Got the heater going in here. Love old Queenslanders but they are not built for cold weather. Too many gaps, no insulation and, in this house, no curtains. Three degrees this morning. Bitter. Fingers just starting to thaw.

Couldn't sleep last night. Fell into bed exhausted at 8:30. Nights of insominia outnumber good nights especially since quitting smokes. Woke up at 1am. Too cold to get up and read a book so tossed and turned until 4, the last time I looked at the clock before 6. Then, when the most delicious sleep is possible, it is time to get up and feed everyone. I can hear Mallory playing with his bell in the next room. Tachimedes begins to do his vocal warm up exercises. Dimitri shuffles from one end of the verandah to the other and the outside galahs have quiet conversations with the wild ones. So I can't lay there and pretend I don't know everyone is hungry and waiting for breakfast, that the lorikeets will appreciate the warm nectar mix on a cold morning. That the wild galahs, perched on the overhead wires, don't really begin their day until they've had their morning wake up muffin at Glen Ellen.

One excellent result of the insomnia was the flash of a drawing I could try. Spent much of yesterday in abortive attempts to come up with an idea for the next work. Sketches on typing paper which came to nothing and met their fate in the compost bin. Funny how the idea came. I was in that hypnagogic state between sleeping and waking (have you ever tried to follow your thought processes back when in that realm? For me, impossible, as though an invisible curtain is drawn between the logical mind of sun and the fog-wreathed world of imagination, where I suspect the mind roams truly free, unfettered by physical rules and laws and regulations). Anyway, this image came to mind fully formed with such a jolt it snapped me out of that dreamy state. A good thing too for I didn't want to doze off and forget it or to remember later that I thought of *something* and not be able to remember what it was I conjured up.

Almost a week without a cigarette. No more morning coughing fits. No stink of cigarettes on me or in me, not in the house, in the furnishings, clothes or cats (yes, they stunk too - not to mention the years of second hand smoke - poor things, animal cruelty really). Trying very hard not to overeat. Not a problem during the day, have even reduced portion size, but at night, much more difficult. Eating fruit and munching pistachios, almonds and peanuts in shell.

Beating myself up for doing this, not doing that, mind like a hamster wheel spinning off dirty streamers of negativity. Walking the dogs yesterday I said to myself just Stop It! Stop It! Big sigh of relief. God, we're hard on ourselves. I'm hard on myself. I know I'm not perfect, far from it. I don't use my time well. I'm lazy and selfish and vain and all thos other labels I slap so freely onto my wrinkled forehead but I'm also quite okay. The animals are looked after and loved, my husband is looked after and loved, the house ditto, I turn out quite alot of art work, I still have an open mind and want to learn how to be with Balthazar in a way which is easy and comfortable for both of us. I give thanks daily for the good things in my life. I'm not sure I deserve them but I do appreciate them. I try and not think bad thoughts about people or things. I try and be mindful. I try and watch my tongue so that I don't score cheap shots by being 'right'. I generally try and be a better person than I was the day before.

I wouldn't let anyone else speak to me as I speak to myself. That book I never read, 'How to be Your Own Best Friend' is aptly titled. We aren't very good at it.

Haven't written about Dimitry in a very long time. Something has changed in that little feathered head. He (or I suspect She) is still timid and wary and easily frightened but she is also bolder, calmer and braver than before. I've put a cocky cage on the floor and feed her seed inside it. It was there for a month or so than I took it out to keep Marvin in while Terry lived in Marvin's aviary. When I put it back Dimitri was less cautious about me being nearby. Previously she'd leave the cage when I was 4 or 5 feet away. Now I am close enough to close the door if I wish. I leave when she goes inside to eat. If I move and she comes out I tell her to go back in and then leave when she does so. Want to gradually accustom her to having the door closed and then opened again while she's inside but if need be I can just close the door and move her - which is the whole idea. I want to get her off the verandah and into an aviary.

So she was a bit more confident when the cocky cage was returned to the verandah. The confidence also shows in the way she takes food from my fingers. She used to snatch and run even if the running was only two or three feet away. Now she takes the treat gently and slowly. I sit on the floor and feed her millet. After the first couple of times she hardly moves away at all but stands just in front while she eats. Get the feeling that one day she'll lower her head for a scratch. That would be an achievement, a break out the champagne moment.

I reread this post and think it's not written well enough for anyone else to read. I mean look at that first sentence or two. How boring. Why would anyone continue reading. Maybe I should delete them and go straight to what meat there is but then I realize, no this post is for me. When I wrote in journals I didn't write for an audience, I wrote for me. I wrote because I had to and it didn't matter whether it was worthy of some invisible reader. The reader was me. Writing a journal on a blog changes things, like a physicist changes the results of his experiments by observing them. Or, perhaps, reality tv shows have nothing to do with reality because the participants are always aware at some level they are being filmed. So, in an endeavour to be true to myself I'll leave the boring bits.

It's quarter to one in the morning and I can't sleep.  Again.  This menopausal insomnia is crap.  Never had trouble sleeping before unless worried about something specific or sick.  Now for no reason whatsoever sleep doesn't come.  Better to just get up rather than lie there.
 
Have done something quite freeing this morning however.  I have deactivated my facebook account.  Got on it as everyone was on it and talking about it but I don't use it.  The reason I don't use it is because it's so public.  It's all minor chitchat about nothing much in particular, illustrated with photos highlighted with a so many (pick a number) *like* this.  Makes no sense.  I realize it's a great resource or it wouldn't be so popular but it's akin to trying to talk to friends in a noisy restaurant.  Can't hear anything properly as everyone's talking at once and don't have any in depth conversations because well, I don't know why except that the forum just doesn't suit it. 

Strange, almost felt guilty for getting off it, like a slap in the face to all my facebook 'friends' but they aren't really friends, most of them.  Those that are friends email occasionally which is more like sitting down and having a chat rather than all this useless noise that passes for conversation.  I'm probably being a bit harsh but that's how I perceive it.  It came in handy during the floods as a way to broadcast information quickly but other than that it isn't for me.  Suppose I can rejoin if I want to at some future point but don't think I will.

What I have done is start a My Space account.  This account will be for photos of my artwork only - some place I can direct people to if I want to show them what I've done.  Didn't feel like doing that on FB nor do I particuarly want to do it here.  This place is just a place to have a chat with myself when I'm in the mood and nothing more.  It's not for other people to read (which is patently obvious as I haven't any followers).

There's a part of me that wants followers.  I want to be popular, to have everyone like me, to be the center of the universe.  After 55 years I still haven't outgrown that desire but at least sometimes it is less of a desire than others.

Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with me; that I am perfectly content not to have friends.  (Yes, yes, I have friends but they are casual not intimate friends). Studies show that people with friends and those who are involved with the community live longer and healthier lives than those that don't.  Oh dear, I'm wrong again.   I don't really have a best friend except for Richard.  I don't work at getting and keeping friends.  I like people and I enjoy them in small doses but truthfully?  I'd just rather be left alone.  There has to be a place in the world for loners too.  There have to be those that muddle along on their own, rather like that echidna we saw yesterday afternoon.  He'd crossed the road and collided with an obstacle; the eroded bank of the hill, at least 20 feet high, that the road cut through.  He climbed one furrow, lost his footing and rolled back to the bottom.  He tried again and made it.  We watched in case he changed his mind and came back across the road.  He didn't care.  He had something he was going to do and it took all his attention.  Whether he had an audience or not was immaterial.

Sometimes that's the way I feel about my life.  I'm here doing my thing.  It's not a glamorous or popular thing.  It's not very interesting to anyone but me but it is my thing and I like doing it.  And it's kind of a solo thing.  I'm not particularly keen on sharing it nor, selfish as this sounds, am I particularly keen on getting involved with others.  I know the metaphysical aspects of life; that we are all connected, what affects one affects everything, the butterfly wing in Porta Vallarta affecting typhoons in Hong Kong but still it's all so tiresome keeping up with the bzzzzzzz of a facebook or the gossip in our small neighbourhood.  If that's the glue that keeps body and soul together to a healthy old age then count me out.  It's so avid.  Eyes gleaming, lips moist, that superior satisfaction of being able to discuss so and so who has been/is less perfect than I (at this particular point in time).  It's tedious.   I'm of the opinion that most people, with the exception of the really cruel bastards who torture and kill for the pleasure of it, are doing the best they can with what they've got to work with.  What they've got to work with is their upbringing, their spirituality, innate or overt, their intelligence and their openness to life and learning.  If they appear to be as dull as ditch water or stuck in some rut of brutish low intelligence and insensitivity well, they probably can't help it - like telling someone who's colourblind that he's a sinner because he can't tell the difference between red and green.

Why is it I sleep well on days off and badly on days I've worked? I'm tired enough. I hit the pillow and think sweet oblivion will wrap me in slumber. I can feel it happening; the thoughts that are like flights of birds, birds that are without a compass and dive and sweep just for the sheer enjoyment. Then suddenly, without reason, I am yanked back into every day alertness and sleep has disappeared over some far horizon.

I stuck it out for an hour then decided to get up and do yoga. After forty minutes I was relaxed with that nice unobtrusive tingle which comes from yoga and still sleep eluded me. When I awoke it was nearly seven and the day felt like it had started for the train without me. I still feel that way. I've done the housework and the big push to get through the verandah (birds can do a lot of pooping in two days and that pooping takes alot of hands and knees scrubbing!) but I am without energy and have a tangible lassitude in my thinking, like cheesecloth makes a curtain between what I am capable of thinking and what I actually am thinking.

Had a great session with Dimitri on Sunday. We've just been working on targeting with him taking seeed from a small coop cup (he's so clever. I used to fill the coop cup but before taking it away he'd take a huge mouthfull of seed which would take minutes to eat. Now I use a shallow layer and he has to be content with a few seeds at a time). Anyway, we'd been working on that for awhile and I decided to try the retrieve again. I'm back chaining which means I put the wooden peg into the bowl and try and click when he picks it upand and drops it back in. He doesn't understand yet but just the fact that I wasn't clicking for when he dropped it out of the bowl and there was so much activity going on with clicks and treats and hands and movement he got quite (for him) blase with the exercise. I was very proud of him.

Even today while I was on hands and knees scrubbing the floor and he was in his 'penthouse' (a narrow 3' tall ex-compost bin with light and entrance holes cut in the sides with a ladder leading to a cocky cage with an entrance hole cut out the bottom) he didn't mind me being so close. He even preened himself! (His penthouse, now that he's learned to use it, has been very nice for him. He's up high and can see out and about yet he cannot fall and hurt himself. He had high perches before but if he got a fright he'd attempt to fly and would of course crash to the ground so this creation of R's has been a nice safe compromise).

There's a little budgie at work, handraised by K from the featherless stage. He's called Tony and is now old enough to fly. I was thinking about him on the way home the other day. I don't think his life at the vet surgery is ideal as he can get lost in the busy-ness of the day and not get time out for flying and one on one attention. Tonys valiant forgiving little heart brought tears to my eyes. Here's this bird, one of tens of thousands baby budgies bred and sold every day, often not regarded as more than a passing fancy, who is so sweet, so smart and so much a big BIG being it seems criminal the he and others like him are not lauded and loved more than they are. I know there are exceptions, many exceptions but they are out-numbered by the 'it's just a budgie' majority. But Tony is not 'just a budgie'. Neither is Cornelius. They are truly incredible creatures. I've love to 'rescue' Tony but of course I can't - and his life isn't bad. He's fed and watered. I brought him tree branches and showed how his cage could be lined with multiple papers on TOP of the wires so that a set could be removed each day and he would always have a sort of clean cage (budgies fossick on the ground like galahs and cockatiels). Still, for the most part he lives in the windowless tea room and only gets attention when someone has time - and in a busy vet surgery there isn't much.