking what’s already there).
Artist’s impression of the breast pump:
It was a very long hospital visit because there were a variety of people we needed to see. The lactation consultant had told me to use the pump for 10-20 minutes each hour in addition to everything else. She’d emphasised it was vital for me to think loving baby thoughts when I used it, or my milk wouldn’t flow.
As soon as I’d attempted to feed Louisette I attempted the pump for the first time. It was very awkward to hold it in place and all I got for my twenty minutes’ of muscle pain (muscles still aching from giving birth) was a couple of drops of milk. Cue more desperate, helpless crying. So much for loving baby thoughts. The long hospital visit had brought back my labour-exhaustion shakiness, even when I lay down in bed to sleep. Louisette had also suddenly developed a very gross eye infection – yuck.
Thursday was similar. Plenty of sobbing and almost no sleep. Finally around midnight, after another pathetic feed (as Louisette grew noticeably less interested in my breasts – a very bad sign for the future) I lay down to sleep. Addled by sleeplessness, hormones, and depression, I had an episode that reminded me strongly of a schizophrenic woman’s description of a psychotic attack (in an Andrew Denton doco). I fell into a kind of dream of mother and baby, but I wasn’t asleep. In my dreams I’m often a different person (every so often I’m Buffy, for example – or a man) but I always have a sense of self.
I had no idea who I was. I was fairly sure I was a one-week old baby, helpless and confused by the world. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know where or who I was. All I knew was that something was wrong and I couldn’t fix it myself. Rather intelligently, I said, “Help, help” until CJ woke up. Even more intelligently, I explained what had happened as well as I could (and later reported it faithfully to the midwife, despite how stupid it all sounded in daylight). Even more more intelligently, I decided to skip the 4am feed and let CJ just give Louisette a bottle.
That night, my body remembered how to sleep again. I was still very depressed the next day, but the worst was over. I’ve had a couple of times when I woke up and didn’t know where I was for just a second (as if I was on holiday), but I’ve been more careful about my sleep (within the realm of the possible – last night I had four hours in a row, which is very rare; a mix of luck and planning) and all the depression is gone.
From Saturday, I began to see genuine improvement in my milk flow, thanks to that breast pump (it’s nice to have measurable progress, and we’re getting along fine now). Since then, Louisette has been taking a little less of the formula. This means she’s getting more milk.
She also has a blister on her lip from her inability to attach properly, but that should go away soon (her eye infection is long gone). Yesterday she had her tongue tie cut (an operation about as complex as cutting one’s fingernails), and she seems to be much more patient with my breasts (now she’s getting a better flow), although the different shape of her mouth is confusing her a little.
Things are good mentally. I believe I’m being rational when I say that the last week – including labour, and including the lack of sleep and my first ever true break with reality – has singlehandedly made up for the last seven years of seemingly meaningless pain. I also think it’ll help me feel better about my novel writing attempts (there’s an epic tale there, but it’s long, boring, and depressing) for at least the next two years (by which time hopefully I’ll have a major publisher signed for at least one of my books).
I’m also cautiously hopeful about how my mental illness will react to my being a mum. It was noticeably dampened during pregnancy (weird but true: I was less anxious while pregnant than I am usually), and I began to wonder how nine months of intense chemical goings-on would affect what is, after all, a chemical imbalance in my brain. Perhaps pregnancy would hit a kind of “reset” code. Many women become mentally ill because of chemical goings-on and major lifestyle change. I may just head in the opposite direction.
Maybe. We’ll see. Either way, I have plenty of rational reasons to be happy. I have a beautiful, extremely pleasant little girl, and my life has a sense of purpose I lost seven years ago, and have badly missed ever since.
Fridge Day
In the days before CJ and I married, I lived in what we still call “the fungus house”. It came with a broken washing machine, broken oven, and without drinkable water. I supplied my own fridge – a bar fridge I’d bought off a student bulletin board for $50 – that didn’t quite freeze meat all the way through.
CJ and I acquired a new fridge for free when someone in our church community moved interstate. The seal was encrusted with something unidentifiable and black, and the glue holding the seal to the door had failed around the bottom, making it drag on the floor. It was dirty inside and out – so much so that it took me a long time to dare to clean it, and I only tried it once. Some things should not be looked at directly. But it DID safely freeze meat, so that was nice.
We discovered early on that milk stored in the door – or indeed anywhere near the front of the fridge – would go off. I also noticed that cheese stored near the back would go oddly soft. One day, in a fit of annoyance, I cut off the lower segment of the door seal and threw it away. That probably didn’t help.
I had my father-in-law look at the fridge, but it was beyond even his skill to heal.
But it didn’t end there. My parents-in-law had been planning to buy a new fridge for the kitchen renovations they’d done. Images of our dodgy fridge preyed on my OH&S-oriented father-in-law and their fridge-buying schedule suddenly sped up. . . leaving their old fridge free for the taking.
And we took it. Oh yes, my precious. We took their enormous side-by-side father-in-law-modified Westinghouse beauty, and we made it our own.
Last Saturday, as the midwife and Louisette and I discussed breastfeeding in Louisette’s room, various menfolk disposed of our old fridge and brought in THIS:
My mother-in-law even cleaned it for us. After three years of glorious marriage and hideous fridge, it’s enough to make one misty-eyed. I may have hugged the fridge once or twice, and I can’t help saying an affectionate hello every time I open the door.
Look inside! Look at the space! Look at the shiny whiteness of it all! Look at the milk sitting so prettily in the door! Look at the way all the most useful stuff is at the most useful possible height, so I don’t have to kneel and dig around to find it! We’ve set aside the top shelf just for things that I need to remember to eat, or that I plan to use for dinner that night.
And the freezer. . . oh the freezer! There’s so MUCH of it. I can CATEGORISE to my OCD heart’s content! Oh, *swoon*!
Look! We’re at the end of the entry and I didn’t mention Louisette even once!
Oh.
Felicity Banks 