Multigenerational living

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When I was about nine or ten years old, my maternal grandparents came to live with us for a while. Grandad was poorly and Gran needed help, so my bedroom became theirs and my kid brother and I shared his very large room. It was no big deal for the two of us – and having the grandparents around was fun.

Perhaps that’s when I first took on board the idea that multigenerational households are a logical way of life for families. Clearly I’m not alone in thinking so. According to the City Futures Research Centre, more and more Australian families are choosing to live this way. For some families this includes adult children who either continue to live at home or move back in for a while, and/or ageing parents or grandparents who move in with their children rather than entering an aged-care facility.

This shift could be happening for any number of reasons, but it seems to me that it’s at least partly a practical response to increasing societal pressures. The job market is uncertain and very mobile, house prices, childcare and living expenses continue to climb whilst wages remain static or, at best, creep up gradually. We’re all living longer, but may not have anticipated the sharp cost increases or our continued longevity. The result in many cases is that superannuation/pension schemes may not provide an adequate income to last the distance.

There are any number of pluses to multigenerational households, such as shared expenses, assistance with child-care and transport, shared cooking and shopping duties, company and conversation, and being able to keep an eye on one’s ageing parents. It also provides ongoing training for children, adults and older people in getting along together, and can narrow the generation gap through sharing.

However, adult children often feel that parents never quite view them as having grown up, which can result in ongoing conflict. Ageing parents moving in with a family may also experience this roadblock. Other issues that could arise are differing needs for quiet, privacy, special diets, personality conflicts, mobility assistance, sharing of chores, and clarifying financial arrangements – to name just a few. If not addressed up front and managed on an ongoing basis, any or all of these things can result in a household imploding.

Whilst I acknowledge that it’s not something everyone might want to do, I believe that the positives of multigenerational households far outweigh the negatives. But it does require ongoing mindful engagement from all parties. As long as the group communicates respectfully, plans and remains flexible, most things can be worked out.

Last year our household grew by three cats, four chicken, a number of quail – and an adult child and her partner. After 11 months they were ecstatic to finally move into their own house – and we were pretty happy to not longer have the noisy (!) chickens in the front yard. But the four of us managed to work around each other pretty well all year, having talked about how to manage issues in advance. It can work 🙂

chickens and mollypup_dec2014

Chaos is puppy-shaped

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Despite having had dogs all my life, little did I know what I was letting us in for when I embarked on my cunning plan of acquiring a puppy to keep our half-grown dog company. I’ve had up to four dogs at a time in the past, but these two… wow. Just… wow. Oddly enough, this does remind me of how I felt at times when I had two small human children…

There is endless competition for food, attention, toys, space – admittedly mostly happily, although not always. The puppy’s also taken to bringing as many rocks as she can indoors every day – many of which are really far to big to fit in her mouth. She’s a determined little terror and it’s game-on as she and Molly compete for the latest rock. They chase each other around, through and over all obstacles – including people. Eventually the rocks get annexed and put out of reach to calm things down. The pile on the kitchen windowsill gets bigger every day.
windowledge rock collectionIn short, they’re a pair of unholy terrors at present, belting around the house and garden leaving a trail of chaos behind them. And that’s on the good days 😛

Gardening dogOf course, when the pups are asleep – or cuddled up beside us on the couch – or playing happily with each other without the chaos-factor – or bringing us their toys, my heart melts. Those are the moments when I remind myself about the bigger picture – the one in which they’re both a little older, Cassie’s a lot bigger, Molly’s a lot calmer. They’ll keep each other entertained and I’ll be able to abandon my various Nik-be-calm strategies. Bigger picture. Yup.

For now they’ve conked out  – the sounds of bread dough being slapped around on the kitchen bench is clearly very soothing. It’s also therapeutic 🙂Peace, however brief

On keeping a Journal

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Do you keep a journal? It might be an actual diary in which you record daily events, or a notebook you keep in your bag to record things you see, or even a collection of scrap paper than you’ve scrawled ideas onto and then collated or stuck into a book.

Joyce Carol Oates once commented that memory is our domestic form of time travel. I like that idea. It occurs to me that if I were to pack for such a journey, it might be helpful to have a memory-map to guide me. A journal can be such a map.

I’ve found that keeping a journal allows me to be honest with myself about my life, to capture thoughts and experiences and provide clarity. These words and phrases – the various things that occur to me in odd places at random times – might otherwise be forgotten or lost sight of in the hurly burly of living.

Finding the snippets later on provides me with reference points to establish or confirm events, to compare my past thoughts and actions to those in my current situation. These are the strands that, as I get older, form the basis of the map back to my past.

Effectively, my journal is my personal external hard-drive in many volumes. As it’s also an invaluable tool for me as a writer. I sometimes spend time paging through one of my notebooks and usually find a key phrase or idea, something that can kickstart my writing – or at least make me smile.

One such was a note I made after seeing the film Lady in the Van. Miss Shepherd (the van lady) makes a comment that captured my imagination. It made me smile then and I’m glad I made a note of it so that I could smile over it again on my time travels: Onions can only take you so far, medically speaking.

Beautiful, yes? Not only that, it turns out that onions actually do have a bunch of medicinal properties, so Miss Shepherd did actually know her onions – even if they couldn’t cure her in the end 🙂

So, do you keep a journal and, if so, what format does yours take?

Rag rug experiment

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A couple of years ago I attended a workshop on rug making. It was a somewhat random decision, inspired by fabulous display of rag rugs at the annual Perth craft fair, and by the people actively working on rugs to show how it’s done. The workshop was organized by the Rugmakers Guild (yes, it’s totally a thing) and was held in Mandurah. I opted to avoid a hour of driving each way by catching the train from Perth and then the free shuttle bus to the venue and felt just a little smug about that as the train whooshed past the peak hour traffic…

The Guild President, Judith Stephens, was over from South Australia to attend the craft fair, show off her beautiful hand made rugs and to run some workshops in conjunction with the local chapter of the Guild. She told us that it was common practice for Australian families to recycle old clothing, blankets and left over fabric back in the 1880s, turning them into rag rugs to warm their homes. Although the craft petered out over the years, there has now been a huge resurgence of interest in rag rugs worldwide – both as an art and craft.

rag rug workshop_27may13The workshop was fun, as was learning some of the very peculiar terminology used by rug makers, e.g. proddy, proggy, hooky and clippy. It’s a whole other language! We learned a few different techniques and most people managed to complete a sample – a sort of mini-rug. I came home super enthusiastic about taking up rug making as my new hobby. The idea of recycling old t-shirts and the like into something useful had enormous appeal.

It also sounded like a plausible pastime for someone planning on moving out to the back-of-beyond. It ticked the craft, recycling and creative boxes perfectly. So, when DaughterDearest’s birthday arrived not long afterwards, I purchased her all the gear for her to get started. Did I ask her if she’d like to do it? Of course not! Motherrrr knows best…

Yeah. Not so much. This was one of those times when I was actually buying something I wanted. What she really wanted bookshelves. So, since I hadn’t bought myself any of the gear, we swapped: I simply reclaimed the gear (so that I could start a rug) and purchased the shelving (so she had somewhere for her overload of books). Everyone was happy.

But somehow time passed. Lots of things happened. More things happened… and my roundtuit didn’t ever quite manage to fit unpacking the gear and using it.

Finally (yes, getting to the point at last), inspired by a desire/need to come up with a craft-related #blogjune post, I hunted all the paraphernalia down over the weekend… and started my first fledging bedside rag rug! It’s still fun, still easy and Himself had a couple of t-shirts he didn’t need anymore…

Rag rug started June 2016

I haven’t quite figured out how to use the rug hooking folding lap frame effectively, finding it easier to just hold the hessian in one hand as I hook the strips of t-shirt fabric through it. I may have to attend one of the Guild meetings to get some tips on that.

Lap frame for rug making

Winter sunshine

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Winter’s well and truly here. We know this at a core (and rather chilly) level as a result of our ongoing crack-of-dawn excursions to the great outdoors. At four months, the puppy still needs encouragement (aka company) to use the lawn rather than the laundry floor… We’re winning, but our feet come inside well and truly chilled.

Despite the cold mornings and drizzly weather over the past few weeks, Perth winters aren’t all doom and gloom. There’s sunshine for part of most days. Admittedly it is sometimes a rather weak and pallid sort of sunshine, but the contrast between the crisp air and the few precious hours of warmth is glorious. Getting out into the sun on those days, even if just for a little while, makes a huge difference to my general sense of well being. I can see why the dogs go and roll around on the grass in the sun, or just lie out there and look contented.

This week I took Cassie-puppy down to the river on the pretext of going for a walk in some of that lovely winter sunshine. In reality I was catching up with a friend I haven’t seen in since January. Even then we didn’t spend much time together as we were both super busy at a conference. It was more of a hug-in-passing and a promise to get together soon. But life seems to roller-coaster everyone along at an increasingly crazy pace these days and sometimes important things can get lost in the cracks.

Fortunately for me, this particular friend decided that the cracks weren’t going to win and emailed me to organise a meet-up. We chose the nearby river café as it has a dog-friendly verandah and garden area. Cassie and I arrived a little early in order to have a pre-coffee stroll to get rid of some of her energy, then annexed a good spot – in the sun, close enough to the grass for puppy convenience, but not too close to the bevvy of small children in the play area.cassie at loquay_8june16

The puppy had to take a back seat while we chatted, but as I am wise in the ways of distracting small children (and puppies), was happily distracted by a rawhide bone I’d brought along.

It was a good catch-up. We talked about everything and nothing, setting aside the years in which we’ve had little in the way of direct contact and anchoring our time together in our shared history, genuine caring and humour. Future plans were explored and promises made not to space our catch-ups so far apart in future.

We only spent an hour or so together, having coffee and then taking the puppy for another quick walk along the river, but it was a shiny, happy time and made my week.

Note to self: don’t let the cracks win!