Merry Christmas Moving

 For Christmas this year, we got a new apartment. Here on Christmas morning, we have moved about 90% of the things we really need, and we are probably only about 40% finished with moving. 

The new place looks really really great. 

Kitchen:

Living room

Entryway

Dining room

Assorted bedrooms and bathrooms

There is still a lot to do and to decorate, but it is so nice being in our own place for Christmas this year. 

Note: The tree is still assembled in the other apartment. We asked Jonathan if he would disassemble it and reassemble it here, and he said no. So we'll go over there later for Christmas tree photos.

Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building

On the 23 of December, the family and I went to get booster vaccinations. Tim and I were eligible for our third dose. And the state was running a walk-in vaccination clinic at Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building, a gorgeous 19th century building built to host fairs and exhibitions. While the building's website says you can book a tour daily, I had never been inside. I had never managed to be around when the tours were running. It always seemed to be closed due to ... something. 

The state would be running the vaccination clinic there right up until close of business the day before Christmas Eve. So I embraced the option to finally see the inside of this beautiful building. Oh. And get another vaccine with the massive surge in covid-19 cases. I convinced the family to come along.

The building did not disappoint. 

I was the crazy lady taking all the photos in the line.

Jonathan, though not eligible for his third shot, came as my support person. So he could see the building too.

It was well worth the migraine and vomiting the following morning for the chance to both (1) see the Royal Exhibition Building, and (2) prepare myself from the incoming apocalypse that is omicron.

Bittersweet endings

Jonathan graduated from high school. Because of Covid, density rules or something, they rented out a movie theatre for the ceremony. But the only theatre available was in a city south of Melbourne, about a 45 minute drive away with no traffic.

We took the train and a bus, and it took us 90 minutes to get there.

I admit it was nice to go. Jonathan earned a special award for extracurricular activities: School council, Earth Science Olympiad, even co-founder of the gardening club way back before the pandemic hit, before the school garden space was taken away. 

Tim and I were sitting at the back of the huge theatre, so of course our pictures pretty much involve tiny specs on the huge stage. But here they are anyway for posterity. 

Principal's introduction. 

 

Jonathan.  

The graduating students in Doherty house, including Jonathan, named after the Australian immunologist. 

All the graduates.

All the graduates singing the school song at the end.

Jonathan and friend M after the ceremony.

We took a taxi home. 45 minutes.

A week later, exam results were released for the entire state. Jonathan's overall mark qualified him for another nice award. He and Tim went up to the University of Melbourne to celebrate.

Last year, Jonathan's individual exam scores were the best he could have hoped for. This year, they were lower than he had expected, in all three classes. He still did really well, and he knows he did really well, and when people ask him, he smiles and says he is very happy with his results. And he is. 

But why did they take extra marks off in English? Weren't his essays just as strong as his practice essays? Did his conscious choice not to write with as many five-syllable words as possible (word vomit, it is called) hurt him in the end, even though he knew it was better writing? And if only he had worked faster through the mathematics exam! 

I hate getting back exam results. I hated it for me, and now I get to hate it all over for Jonathan, as I feel like I experience all the pain all over again (probably worse than he does), and there is even less that I can do about it this time through, because it is not my exam! It is his!

So there is a bit of the bitterness, and it's all coming from me. He's happy, and over it already. And life is good. 

What about next year? High school is over. Summer is upon us. 

It looks like the boy will choose to live with us for now, and attend the University of Melbourne. 

In the past, he was considering moving out and attending Australian National University in Canberra, living in the dorms. But it has been a brutal couple of years for students living in dorms. He has decided to weather out what still seems to be an uncertain pandemic future with his family. Again part of me is sad that he won't have that dorm experience (yet). Still, I cannot deny that it will be nice to have him at home.

Me, I chose to live at home in my university days, and I regretted it. There were too many people at home, who didn't understand university schedules, university studying, university social needs. But there aren't all those extra children in Jonathan's home. His mom is not my mom: the elementary school PTA president who completely freaked out when I finally started dating in college and staying out late, and for the first time in my life, age 20, decided I'd better have a curfew. Good times. 

I hope I will not be that mom.

And here we are, at the end of a post that is purported to be all about Jonathan, when in fact again it is really all about me. 

 

Maybe moving soon. Maybe.

When we began this blog, way back in the dark ages, we were renovating a house as we moved from one continent to another with a small child. We're moving again. This time from one apartment to another in the same building, and with a very tall young adult. Pretty much the opposite in all respects of that first move. Except we are renovating again. 

We bought the apartment two years ago, rented it back to the couple who owned it while they took a short time to finish renovating the apartment they were moving into. Then there were delays, lockdowns, covid, and delays. And we are finally renovating our apartment with the hope of moving there by Christmas. 

The last time we redid a home, we stripped out a dark kitchen and replaced it with light wood and white countertops. This time, we stripped out a dark kitchen and replaced it with white. So far just white. There will be black accents, because we are modern. (?) And the black looked good.

But today, we just have kitchen cabinets:

The countertop will be black engineered stone, to match the black double oven. 

We are still choosing tile, but it is looking like a matte white subway tile. For a very bright white kitchen. With modern black accents. 

There have been other choices. Ceiling fans. Carpet (gray). A mantle for the fireplace (black stone).

We also chose a light for the entry way. The entry was designed in the 1930s for a 1930s light.

We went out and found a 1930s glass light to hang there. 

Still coming: Paint, carpet. Finished flooring.

It looks really good, and we are excited to maybe be moving soon.

 Maybe.

Endings

When given the opportunity to take on a new, challenging task, you stare deep into the future and imagine how it will change your life while it is going. There will be times when you don't know enough. How will you learn? There will be times when you aren't strong enough. How will you grow? You cannot guess at all the challenges, but you can envision the struggle, and you can decide whether the struggle is worth it. 

And if the struggle is worth it, you step in, and you wade through, and you lose face when you are stupid, and you lose sleep when you are worried, and you grow in ways you did not imagine, for years and years....

And then the task ends. 

The end. 

Walk away. We're finished here. 

What? Just like that? 

But what about all those years!?

In 2016, newly arrived in Australia, a supervisor suggested I apply for a research fellowship. I thought it was a stretch, but I took it on. And won it! Starting in mid-2017, I received four years of funding and opportunities to grow my research in ways it had not grown before. I worked hard for four years, learned a lot, took on students and postdocs and really became more of a research leader. 

And quietly in July, the fellowship ended. The end! Walk away. 

What? But what about all the lingering ideas?

In 2017, I was asked to step in as Chair of the national Women in Mathematics group in Australia. What, me? Surely I don't know enough about advocacy, media engagement, leadership, for that? But I was assured that I knew enough, and someone was needed, and I would be enough, and pretty please? So I stepped in. I had to learn. I became a face for equity. I did what I could to help, through unexpected crises. I learned to do fancy management buzzwords, like "pivot" in a pandemic. I survived.

And then, quietly, the position ends. All that fear, all that work, and I'll step down in January. The end. Walk away. Someone else can lose sleep over it now. 

What? Just like that?

Here's a really big one. In 2003, I chose to get pregnant. There was no way to see the monumental shifts this would create in life. The sleepless nights. The worries over childcare. Tears over scraped knees, fights with friends, the elation at the child's successes! The devastation at the failures. Carving out spaces for another new human over three different continents. 

And quietly, Tuesday is his last day of high school. 

 Just like that!

All grown up, and a more brilliant human than I ever could have imagined, and ever could have foreseen. 

Somehow, the endings are not as evident from the beginnings as I suppose they should be. When facing the huge task, it never really seemed we would every get here, to the end. And yet here we are.

What?

Survival! How we lived through Melbourne's largest earthquake

Yesterday, Wednesday 22 September 2021. 9:15am. 

I had just finished an online meeting with New Jersey and was composing an email in my bedroom/office. 

Jonathan was online down the hall in the living room with a friend: they were about to work through an old English test in preparation for their upcoming Victorian examinations. 

Tim, through the wall in his office, was in a meeting with China. 

When the walls began to rumble, I thought it was a large truck parked outside the balcony.

There is a garden outside the balcony, no place for a large truck. I stood up. 

The balcony doors were shaking hard. Definitely no truck. 

Meanwhile, Jonathan back in the living room heard the window behind him start to rattle. 

Helicopter, he thought. 

Tim, through the wall in the office, thought the neighbor's washing machine must be going into overdrive. 

Back in the bedroom/office, I crossed to the window and looked out, feeling everything shake. 

Earthquake?

Surely not an earthquake in Australia.

...

Earthquake!

I opened the door to the hallway and called down to the others.

"What's happening? Earthquake?!"

Jonathan's friend felt it. He left the call. Jonathan came running out of the living room. 

Tim felt it. He paused the call. 

Earthquake!

My computer monitor, on its monitor arm, was bouncing up and down. The doors were rattling hard. And now Jonathan and I were jumping up and down. 

Earthquake!

The shaking stopped.

We burst into Tim's office.

Surely that was an earthquake. He opened a geological website. No earthquake reported.

Jonathan and I went down the hall to my office and opened the local news site. No earthquake reported. 

We checked the local geological website. No earthquake reported. 

We checked Twitter.

"Earthquake!" from Melbourne.

"Earthquake!" from Melbourne.

"Earthquake?" from Sydney! Sydney felt it? Woah!

If they felt it all the way to Sydney, an eight hour drive away, it must have been HUGE!

Tim ended his meeting and came to join us bouncing up and down in my office in excitement. 

That was an earthquake!

Jonathan showed us a picture on his feed of a building nearby that had some bricks knocked off of it. Woah! Bricks knocked down! Like a serious earthquake!

Someone else posted a picture of a knocked-over lawn chair. "We will recover!"

Within a half hour, the geological sites had confirmed an earthquake, magnitude somewhere between 5.8 and 6.0 (they eventually settled on 5.9). In our excitement, we missed the two most notable aftershocks: 4.0 at 9:30am, and 3.0 at 9:55. 

Around 9:50, after 45 minutes of bouncing up and down, I sighed and said I'd better get ready for my next meeting. 

Jonathan sighed and said he'd better go try that practice exam. 

Tim sighed and said he'd better get back to work.

And that was THE END.

Melbourne, a couple of hours after the earthquake. I don't see any damage. Do you?

 

Coworker

I've been working from home a lot. 

When I work from home, every hour or so I stand up and walk over to the window to rest my eyes, watch the view, see what is happening. 

I discovered that I was not the only one watching the window regularly. Frequently, I found someone else at the window: 

 ... a medium sized spider hanging on its web.

I am not a big fan of spiders. Still, this one didn't move much. It became nice to say hello on a regular basis. She and I seemed to have an understanding. She would watch me, I would watch her. And she would not move much. And so the workday passed. I introduced her to my instagram followers as my coworker.

Fast forward to Sunday morning. Lazy day in bed. 9am, poking my phone.

Suddenly a huge black spider crawled over my shoulder and down my chest. 

There was much screaming and flailing about.

And more screaming and more flailing.

And I flung the phone and jumped off the bed and dusted myself over and over.

Tim found an upside-down medium-sized spider under the window and squished it. 

Jonathan was awake. 

"Who was murdered?" he asked when I walked down the hall soon after. (I was up -- might as well get breakfast!)

My coworker.

A few days ago, I cleaned out the remnants of the web on the window. 

Now I watch the view from the window alone.

New step counter

My cheap little step counter died a long time ago. I had been carrying around my heavy phone when going on walks or runs, and thinking I needed something better. Because I've been counting steps for years, I could probably justify spending some money for a fancy fitness tracking watch. And then after a few weeks of eyeballing fancy fitness trackers, there was a weekend half price sale, and I bought one!

Finally. A device meant to watch my fitness for me. It would be so much better and more accurate than my phone or cheap step counter. I immediately took it out into the park to go race walking. In the past, I found that my cheapo step counter, and my phone, were terrible at tracking steps while race walking. Finally with an expensive device I could figure out how far I really went, how many steps I really took. 

But after a long zig-zaggy walk through the park, it only gave me 3000 steps. My phone in my pocket gave me 6000 steps for the same walk. To add to the insult, I came home and it told me it had auto-detected a workout! Good job spending 30 minutes on that elliptical trainer!

So ok. It didn't seem to count steps any better. In fact, it was significantly worse. But no worries -- the fancy fitness tracker came with a built in GPS! I would take it race walking again, but I would turn on the GPS and let it track me all over the park and it would see how fast I was walking and call it a speed walk, not an elliptical trainer.

This time I left the phone home, and just went on the long walk -- me and the tracker. A few minutes in, it buzzed me and let me know it couldn't find a GPS signal, and was turning off. Argh! 

I looked it up, and people online also complained about the poor GPS signal. To really track your workout, you needed to bring along the phone GPS as backup. 

So I did that. I did that too. It mapped out my whole route!

But it still only gave me 2840 steps. 

My phone gave me 4308 steps.

The fitness tracker? You can see that it thinks I went 2.42km. But then I tracked a slow walk later that day:

And it gave me 2.64km for what is clearly a much shorter distance. (It also says I went walking straight through the soccer club buildings and then across the muddy field, so also not so accurate.)

I sat down at the computer, and mapped out the zig zaggy walk carefully. It said the whole walk was 3.2km. From there I could figure out my speed: about 6.4km/hr, or 15 minutes per mile. Long way to go before I reach Olympic race walking levels, but definitely faster than my usual walking speed. Still no idea how many steps, but probably at least as many as the phone gave me.

You would think that the fancy expensive new device could figure that out for me. 

I did a search, and the online race walking community is also disappointed. Faster people than me have had their workout auto-detected as elliptical or even a bike ride. And poor step counting.

Disappointing. But oh well. Maybe I'll just take up a new sport. Like elliptical training.

Watching the Olympic opening ceremonies a year late

We are only two hours ahead of Tokyo, so a pretty reasonable timezone for viewing the 2020 Olympics here in July 2021. I turned on the TV and there was dancing in Tokyo. I left it on while I poked my phone on the couch. The dancing and lights show was kind of interesting. But it didn't completely grab my attention until the teams started walking in. 

In the background, they were playing Final Fantasy IV battle victory music. From the 1990s. From my teenage Final Fantasy video game playing years. I called Tim -- "They're walking out to video game music!" He came in just to see, and then couldn't leave. It was the costumes. The costumes from all the different countries. And trying to remember where a particular country was located. 

There were a lot of countries whose costumes were not embarrassing. Australia, for example, was fine. Not embarrassing. Probably comfortable. Described by one news site as "Girl scout chic." 

Not Italy. Italy's costume was bad. Pizza bellies. Very embarrassing. I feel sorry for all their athletes. 

 

Latvia also got to wear plastic bags over tin foil. Not really a great look.

 

To my surprise, I kind of loved the burnt orange jumpsuits of the Netherlands. I would probably wear that.

After Tim and I had been sitting there for about half an hour fascinated by countries and costumes and video game background music, Jonathan walked in and said he was going to bed. And paused. And then within the next half hour, he was sitting on the couch with us and wondering out loud if he should go get the globe out of his bedroom to try to identify all the smaller countries.

We forced ourselves to turn it off after Japan entered the stadium last. The ceremony continued, but it was 11.30pm, and we just didn't have the stamina. 

But now, twelve hours later, I still want to get myself one of those red and white robes worn by the women from Palestine. 

Another stay-cation

 I was going to be working in Sydney this week. But Sydney had a bit of outbreak of covid-19, so I took a vacation instead. Jonathan is on school holidays, but Tim is working. So with a last minute change of travel plans during a busy time of year -- we're doing another stay-cation, Jonathan and I. For Jonathan, that seems to look like lots of homework. For me, it looks like puzzles.

And long walks and TV shows and movies. 

Today marks the half-way point in the week. I will probably take some of next week off, too. I was meant to be in Sydney for three weeks. Now zero weeks. Oh well. More puzzles for me.

Human flourishing

 Sydney is in lockdown again. Australia as a country had gone months with no community spread of covid-19. We were living pre-pandemic lives, albeit with no international travel, and no international visitors. Locked away from the rest of the world, we were fine. We were fine.

At the beginning of June, a returned traveler contracted the virus on his way out of hotel quarantine in Adelaide, and brought a highly infectious strain to Melbourne. Those infected took public transit, went out dancing, attended football matches in a 75% capacity stadium. Melbourne had to lock down again for two weeks, but they have managed to bring transmission back under control, and I am free to go back to work again next week.

I've been planning a trip to Sydney for months. It was postponed, and then postponed again, but this time everything was scheduled. Registrations were open for my public lecture, to be held in a lecture theatre in Sydney in mid-July. 

But a couple of weeks ago, a driver shuttling international passengers tested positive. His contacts tested positive and their contacts tested positive, and the disease had been spreading exponentially before caught, in a country with less than 5% of the population fully vaccinated. So now Sydney is in lockdown. It looks like I won't be going. No public lecture. 

****

Australia has been handling this virus completely differently to the Americans. To Americans, lockdown meant trying not to get too close to your out-of-state visitors while you laughed together in the backyard and shuttled in and out of the kitchen and common bathrooms. To us, no visitors. No interstate travel. No travel beyond a 5km radius. 

But today, nearly 50% of Americans have been fully vaccinated. All my siblings and teenage nieces and nephews are vaccinated, giving them some protection from this disease. Pandemic fatigue means they're traveling again. Holding classes in person again. Back off on their international adventures.

****

My mother forwarded a message from my dear aunt and uncle. They had been called on a humanitarian mission before the pandemic hit. Their travels were delayed by a year. But now they are finally off -- to Africa! They've been flying from country to country to country, along with a legal team to try to help them advocate for human rights.

It's noble. They've felt the hand of God in their lives pushing them towards this service. 

But my mother's letter indicates that a man from the American legal team tested positive for covid-19 upon arrival in Ghana. 

The population of Ghana has even less vaccination than Australia: a quick internet search says just 1.3% of the population is fully vaccinated. Ghana has less health infrastructure than the Western nations the missionaries come from. The Western nations, for economic reasons, are actively blocking countries like Ghana from producing their own vaccines. 

And then they ship Western missionaries into the country to test positive to covid-19. To isolate in the American sense of isolate. It is rage inducing.

****

In the news in Canada, at the sites of former "Indian" schools, authorities have uncovered mass graves of children. These native children were forcibly taken from their families, and put into conditions of starvation, disease, neglect. For their own good, said the Church. When the children died, they were buried silently in mass graves, untouched until their very recent discovery. This situation is beyond horrifying. In Australia, they forcibly removed children as well. The Stolen Generation, those children are called. The colonists had already taken lands and livelihoods. And so they took the children. The language. The culture. The love. There is nothing more completely horrifying than the thought of stealing children. 

There was an Indian School in Brigham City. We used to drive past it on our way to visit my dear aunt and uncle, the humanitarians. I remember asking what the buildings were for, and being told about my church's noble actions to educate the savages. I remember asking if the children were still there? No. The school had been abandoned. If it had been so noble, why was it abandoned, I wondered as a child. 

****

There was an article in the newspaper here recently about another pandemic, one likely seeded on purpose. In the 1700s, the British colonists didn't find a land empty and ripe for their harvest. They found people living here, towns, crops, life, and a civilisation that stretched back 50,000 years. And so they brought in smallpox. 

The outbreak started near Sydney. Natives knew how to treat other diseases, but not this one. They quarantined the sick in caves, but it was not enough. As death took their families, some fled inland and spread the disease with them. By the time the colonists, evil incarnate, were ready to move, it was easy to execute the remaining survivors in mass shootings, and take what they wanted. 

This is the story of human flourishing. 

****

Sydney is in lockdown. 

There are 82 active cases of covid-19 in the entire state of New South Wales, where Sydney is located. There are nearly 8.2 million people living in the state. But we have watched the world struggle under the weight of this pandemic. We have watched people die. Economies fail. Continents struggle under the weight of extended spread of disease. We have learned that early eradication is the best strategy. Quick, thorough, effective lockdown, and then open back up to life again. 

And honestly, it's all we have in our arsenal. The vaccine rollout hasn't gone well. We are still lacking in supply. Those under 40 years old are still ineligible for vaccination. Only 5% of our population is fully vaccinated.

It grows heavy.

Misc

As of Thursday morning, I am now eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Tim and I have been calling the phone line to try to set up an appointment repeatedly since then. Most of the time we get a message that says due to large call volume, your call will not be taken. Once I got put on hold, but after 15 minutes, and reading online that I might be on hold for hours, I hung up: I didn't have that many minutes on my phone. We will keep trying. Put more minutes on my phone. Or call from work where calls aren't charged minute by minute -- when I can get back to work. 

The reason we are now eligible is that we've had another outbreak of community virus transmission. Before they identified the fact that less that a dozen people were infected, those people went to AFL matches at both of the major stadiums in Melbourne, went bar hopping, called people into work meetings at grocery stores all over the city -- there are tens of thousands of immediate first contacts to trace down. We're back to online work, online school for a week while contact tracers try to get a handle on things. And they've opened up vaccines to younger aged people to try to increase vaccination rates. 

The rates have increased.

I do feel like we are in a rush. This virus is still killing many people like us around the world. I want to be vaccinated and I want my whole family to be vaccinated, including my son who is still not eligible. But now I must be patient, I guess.

***

The other big thing that happened Thursday is that we took the keys to our new (to us) apartment. 

Now that it's ours, there are a few things we need to do to get it ready for us. But it is exciting to be able to measure things and make plans. 

Circling the soccer field during a lunar eclipse

 We come out after dinner, to the dark and cool of late autumn. Out for Air, and Steps, after a long day of screens. 

The moon we notice first -- high in the sky and looking nearly full, sharply outlined against the darkness all the way around -- but with a softness in its border at the bottom right. 

"Oh," I say, remembering. "Wasn't there a lunar eclipse tonight?" 

We study the moon, walking, watching it disappear behind the thick branches of the fig trees lining the sidewalk to the south of the soccer field. 

Turning to the east side of the field, the moon appears again between the elm trees reaching into the sky. 

"Lunar eclipse, or not quite full?" 

A rustle of animal. A man walking a dog. 

We turn at the north side, native eucalypts, and recall lunar eclipses past. 

"If it is an eclipse, it will take a long time," I said. 

West side, Tim turns off towards home for a meeting with Europe. 

"Go around again with me?" I ask Jonathan. But he retreats to the yellow warmth of the house. The heater. 

On my own now, tracing the sidewalks around the field with my feet. The softness on the side of the moon seems to be spreading. 

A possum pauses in the shadows to watch me. Something swoops into a low hanging branch. Bat? But it perches rather than hangs. Frogmouth. I hear bats cackling in the row of figs. The moon is up and to the right. It can't be watched while walking without twisting to see. 

Rounding the field again I think, I'll go around another time. Let the moon watch over me. 

But the moon doesn't watch me. The streetlamps watch me, forming a cobbled path of light pools, yellow electric glow to yellow electric glow all around the field. A brushy tailed possum watches me, a fuzzy lump of misshapen darkness at the base of an elm tree. 

Turning my head, I can watch the moon. There. In the tops of the branches. Clearly retreating into shadow there on the right side.

A small group of people has met up at the north side of the field to chat and watch the moon. A man with a dog stands still, chin tipped to the sky, to observe the moon while the dog runs. 

I'll go around again. 

The fig trees form a natural corridor, thick evergreen leaves on all sides. The elms are not evergreen. Their leaves are yellow, falling. Their dark branches taper towards the sky. A late autumn breeze makes them shiver, and a few leaves scatter across the light pools on the sidewalk.

Someone has set up a small telescope on the west side of the field. There are four people gathered there, chatting a bit. But otherwise the park is quiet in darkness. The earlier group has turned right, walking down the long diagonal leading away from the soccer field. Another dog and a harried owner pass in the opposite direction, one last walk before the day ends. A couple is holding hands under the elm trees. 

And otherwise just me. And the trees. 

And the moon, missing a slice of disc, rust-coloured shadow spreading. Impotent. 

I go around again. 

There is work waiting at home. An overdue report weighing more than the trees. More than the sky. I've had my Air. I've earned my Steps. Maybe I am even missed?

I go around again. 

The moon isn't the only one up there in the sky. I can see a few stars beyond the trees. A large red one watches the eclipse. A few yellow ones hover further away. But the streetlamps, and the lighted city spreading beyond the street lamp pools, dim the glow of the sky.

My step counter says these loops around the soccer field aren't counting for much. Not for steps.

I go around again. 

Tenth loop. The moon is at least half covered now, but it is hard to tell whether the shape is half a disc or less. Or more. The air is still fresh, sweet against my skin and lungs. But my legs are growing bored. I take them off the sidewalk, into the field. 

I stand, a few yards from the goalie box, and stare up at the moon. 

A lunar eclipse can take a long time. 

I watch it, unchanging, alone, in the cool darkness, for a few minutes more. 

And finally I accept the fact that there is nothing I can do for the moon. Nothing it can do for me. 

At home, I close the blinds. 

Much later, meeting finished, Tim joins me in the bedroom. "The headline says it full moon, not an eclipse."

"Oh, it is definitely an eclipse," I say. "Look." 

We shut off the lights and open the blinds together. There, high in the sky, now well above the line of the elm trees, hangs the moon, a rust-coloured marble, with just a slice of light remaining on its lower left side. 

Lunar eclipse. 

Autumn into winter

 It is mushroom season again.

But don't eat them. As if you would.

 I like the sounds of Sunday morning here. The birds start the noise. Just before dawn you can sometimes hear a kookaburra. Then the currawongs start to whistle. The magpies come next, warbling to the sunrise. And after the sun is up, the lorikeets squeal with joy to be out in the flowering trees on such a morning. By the time the lorikeets are up, you can hear the trams rumbling up the road on the other side of the apartment. A dog barks. And even later, the shouts of soccer players as the Sunday morning crowd takes over the field closest to the window.

In the living room, the heater has come on. There is a warm glow and a soft rumble. The laundry is dry on the racks set up over the living room rug. Smells of toast from the kitchen. Later, baking and cinnamon as this week's batch of granola turns golden in the oven. 

We walk around the botanic gardens in the sunshine. The water is a mirror to the autumn sky. 

The city stretches its fingers against the horizon. A carpet of grass, green with the incoming winter rains, runs to meet it in the distance.

Here, the world is turning. Day, night, day, night. Another summer come and gone. Such a small tilt of the earth, to put such a chill in the morning air. Mist against the grass. Brown leaves carpeting the sidewalk. 

Sunday morning. Late autumn.