Hi All,
I’ve been gone. I’m back. “G’day”.
Firstly I would like to thank Jo of “All the Blue Day” for inspiring this comeback post and for giving me a decent reason to take back the fort. Check out her inspiring blog here, especially this galvanising post…
http://alltheblueday.blogspot.com/2018/06/life-is-mess-but-also-often-quite-pretty.html
I could say that the revolution in the title is why I have been gone so long but that would be a fib and as the content of this blog post is ALL about the truth, why not start out as I mean to finish off? I have been living life at an often frenetic pace but most of the time I have been enjoying the heck out of it without feeling like I had anything really worth posting about.
See that’s where it starts… you read “other people’s” blog posts and they are SO much better/more informative/productive than yours. “How I lost 4000 pounds in a week…”; “How I climbed mount Everest whilst still finding time to clean ALL of my house, cook gourmet meals for my family and work a 10 hour day…” you know, “those” kinds of blog/Instagram/Facebook/”insert other social media that you follow” posts. The kind that make you feel “less than” and the kind that make you feel that stirring need to compete and the kind that result in you having a restless feeling inside you that tells you that you are not doing your best and that life is slipping through your fingers while you wrestle your demons, THAT kind of post.
Well my friends, I am here to tell you that it’s time we had an old fashioned, pitchfork carrying, torch wielding revolution. We the masses against the fibbing media. It’s time to start posting pictures of us in the mud after the dog decided to chase a duck in the dark rather than our perfect dinner that took us 4 hours to pose and that was cold when we got to eat it because “INSTAGRAM!” Reality isn’t popular folks. I saw that yesterday when I was watching Martha Stewart who must be about 80 but whose face looks 40 and all of the perfect baking school students that she has visiting her that are also “perfect” in every way. Real baking isn’t that perfect Martha. Thanks to some excellent editing that no-one suspects is going on, Martha appears to turn out perfect baked dish after dish and we all sit there thinking “wouldn’t it be lovely if we could bake like that and wouldn’t our families love us again and we could take baked goods to our neighbours who want to shoot us because our roosters are crowing all night and everything…EVERYTHING will be better if we just bake like Martha (and buy a Kitchen Aid…)”
See its insidious folks and it’s all around us and it’s bloody sneaky! The advertising gurus are employing all kinds of psychological tricks to get us to jump on the bandwagon and buy into these fibs of lives. If we don’t feel like we are keeping up we can always buy “insert such and such here” which will make our lives easier and might get us a little bit closer to that perfection that we all aspire to. But why are we aspiring to perfection? The truth is, life isn’t perfect. We can’t make it perfect. We are lucky if we can get a few lucky breaks in life, let alone have everything our way. We human beings have created such a false society outside of the real world that we are starting to believe the garbage that is being peddled to us and it’s time to take back our realities!
I would like to state here that I am a country mouse. My house is NOT tidy, or clean, or anything other than lived in. If you came to visit me you would soon realise that “Better Homes” ready it is NOT. In fact, it’s more like those before shots that they take of houses that need some serious renovation. The thing is that as imperfect, shabby, grungy and as and dog hair covered as it is, I love it. I can’t count the amount of times that I have wandered around this little hovel running my hands over the back of a wooden chair, felt the warmth of Brunhilda and her blissful ambience in the dark before I am truly awake and functioning, felt the real joy of creating something myself no matter how much flour, dirt, mess I made creating it. The only problem is I would likely die of embarrassment if anyone else turned up here because this is NOT what society considers a “home”.
If you could actually drive up our driveway you would receive a gold star and an extra special scouts badge to proudly display on your shirt for “all terrain scouting”. Once you arrived at the top of the driveway, if you survived the potholes and the feral chickens dashing in front of you at high speed, you would see several “gardens” (I use this term VERY loosely) that were in need of some serious work. Sort of along the lines of “The Secret Garden” work. If you haven’t read this amazing children’s book by Frances Hodgson Burnett, please do so. It’s one of those classics that everyone needs to have read before they die. The gist of it is that there was a seriously overgrown garden that needed work. Frances Hodgson Burnett got the work done in her book. We didn’t. Enough said.
Once you got over the state of the drive and the seriously unkempt and almost jungle like “gardens” and the ever-present feral chooks, you could wade through the mud to get to our gate. After that all hell would break loose and you would be greeted by some serious “woofage” by 2 over exuberant manic dogs that look like the hounds of the Baskerville (you didn’t read that? You seriously need to take that one out as well!) And who will persist in jumping on you at any chance that they can get for your entire visit. Inside our humble little hut it’s all geared towards simple and being as sustainable as we can get it. We are middle aged penniless student hippies with a severe lack of funds so most of what we have/do here is either second hand or we made ourselves.
I have a terrible hoarding habit that I inherited from both of my parents (doomed from the start) that I limit to my overflowing bowl cupboard (I LOVE bowls with a pathological lusting desire) and to ALL of the found things that I discover on my walks with Earl-the-wonder-dog including cuttings, seeds, nuts, stones, sea glass, ALL of the things that I keep in some of the bowls on our rapidly disappearing kitchen table. Brunhilda pumps out a steady stream of warmth and ash and the dogs pump out a steady stream of anal air and hair and although I was once house proud when we lived in the city, I had to give it up for lent when we moved here or I would have had to be placed in the nearest mental home because of a serious mental breakdown that would have occurred should I have even tried. I am also married to a completely lovely man whom I adore BUT who has no idea about taking off his shoes (often covered in chook poo and mud) or tidying up after himself or shutting doors…you get the picture
All in all our house is perfect for us. We love it! I pee in a bucket that sits proudly in the toilet but if you arrived to visit I would have to hide it because it’s not what society sees as “proper”. I use this pee in our garden and I don’t flush ALL of that pure water down the toilet because to me, it’s immoral. I wash my dishes in a bowl in the sink and use the water in my wicking beds. I don’t vacuum because it’s a waste of electricity. I sweep and it’s not perfect and it doesn’t get ALL of the dust and at any given time my home is seriously under threat of being swallowed by daddy long legs cobwebs but I love it. I am comfortable here. It’s “Home” to me and I truly love my life…just not if anyone else comes here!
See the reality is that we are all just treading water just trying to keep up, living our lives hoping that no-one else notices our imperfections or comes to visit (well, some of us are 😉 ) and it shouldn’t be like that. It shouldn’t matter that we live different lives to everyone else because that’s what makes us different and unique and worth the effort to get to know. We can be interesting if we aren’t all the same where those plastic, perfect, polite faces on Martha Stewart are not at all real and can’t be sustained. It’s NOT REAL! It’s what makes a tiny bit of me die every time someone wants to visit us out here. Aside from being serious hermits we don’t want anyone else to judge us and find us seriously wanting.
How can we be SO happy in our own little space and yet so terrified of other people being here? The media is the answer. From day 1 it was selling the “perfect life” to us and it has simply gotten much better at tweaking our psyche’s and pushing our buttons and there is a LOT of money riding on us being perfect housekeepers, perfect mum’s, perfect cooks, perfect workers ad infinitum. The industry is worth billions of dollars and is about as sneaky and conniving as you could possibly imagine and I have a seriously good imagination.
So I stopped posting because I didn’t have perfect things to share with you. Sanctuary looked a bit ratty (metaphorically and seriously…thar be rats!” and Narnia got covered in white fly (again…) and the chooks stopped being “cute” and started being pest species and it has come down to me not feeling bad when Mr (fat) quoll comes to visit in the night because that’s one less chook that will hatch out another clutch of babies and start the whole messy cycle over again. Life is NOT easy. Life is not perfect. Life is just “Life” and if we can find joy in that, whatever we are doing, however we choose to live, whether our gas heater blew up back in 2010 and we chose not to replace it or not, we can class ourselves as truly lucky individuals. I am seriously happy out here in my mess and if the media wants to judge me, first it will have to drive up our driveway, avoid the feral chooks, get past the mud and the gate and the hounds of the Baskervilles AND the pitchforks and the torches and the madding crowd to judge me for it!
Thus endeth this sermon and hopefully, this won’t be the last blog post for the next 6 months 😉
Catch you all soon and here’s to living perfectly imperfect, happy lives!
serendipityrevisited 
Vive la revolution indeed! This is a triumphant war-cry, and I love it! And I love all your wonderful photos of The Good Life. Absolutely, let’s live our one life resolutely marching to the beat of our own drum, come what may, and let’s rise up and collectively stare down the practice of perfection. It is completely unnecessary and demoralising. I hereby invite you over for a cuppa and pinky promise not to clean up beforehand:)
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HAHAHA! You are on Jo 🙂
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So glad to see you back! I miss reading about your unconventional lifestyle and what you are doing on the ‘Farm. I’m trying to make a comeback too, by keeping up with foodnstuff. Surprisingly, it was your recommendation of All The Blue Day blog that got me enthused again.
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Jo enthuses a lot of people Bev. She really is a very positive role model and gets you wanting to try “just one more thing…” I miss your blog. Your blog taught me the principles of wicking beds which allowed us to use fridges to solve one of our gardening problems. You are my gardening guru because where I am slapdash and haphazard and chaotic in my methods, you are methodical and your results are always stellar and very easy to follow. My kind of results! Thank you for still following my blog. I think most of my followers have exited side left over the last year but that’s OK, I can pick up some more strays and waifs who might just be interested in what we do down here on our little patch of chaos in the southern hemisphere 🙂
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I loved this post. Hurrah for perfectly imperfect lives…being happy is what counts. Not sure if I laughed more at the fossilized apple turnover or the phone. Welcome back!
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Hi Chica. I can tell you that “we” laughed more over the turnover 😉 We did manage to replace our phone for another similar one for $30 less so that made us happy. This new one has aspirations of grandeur and keeps altering my photos that I take to “improve” them. I think it might need a few lessons in design to be honest ;). The apple turnover got shoved into the oven at the last minute and contained the last of my amazing boozy brandy sodden fruit mince. All I did was throw an entire bottle of brandy into a bowl, toss in 2kg of dried fruit and some grated apple and spices and let it sit. It was magnificent and I was majorly bummed out that the very last drop got dehydrated to the MAX in that turnover. Brunhilda was so good at fossilising it that we didn’t even get a whiff of smoke and I only found that turnover the next morning! Glad you liked the post Ms Chica and I am going to try to post a bit more often now 🙂
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Soooooo glad you’re back! I’ve missed your blogs, still reading my way though this superblog 😀
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Yep, I agree with most of what you said, however your home looks lovely to me and much tidier than mine. I don’t really care if people don’t think much of my home, but I don’t want them to feel they might “catch something” if they come to visit so I do make an effort if I know visitors are coming. I don’t like housework ☹️ so if it’s a choice between garden and house, garden wins, not that you would know to look at the garden it’s not most people’s idea of a garden and certainly not manicured. The bucket in the loo would not be a problem for me. I’d be too busy scoffing your food.
Your dolls hair looks amazing can’t wait to see it finished. I hope the blogs keep coming you have plenty to write about.
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The really excellent thing about living out in the country and also, living on your own, is that you don’t actually have to do housework unless you absolutely positively want to. I agree about the mad cleaning up and when I thought that the NBN man that was coming to hook us up to wireless the other day was actually going to come “inside” I did a quick dust and actually looked under the computer desk and realised that there was pretty much an entire small dogs worth of hair and at least a medium sized dust bunny keeping it company. He didn’t end up coming in and I KNOW that the man that will eventually come to put the satellite equipment on the roof won’t have to come in so the dust bunnies and small dogs are safe for the forseeable future ;).
I am with you on the garden looking ratty as well. Story of our lives. No matter what we do the garden still looks like it has gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson and come out minus an ear. It’s our common growing conditions and things that grow here need to be tough, or toughen up pretty quick smart or exit the building. The native animals (and the chickens) all seem to want to have a piece of anything that we plant here, and its not easy gardening but when something works it makes me feel like a million dollars. It is worth all of the previous hassle for that small moment 🙂
I need to keep moving forward on that doll! I am going to write another blog post this weekend. I think I need to get my hand back in 🙂 Thank you for your lovely and very soul boosting comment Jane 🙂
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Thank you for this real and honest post. I’ve found my way here from Jo’s blog.
I too, dread people coming to visit and thankfully not many do anymore, because I know our place isn’t instaworthy and the town folk wouldn’t understand. I am almost burnt out from trying to maintain a “city” house while living in the country with a partner who could possibly be related to yours and 4 children. Only 1 daughter left at home now, so the mess level is more static.
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I hear you sister! It’s a constant, and very slow, anxiety attack trying to meet the standards and constantly falling short. The thing is we are ALL falling short unless we are running ourselves into the ground and there comes a time when we need to say “OK, this is me, this is how I am, this is my life and this is more than enough” and if “people” don’t like that, “arrivederci!” Life is too short for bad wine and being “perfect” so drink the good wine, put your feet up, tell yourself that you are doing a smashing and most vainglorious job of living and think about all of the amazing things that you have done today, got up, faced the world, brewed a good mug of “insert beverage of your choice” and that’s only the start! What amazing lives we lead and absolutely perfect for us if we stop trying to please the invisible masses that we think might be judging us. Lets all get out into the road and sweep up the leaves and put them on our gardens like Jo. Lets offer our less than perfect lives up and if it resonates with other people, we have done a good job. Letting other people know that it’s AOK to not be perfect is the most amazing thing that we can do on social media these days. Jo is a star for what she is doing, although secretly, her house is AMAZING, she is AMAZING and her garden is to die for. Even her dog is wonderful and if I was to introduce Earl to him, he would teach him some terrible tricks that Jo would never forgive me for. Life is SO much better when we stop trying to please everyone else and we start pleasing ourselves. Thank you so much for visiting Kate and here’s to a lack of visitors, a house full of mad love and husbands who really could care less 😉
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Amen. Let’s join the quiet revolution of real living rebels and show the world another way to be.
I’ll just quietly watch from the side, from fear of being in the spotlight. Not much of an activist me, so I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and hope for the best.
Cheers Kate
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The quiet revolution RULES! I think we should all vote Jo in for our next Prime Minister. Aside from it not being at all possible to do a worse job than he does, so everything that she does will be a coup, she would be the nicest Prime Minister Australia had ever had and we would almost be on par with New Zealand then. 🙂
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I pretty much only follow a couple of “real” blogs; yours, nothingbythebook and a friend I know from real life and but I have started to peruse Instagram and I totally see what you are talking about. all the perfect images all start to look the exact same which is totally boring. I however am guilty of posting pretty pics…I’ve fallen into the “silent sundy/wordless wednesday” trap and just post a bunch of pretty pics (which is really pretty easy since we just moved to a wickedly scenic location) instead of witty, funny, messy life that I would like to focus on. But posting “realness” means 1. time (it takes time and heavy editing for me to appear witty) 2. vulnerability. It is a little scary to be vulnerable and discuss your struggles and admit that you scream at your children, never vacuum, etc. Plus there is the art-angle. I like photography for the arty factor and since I’m not painting or drawing much right now it it sort of creative outlet. I recently learned what an “Influencer” is (someone who posts things on social media and mentions a brand and basically gets paid to advertise) and I thought “well I could do that” but “would I want to?” and no because even though there are nice products out there that I would probably enjoy using I ultimately feel like material possessions shouldn’t be too glorified when there’s all sorts of free natural beauty more deserving of attention. and I am frankly more impressed with your pee bucket that half the crap I see touted on social media. I also like for my posts to be positive which can be challenging when you want to be “real” but also not have a pity party or complain/be cranky. Also, I loved your point that we feel so comfy in our own homes but can be so afraid to share it; I also think I can be very protective of my own smoochie snuggle home/life and that can be another deterrent to sharing. So this Viva la revolution post really nailed it; positive, full of unique ideas, some beautiful photos tempered with enough dust bunnies and urine to keep it real. I am feeling inspired! I think I may try and write about this topic in my next post. Glad to see you share, I have your site bookmarked and I frequently check to see if you’ve posted anything. VIVA LA REVOLUTION!
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Its harder for you Ms Spy, because you live in the home of marketing and entrepreneurs where everyone aspires to their 15 seconds of fame and their mug on the telly. The problem with swapping “goods” (or services) for a blog post is that people stop taking what you are saying seriously. I have actually stopped following blogs because they start posting product reviews more than they update with regular content. It’s lucritive but often the blogger forgets what is going on when they blog. People come to their blog to see get something that they aren’t getting somewhere else and often that is a sense of reality or some lovely pictures (admittedly) etc. but at the end of the day you can just throw a query in for “product review” and get exactly the same kind of response.
Thank you for still following my blog Ms Spy and for your lovely comment. We all need to add, even a teensy bit of, reality to our blog posts to take back our space and to share the honesty of our lives with people. Mental illness is on the rise in a most alarming way and people are so dissatisfied with their lives because they believe that “everyone else” has better, more fullfilling lives thanks to social media. The pressure on people to perform and to be “perfect” and to “capitalise on your investment” is HUGE and you know what? Most of us don’t want that kind of pressure. We just want simple lives doing simple things enjoying simple pleasures that don’t involve having to mortage your house every 6 months to afford or work 10 jobs and have no life at all.
I am off to check out your new vista! Congratulations on the scenic move and I hope that everyone is healthy and happy on Spy central 🙂
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yes cheers to simple lives and simple pleasures! thank you for the reply and for visiting spy garden; even if there isn’t much gardening at all going on!!! We are in a rental house and are thinking we will only be here for 1-2 years so I won’t be digging a garden and not really ready to invest in large pots/soil either at the moment but maybe I’ll grow something this summer?!
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Small pots can hold a lot of vegetables Ms Spy. I love the look of the rental and Dexie is certainly looking right at home. Here’s to sea changes ❤
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I just tired to make a comment on your glorious new situation (home of Stephen King and Pennywise…let me know if you see him down any drains…) and your wonderful new baby smoochie and it wouldn’t let me 😦
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UGHHH!!! Sorry! I think I fixed it, there was some wordpress notification under comments section so hopefully its fixed.
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Cheers for that 🙂
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As one who is domestically disinclined I see no problem at all with your housekeeping. I do, however, dislike people pretending to have the perfect (face, house, life or whatever) who are clearly faking the whole shooting match. I have cobwebs, dust bunnies, and cupboards I’d rather weren’t opened by anyone other than ….. well, just anyone actually. But I’m happy. And I’m trying to reduce the amount of ‘stuff’ in the house too. It won’t be presentable for instagram anytime soon but that won’t stop me welcoming friends should they arrive. Those who matter won’t care, and anyone who cares doesn’t matter.
Earl is still looking darned fine – if a little embarrassed to be photographed wearing a coat.
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Our property is currently “under mud” as it usually is for most of the winter period. Our dogs are currently “under mud” as they usually are at this time of the winter period (when they aren’t laying upside down with their muddy feet in the air near Brunhilda that is…) and picture this scene in your minds eye…”Steve and I slobbing around in our slobbiest of slobby clothing (stretchy pants and old jumpers with burn marks on the front from using the jumpers to open Brunhilda’s door etc….) doing some studies on a Saturday (as you do when you are afforded home study) and listening to the lovely nasal drone of your favourite lecturer when suddenly your dogs go mental and you figure you had best go out and see what all of the noise is about (squirrel, care went past, dog barking 40km away…) and it turns out that the lecturer that you were just listening to is standing at your house gate with his trusty steed (bike) that he has just ridden 50km to bring you 3kg of flour that he offered on Facebook because he didn’t like it. Your hair isn’t brushed, the house is a MESS, there is something stinky in the fridge that you can’t isolate (likely a dead mouse down the back) and your clever idea to use chook poo sodden hay to create your fridge wicking beds outside the back door has backfired in a most spectacular way and STINKS to high heaven whenever it rains (and it was raining all day yesterday) right near where he chose to park his bike and you are just about starting to touch the tip of the iceburg that Steve and I had yesterday”. My lecturer must be made of sterner stuff because he braved the jumping muddy dogs (I did offer to pay for his drycleaning…) to come into our humble little hovel and again, braved having soy milk in his tea (that thank goodness I still have in the cupboard as I use it for kombucha feeding) and actually drank it all, had a nice chat for a few hours while the dogs bayed at him from outside the door and then headed off to ride 50km back to the city. I think he had his serious dose of reality to last him for the rest of the year! 😉 As the old Crowded House song goes “You’ve seen me at my worst, and it won’t be the last time I’m down there” rings loudly in my ears even as I type this 😉
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😂😂😂. Lecturers have to be made of stern stuff.
(And as I said before people who matter don’t mind…..)
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🙂
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😂 😂 I guess your lecturer might become a good friend! Also you never know he might feel his place is worse than yours, and that you actually live in paradise. It all depends on you perspective, of course he could have been hoping for some of that delicious baking you have been doing.
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HAHAHA! The lecturer has been our lecturer in kind for almost 6 years now and he is a friend. I filmed my short film in his house that he incredibly generously allowed me to film in. It was perfect for my film. I am going to bake some nice bread for him, my other lecturer and some of the members of my class sometime soon 🙂
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OK I did my vive la revolution post; thanks for the inspiration!!!!
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Excellent post and even more excellent procrastination about doing your thesis 😉 I hope the summer is treating you well. I am LOVING winter and don’t want to trade for what I KNOW is going to be a long, hot and very dry summer so I am going to ignore it for now and just bask in the bliss of Brunhilda’s warmth 🙂
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