The Inner inner sanctum

Daddy Travel Writer has competition. From me. I've just started blogging professionally about life on the New South Wales Mid-North coast for Our Patch, a community based website. It will be an entirely different set of musings to what you read here and here's a link to the first one to give you a clue to what I am on about: http://www.ourpatch.com.au/forster-tuncurry/users/danscott/blogs/2456-life-on-the-mid-north-coast

From now on Daddy Travel Writer should be regarded as news from my inner inner sanctum. Or should that be for my inner sanctum? I know what you're thinking. This guy's a crackpot, this could get messy. But I promise to spare you most of the ugly stuff.

Now where we, being a Dad, being a travel writer, being a recovered adrenaline freak? Actually the last thing I never really was and half the stuff I've thrown myself into for work - skydiving particularly - I'd probably never have done if I hadn't been writing about it. It's funny the tiny part of me that thinks he's Ernest Hemingway often drags the other (much larger) part of me into situations he dreads just for the story. I'm grateful to Ernest for some of the most unforgetable moments in my life but the big little guy wishes sometimes he'd take a long, well-earnt rest and let me sit by the fire reading a good book for a while.

This morning has been one of those mornings when I've been all Dad and very little travel writer. Sure this is the second blog of my day but work on my story on driving 4000 kilometres through WA has got absolutely nowhere. Which adds to yesterday's nearly nowhere. So to sum up I am in the middle of nowhere with WA.

The Daddying began at 3.40am when I had to administer a warm honey and ginger drink to Mila, the poor pet, who's been coughing her guts out for the past few days. It's been keeping her and us up for many a night. She went back to sleep but as usual when this happens, it took me ages to fall asleep again and by the time I did, Mila was waking up and ready to play. My littlest Freya is now succumbing to the same bug, which her Mum has had for weeks as well now, and so she's really unsettled too.

Thursdays are Sarah's yoga teaching morning and Mila is normally at pre-school but not today. Freya was not settled before she started teaching and so I've had four attempts at getting her to sleep while at the same time putting on episodes of Playschool for Mila. It was a hopeless task because I knew each Playschool recording only lasted about 26 minutes and each time I had Freya nearly asleep (by patting her rear-end repetitively - the only thing that works for a non-boobed Daddy) I'd hear a plaintive cry from Mila: "more Playschool". Finally, I found a longer episode and Freya gave in to overwhelming tiredness.

But now it's 11.30am and half the day (work usually starts early and ends at around 4pm most days for me so I can bath the girls before dinner) is gone. I'll get back to the story of course but after this start it might not be my best work!

Anyway, thanks for reading and there'll be more messy thoughts from the inner inner sanctum soon.