Old family, new family

Well happy family day my stateside luckies! I am distinctly feeling a psychological lack of...turkey day communitarianism. By this I mean the getting-together of the nether regions of the family to cook and do garden projects and watch the day turn to even before the meal begins. On this everyday-like day here, Tyler may be gracing us with his famed Potato Things (deep-fried goodness), in honor of the ordinariness of it all.

Ahh, holidays. Some people love them, some people “absolutely detest Christmas.” (That's Della's opinion.) It's great for me this year because there's no possibility of me sending christmas gifts back home, and I probably won't be receiving any, and I may be giving some around here, if I feel like it, but since this community is based on non-consumerism, the less we create, the better, and so what I'm saying here, is I'm off the hook!

Smiles.

And tears, since I'm missing family feelings right now.

I've been talking to Della about Tyler, and Tyler about Della, and to both of them about Solomon. Elly's too little to be much more than cute, but boy do I have things to say about the S-man.

Namely: leave me alone!

And I don't know how to say this nicely so that he listens.

It seems he thinks I'm his entertainment, so I sneak off when he's eating lunch to have alone time, and creep back, on the lookout for his red gumboots, and have imaginary conversations with him as to why he has to eat what's in his bowl before he can have anything else, or why I don't want to 'look at this!' or any other thing he wants my attention for.

Today was a rough one for me. I found myself wanting to be cruel. Not even so he would leave me alone, but just for my satisfaction.

I left, instead, as quietly and quickly as I could. It doesn't actually feel good to be mean, and the mental aftermath is hell as well.

It's funny, because I compare the S-man as he is and my conception of myself as a child. I was independent, (a me-do-it child), and once I knew how, wanted to do things for myself. If I couldn't do something, loathe was I to ask for it to be done for me, I just wanted to figure out HOW to do it.

This is not the case with the S-man. If, after one or two tries, nothing happens, he brings you his problem, shows you, and asks you to do it for him. Or tells you, and asks. Or he'll just ask if he sees something he wants. Like chopsticks, when we were eating lunch, even though it became apparent very quickly he doesn't know how to use them, and was more concerned with stabbing noodles, flinging noodles, wrapping noodles than playing with them.

Yarrr!

I just didn't have the patience today.

Thank goodness Della showed up and offered me a ride into Smithton, our bustling metropolis.

Speaking of which, last night was our first clear night that was warm enough to be out in to see the stars.

Amazing!

The sky around Abeo is a pool of blackness, with Venus shining through in the West, and Orion's Belt in the NorthEast. You can see the lights of Smithton in the North. Tyler said he has plans to build an observatory here, and eventually Smithton will be submerged when the polar ice caps melt. I guess some of the ice sheets have broken apart and the sea is predicted to rise 230 feet (70m) when they melt.

Or something like that.

**

We're headed to Deloraine on Saturday, for the Annual General Meeting. I might get to cook for it, we'll look at some gardens and have lunch at a bakery and stay in someone's bunkbeds. We may get to see Emma, another member of Abeo who lives in Lorinna, a city we can't find on any maps of Tasmania, and perhaps visit Tasmazia and the village of Lower Crackpot, which Tyler says is amaze-ing. (ha!)

I've begun researching other communities around AUS, and I'm wondering what it is that I want to see/experience/visit. Looking around the ic.org website, I checked out some AUS communities like Ballintaggart on the Atherton Tablelands, a community that looks to be sustainable and is in the tropical, jungle part of AUS. Another one is idealifestyle.org, which seems to be a bunch of ideas in run-on sentences about a community based on energy self-sufficiency and sustainability.

I found one 2-person community living on a yacht, somehow managing to survive on a raw-food diet, sailing around looking for 4 more people and the ideal place to live. Oh, yeah, they had a kid listed, not pictured.

I am so much more wary of children in communities!

One community was called the Australian non-children community.

Based on people who've made the decision not to have kids.

I briefly considered them, until I realized that this was what their community is based on. Does that mean they sit around at night and make comments like; “I'm so grateful I decided not to have kids. How many kids did you decide not to have, Gary? It's so nice to have peace and quiet here, no screaming children.”

And while I'm realizing (quite forcefully today) how strongly kids impact my environment, it doesn't mean I'm adverse to having them around.

Every once in a while.

Under supervision.

Yarr! Still some angst after today.

Must...breathe..laugh...smile...relax.

What a great way to break those materialistic habits! If ever you need anything destroyed, just give it to a 5-year old.