Deborah Kalin's Blog, page 11

tiger, tiger, burning bright

Tiger, a photo by deborahkalin on Flickr.

my kingdom for some meaning

I've taken to singing. All the effing time.

I have songs about burps (they're nasty); nappy changes (they're awesome); boredom grizzles; the fear of sleeping; the necessity of sleeping; the insidious and all-too-easily-missed-or-mistaken nature of weariness; socks that won't stay on; the loveliness of whichever drink bottle, chandelier or featureless wall she currently finds fascinating — you name it, I've probably sung about it. An awful lot of my songs are, lately, to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it…"

I am so. utterly. sick. of myself.

Aurealis!

Squawk woke me at 5am this morning (needing moral support to make it through a fart — we both survived physically unscathed, despite her fears to the contrary), and as I always do I checked my phone. My phone is my brain these days. I can't tell if she's really hungry or just fussing unless I know what time it is now and what time it was that she last ate, and yes, I know I have a brain for just this circumstance but did you know brains don't function quite so awesomely after a few days (let alone months) of sleep deprivation?

Anyrate, that's all beside the point, because in checking my phone I found not only the time, but a rather attention-grabbing tweet:

.@debkalin OMG, congrats on the Aureallis finalist spot! You go show @margolanagan what for.

— Barry Goldblatt (@barrygoldblatt) March 20, 2013

Of course I then had to google and you guys:

"First They Came…" has been short-listed for an Aurealis Award!

I am so chuffed that even though I got Squawk safely back to sleep, and even though you must always, always, always sleep when the baby is sleeping, I haven't been able to close my eyes for the buzzing in my blood. I pretty much currently look like this (sans the rabbits):

I can't lie: this photo was taken well before hearing the news. I really do get this excited by finding Red Tulip Elegant Rabbits in white chocolate. Especially since my local supermarket only started stocking Easter chocolate a week ago (omg why you make me wait so long?) and they've treacherously elected not to stock the white one at all (omg why you hate me, coles?).

Quietly, Gently, Quietly

The last week has been somewhat of the hard-slog variety, for a variety of baby-related reasons. Or rather, for a variety of baby-modified reasons. Heat waves aren't fun at the best of times, especially when you don't have air conditioning (and our place doesn't even have access to the cooling southerly breezes) — but when you're cuddling a baby for an average of 50 minutes of every hour, it gets even less so. Similarly, RSI is whimper-making, but when it's caused and aggravated by constantly picking up and holding and settling and soothing and putting down a baby, and there's simply no option of ceasing that activity… Well, you get the picture.

I'm currently wearing a splinted brace on each wrist, a compression band on my right forearm to alleviate the tennis elbow, and I think I need to add a brace to my left knee as well. I'm more neoprene now than woman…

But, to balance things out, the world has been sending me happy-making news regarding my story, "First They Came…". There's some news I'm not yet at liberty to discuss, but among that I can talk about is this wondrous review by Tsana Dolichva:

A really beautiful story that subverts expectation in unexpected ways. It started as a tale of a Melbourne in which shyness had been classed a disease, but it ended as so much more.

…I know which future Twelve Planet collection I'm most looking forward to now.

The story has also been nominated for a Ditmar, and I have to admit the thought of anybody reckoning the story as worthy of attention makes me stupidly happy. (For those keeping count, it's also eligible for the Chronos Awards.)

Given its theme, it seems supremely fitting that the way this story is gathering attention is quietly, gently, quietly.

Dragonfly, a photo by Moyan_Brenn on Flickr.

Pensive Zombies

Pensive Zombies, a photo by deborahkalin on Flickr.

Taken during the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle 2010

if world=me, it's already true

Dear Squawk, I really hope this proves true:

@debkalin she will bring balance to the Force. And by 'Force' I mean world. And by 'balance' I mean speechless frustration.

— Sir Tessa (@sirtessa) February 24, 2013

i was promised tv time. there is no tv time.

Writing around a newborn — even a relatively placid, low-needs one — is requiring a significant re-think of my process. (She says, shocking no one.) Of course I expected this, but I still haven't quite come up with strategies that might work to combat not just the time-poverty but also the zombification of my cognitive functioning due to sleep deprivation. It's a bit of a brutal combination: I now have the entire day in front of me, but yet it is gulped up by errands such as feeding, settling, washing, feeding, settling, settling, settling, feeding, washing… When I do get time to write, it's in five minute snatches, and that's too brief to make any real headway even if I wasn't too tired to think (let alone write) swiftly.

One thing I have managed to implement is reading, although that, too, has needed an adjustment to fit the new lifestyle.

It turns out that feeding is just a smidge lacking in intellectual stimulation for me. I've taken to checking twitter while she's at it (and as a consequence she's taken to burping herself while still feeding rather than wait for me to remember her — I choose to view this as fostering independence). But because newborns feed a lot, there just isn't enough twitter to last the distance. So when she's done, propped up against my chest and fighting the apparently-terrifying prospect of dropping back to sleep, I read. And, because the sound of my voice is soothing, I read aloud.

It's very much changing my experience of stories. I've never been one for audiobooks, because I can't follow a story that's read to me. I much prefer the silence of words on the page, and the way a story opens up underneath that for me to fall into; read aloud to me and the story vanishes like smoke on the wind and there's just a voice intoning meaningless words at me. I simply can't think when people are talking, and if I can't think there's no story.

Here's hoping with all the enforced practice I'm getting at audio stories now, my brain will come out of this trained into a richer appreciation of the format.

Oh, and for the curious, the first book that Squawk is "reading" is Redemption In Indigo, by Karen Lord, which I picked up at the San Diego WFC. She started at chapter 7 and didn't think to complain about that, and she keeps falling asleep within a page, so I can't say much for her critical analysis skills, but she does grizzle when I stop reading.

oh, i'm so funny

That thing I said the other day, about trying to write every day, even if it was something as tiny and trivial as a line in my journal?

HA. HA HA HA.

i just wish she'd get the hang of sleep

Apparently if you want free stuff, being born is an awesome tactic.

Below is (most) everything that Squawk received, from people other than her parents, to celebrate her arrival. There are a couple of outfits missing on account of being in the wash or on said squawker, and I should add that I only included the brand-new stuff bought or made for her (which includes the very-effectively-obscured quilt upon which it's all sitting…), not any of the hand-me-downs.

I can't believe how awesome her wardrobe is now. Between the trilobite t-shirt, the world's smallest ugg boots, booties knitted in the shape of Mary Janes, and a rocking dress made and purchased in Zimbabwe, she is one styling babe.

(I apologise to all gift-givers in advance on her behalf, and assure you the spit-up she will inevitably deposit on said wardrobe items does not reflect her opinion of them.)

The dress from Zimbabwe. Wish it came in my size!

Somewhat to my shock, it's been three and a half weeks since she first arrived, and I won't bore you all with the banalities. It's all the predictable stuff, anyway. She's learnt that she doesn't need to keep her limbs tucked so hard into her torso that she most closely resembles a soccer ball; she pulls incredibly entertaining faces; she refuses to pay attention to my diurnal rhythms; and she's bigger. Mostly in the skull. Seriously, this child has the world's thickest, heaviest skull. The Kalin skull. Quite frankly, I pity the walls she's going to ram it against in her lifetime.

I will say this, though: no one warned me about the heavy breathing, or the STARING. She does this thing when she's hungry where she breathes like Dana-possessed-by-Zool in Ghostbusters. Turns out babies are creepy — who knew?

Hopefully not too ambitiously, I've started, just this week, trying to write some little thing every day — a journal entry, a stream of consciousness, some brainstorming or a blog post; anything, really. I'm going to need (read: I want) to start work on my Twelve Planets collection sooner rather than later, so I want to start gearing my brain and her routine up to let me squeeze some writing time in. Or writing times, rather, as I suspect all my writing for the foreseeable future will be snatched in five or ten minute blocks here or there.

Eh, it's a learning curve and an experiment all at the same time. With a little luck, we'll get the hang of each other soon.

and then, abruptly and yet not…there were three

You guys, I totally grew a whole new person.

And then the hospital just let me walk out with it. A human being! I didn't even have to sign any paperwork promising not to be reckless. (Surreal. Don't they know I'm not exactly competent at this gig?) I just packed up my bags, which suddenly included a squirming creature, and walked out of there. It totally felt like stealing, but nobody batted an eye.

So far, we've discovered she's inherited my rock-hard skull,1 the pterosaur's jiggles and wriggles, and on the she never had a chance score, since apparently both the pterosaur and I displayed the same behaviour as bubs, a habit of sleeping longer and deeper than normal babies. Bonus! Oh, and as you can see from the last photo, she's definitely inherited my sleeping-brow-of-doom.

The photos are from yesterday, at approximately 24 hours old. We reckon she's pretty awesome, and since she was born 2 days after Christmas and doesn't cry,2 we've decided to nickname her in honour of our favourite Christmas viewing: say hello then to John McClane.

This is no surprise to me, having had the thing grinding into my pelvis of lateSeriously. At one hour old she had two injections and responded with only a single indignant squawk and blink. At 48 hours old she had a heel prick and slept through it.Other names so far include The Baggage, obviously, and The Minion. Kinda fond of the latter, I must admit.