Soul Food

Looking for a bit of inspiration, I posted on Facebook a request for suggestions for something new to try. I was pleased to receive many suggestions (including yodelling, which I may just store away for a rainy day), but the one that rocked my world was from my friend Ryan Youens, who is a professional music arranger, composer, conductor and music tutor. This clever and generous man suggested that I write some lyrics and he would write the music to the song. This isn’t strictly a new thing for me – I dabbled in a bit of song-writing with my brother when I was in my teens, but I haven’t even thought about doing it in (gulp) 10 years, so it’s new in the sense that it’s not something I am in the habit of doing.


Pouncing on this opportunity, I set to immediately and wrote the following:

Soul food

Every day with you is soul food
You hold a mirror up to me
And when I’m losing control, you
Fill me up with your soul food

Last night you looked at me and smiled,
Said, ‘Come here, my love.
‘You look tired and you need some time
To remember what you’re here for.’

It didn’t take long for me to realise
That you were one of a kind
A special light surrounded you
The warm glow from a huge heart and mind

I flicked it on to Ryan, and he replied immediately, saying he’d ‘whip it up’. A couple of days later I was stunned to hear that he had not only written the music, he’d also recorded the backing track with piano, guitar, drums and bass. He suggested that I come over and learn it and record it with him. By this stage I was so excited that I nearly wet my pants.

So four days after I wrote the lyrics, I found myself at Ryan’s house hearing the song for the first time, while his lovely wife cooked us a beautiful tortilla vegetable stack for dinner. It’s an amazing experience to jot down a few lines and have them set to music. The words came alive and took on a whole new level of meaning. I learnt the song (and here I should add ‘incredibly patient’ to the list of Ryan’s virtues) and recorded it. You can hear it here.

For the next few days I swanned around grinning from ear to ear, and not even the strongest willed toddler (who actually lives in my house, by the way – I will have to get on to ringing the Guiness Book of Records) could bring me down off cloud nine.

Ryan turned up to my husband’s 30th a few days later with the complete package of CD, chords and sheet music, all professionally bound with some photos of me recording the song. Seriously, how do you thank someone for this? Suggestions are welcome. My husband, for whom the song is written, is quite smitten with the song and has been humming it around the house ever since. (‘Da da da da soul food…’)

Meanwhile I’ve been considering what I have to offer for people looking for new experiences. My number one offer is a close encounter of the toddler kind, which is highly recommended as she is rather delightful, if a little demanding, which I suppose is the wont of people her age. I could also teach you how to make some mean chocolate chip biscuits, and I have a trampoline you can jump on. If you are interested in taking on any of these experiences please enquire within.

Butterflies flutter by

Winning the ‘right in my backyard’ category (so far), the West Lynn Gardens are well worth a visit. For a $2 donation you can visit these lovely grounds which are maintained by a team of dedicated volunteers. The gardens include a butterfly house with monarch butterflies perched in every nook and cranny, much to the delight of the kids at the festival day we attended today. One kid was even tormenting the poor things with a butterfly net, which I thought was a bit off, but there you go.

The gardens were established in 1981 – a jolly good year for beginnings, if you ask me. There are picnic areas and basic tea and coffee facilities. You can even get hitched there if you are so inclined. The grounds are open 10am – 4pm seven days a week. Isn’t it incredible what volunteers can achieve?

Town meets country

Auckland seems to be fizzing with public events at the moment. Must be the season for it. My ‘new thing’ this week was to attend the Kumeu Show, which I had somehow missed in nearly 20 years growing up in West Auckland.  Upon entry ($10 later) we were blasted with the cacophony of fairground jingles, screaming children and confused parents trying to figure out the overly complicated token system for rides. Our merry group added to the bedlam four adults, one 5-year-old, one toddler and a newborn. The fairground seems to be a place where the world is turned upside-down in more ways than one – parents walk around stunned with vacant looks on their faces while children seem to know exactly what to do, confidently dragging their bewildered carers this way and that.

                                                                                                           

Aside from the rides, there are the animals, which is really the point of the whole thing. My toddler was particularly taken with the kunekune pigs, which could be purchased for $75 each. Just quietly, I would have paid $75 not to have to take one home, but each to her own. We had close encounters with alpacas, which remind me of strangely shaped teddy bears, and the weirdest looking chickens I’ve ever seen in my life, who were cage-neighbours with Jemima Puddleduck. Adding to the surreal nature of the show were the gigantic pumpkins. Bummer for the guy with the smallest gigantic pumpkin. He would have come to the show fully stoked with his gigantic pumpkin and then, upon seeing the others, hung his head in shame.

One of my favourite parts of the show came when my daughter and I played the laughing clowns game, where you stick ping pong balls in the mouth of the clown and hope to win one of the awesome prizes hanging up on the wall. Of course, we only won the ‘consolation prize’— a plastic doll which lost its arm two seconds later after an over-exuberant yank. Still, a prize is a prize, and my daughter is still playing with the doll, and has even disfigured it further by yanking off one of the legs. She’s learning to accept diversity, so I’m cool with that.

All in all, a fun day out for young and old, with a little bit of something for everyone. I’ll definitely be returning next year. I might even go on the ferris wheel next time. I’ll have to work up to that.

Picasso, eat your heart out

This week it was time to visit my artistic side. I have never thought of myself as much of an artist – in fact, I have always claimed that I can’t draw to save myself. But this ‘try new things’ kick has given me the impetus and the confidence to step outside of my comfort zone, so I asked a good friend of mine to give me a drawing lesson. I decided I’d like to be able to draw a passable picture of one of my daughters, and seeing as this friend has drawn beautiful pictures of my daughter and my nephew I thought he’d be the perfect person to ask.

Before he came over I decided to have a little go and see what I could come up with pre-tutorial. I tried copying this picture.

I’ve decided to share the results with you purely to give you a good old laugh. Feel free to come back to this picture if you’re ever in need of a pick-me-up giggle session. Oh, and if you need something to frighten burglars away or scare your children into submission, feel free to print this out.

OK, so therein lies proof that I was in dire need of some guidance and that I had nothing to lose from receiving a lesson. My friend started by explaining that drawing people – or anything, in fact – is made much easier if you are taught how. There are, apparently, tricks and techniques that enable you to much more accurately represent your subject. So we started by doing a very quick outline of a face, and then plotting out the features by way of a cross. Precis everything out very quickly and roughly, with an eraser close to hand. Draw the eyes on the horizontal line halfway up the face, not towards the top. Figure out the other features from there. Most of all – don’t get too precious about any aspect of the drawing; be prepared to rub it out and start all over again. Once you’re happy with your rough drawing, start refining and defining the lines and adding in shading.

So here’s my effort so far with the right tools and a bit of guidance.

A wee bit better, no?

I tried another new thing this week – abolishing guilt. I was beginning to feel a bit down early this week as my husband has just returned to work after six weeks’ paternity leave. Living the life of a sole-charge parent of two very young kids is bloody hard at the best of times, but we had also just moved into our freshly renovated house (read: extremely messy with stuff everywhere) after two weeks of living with my parents. The girls were very unsettled – being out of routine – and I was sleep-deprived and very anxious to clean up and get the house feeling more like a home. Not a good mix.

By day three I knew I had to change my attitude and get out of the dumps. One thing I pinpointed was that I was constantly feeling guilty – guilty that I wasn’t spending enough time with one or other daughter, guilty that I wasn’t cleaning up the house enough, guilty for wanting some time to myself. Guilt was making me doing crazy things like giving into the incessant demands of a toddler – who, we must remember, is a complete lunatic just by virtue of being a two-year-old. I decided to abolish the guilt and see what happened.

Amazing what something so simple can do. Once I started putting a big STOP sign up at the first sign of the insidious guilt monkey, I began making rational, confident decisions and regaining control. For example, I have managed to get my baby into a proper sleep routine. Believe it or not, she’s sleeping 8pm – 6am or even 7am, and having good naps during the day, thanks to the old ‘controlled crying’ technique coupled with making sure she’s having proper three- or four-hourly full feeds. She’s a much happier baby and I’m a much happier mummy for it. I recommend this to everyone – banish the guilt! It’s a wasted, harmful emotion.