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December 17, 2000

December 2000

Well, in one week it'll be Christmas Eve ... ahhhh, what a magical time of year this should be! Mind you, the fact that we've just moved interstate, 650 kilometers away from family and friends, and have yet to secure ourselves a lease on a house to call 'home,' has meant the lead up to this Christmas has been rather hasty and overlooked in the Richard-Sephton household. It's a bit of a shame, I always look forward to Christmas and all the preparations: the baking, the Christmas movies, the tree-decorating, the Christmas get togethers, the shopping and wrapping of gifts, the anticipation as the day edges closer ... but this year it's upon me without much prelude or excitement.

I never would've imagined it a few short months ago, but it appears that the best Christmas present Jay, Pixie and I could receive would be a lease to sign. It's a particularly disturbing time of year to be homeless, and we're having a rather hard time finding a suitable house to rent in this new city we have to learn to call 'home.' Rental prospects are bleak, the competition (even at this time of year) is fierce, and everything seems outrageously expensive. It's driven us to tears and hand-wringing on more than one occasion, we don't enjoy this nomadic existence, and Pixie DOES NOT enjoy being bundled in and out of the car and driving all over the place on steaming hot afternoons, looking over houses and watching her mother burst into a cataclysmic tantrum when house after house after house is 'all wrong'. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not amazingly fussy, but a house has to "feel" right to me if I'm going to call it 'home,' and I have a heightened awareness of the 'vibes' of houses and neighbourhoods.

At this stage in proceedings we found an almost perfect house, put in an application, were recommended by the real estate agents as the best tenants, but were rejected at the last minute by the landlady. We hazard a guess that she didn't want her lovely house ransacked by a marauding 1-year-old; we could be wrong, but that was our overwhelming feeling. All week we continued the search and found nothing, just lots of horrible houses in bleak neighbourhoods for outrageous prices. Finally on Friday we found a house that looked OK, but was deep, deep, deep in the suburbs (which is hard for me as I've always been an inner-city girl), but we've submitted an application. On Saturday we found another house that was quite nice, but had a bleak backyard and electric cooking (I HATE electric ovens, and I have been known to have passionate-phases of baking), but we submitted another application anyway.

So here we sit, a week before Christmas, in temporary accommodation (albeit a comfortable townhouse), while all our possessions are God knows where in storage, and we wait on news of houses we only feel mildly passionate about, but we feel desperate to secure a house before we head back down south for Christmas. Otherwise our visit to friends and family will be cut short as we'll be forced to drive back early to continue this seemingly fruitless and excruciatingly frustrating house hunt. We need as much luck as you can send our way, so wish us well!

Despite all this I'm doing my best to generate a little Christmas cheer into our frantic lives. We pulled out our moving Santa and set him up on top of a removal box; we bought a teeny-tiny Christmas tree for our dining table (our big one is packed in storage); we cleared a space for our Christmas cards; and we've bought toys for Pixie's Santa sack. We tried to get the girl's photo taken with Santa but she bellowed the shopping centre down when Jai placed her on Santa's lap. 'Twas rather amusing! Despite Pixie's refusal to sit with the harmless old guy, Santa is getting Pixie: a coloured wooden block set in a cart, two wooden puzzles, a TeleTubbies video (Jai and Pixie are big fans), four books, a Pooh picnic set, a set of hand-painted wooden babooshka dolls, some animal stacking cups, a Pooh bear sand and water funnel and a crate of eggs you can pull the shells off to reveal little faces! We might throw in a bouncing Tigger because she seems to go crazy for them when she sees them in the shop, and if we really feel like spoiling our Princess (highly likely given our homeless circumstances), we'll also buy her a black baby doll of the male persuasion (you know, one of those wrinkly newborn dolls with a little penis and a bandage over their healing belly-button! Ha!). Pixie loves baby dolls, (especially if they suck dummies), and I want her to have dolls of different races and genders so she won't turn into a 'white bread' Barbie doll kinda girly-girl! Ha! So I guess we've had a pretty decent blow-out for the Pixie's sack! And we've had FUN, even if our shopping expeditions are seriously rushed.

Mind you, if Santa was watching my girl these past few weeks I'm not sure he'd be so generous with the gift-giving! Pixie is going through a 'bad patch' at the moment. She's developed this nasty habit of yelling REALLY LOUDLY all the time. She'll stand at the fridge door and YELL in an attempt to get me to open it for her. She'll stand at the glass door that leads to the balcony and YELL to get out. And worst of all she YELLS at random moments when we're traveling around in the car. She's scared the bejeesuz outta me and Jai when we're just peacefully driving along and suddenly she'll YELL so loudly you'd think she'd just spotted a Pixie-eating piranha in the backseat of the car! Sheesh! She YELLS in shopping centres and supermarkets. So much that I don't pay any attention to it now, but occasionally I'll notice people staring strangely at us and I realise that Pixie has been yelling really loudly for the past few minutes. Ha! What can I say? I've got one of those kids!

OK, well, I don't imagine this Toddler diary will be posted before the new year, but I want to wish everyone a MERRY CHRISTMAS anyway. Jai, Pixie and I hope you all have a FANTABULOUS TIME and I want to hear all about everyone's holiday when our message board is up and running next year!

Love and best wishes for the New Year too,

Eloise, who is suffering serious withdrawals from diary-writing life!