A Free Man

Let’s kick things off this week with the sultry, smoky voice of Melody Gardot. Her debut LP, “Worrisome Heart” is out and what I’ve heard of it so far is just stunning. Gardot was seriously injured after being hit by a car whilst riding her bicycle in 2004. One of the treatments suggested for her was music therapy and she has truly blossomed. The title track is a guantlet thrown down for aspiring jazz singers. Sublime.

MP3: Melody Gardot - “Worrisome Heart”  .

Word of mouth is still my favorite way of learning about new music, one of the reasons for this post in fact. I got a package from Blighty a little while ago and along with wonderful English sweets was the Mystery Jets latest “Twenty One” (thanks, SSG!). Their sugary British psych-pop wasn’t quite as sweet as the Wine Gums, but nearly as addictive. Get the new Mystery Jets from Seven Digital.

MP3: Mystery Jets - “Half In Love With Elizabeth”

I don’t know much about hip-hop, but I know when something tickles my fancy. And Seattle’s Common Market did that with “Tobacco Road”, the title track from their forthcoming debut LP. The duo got a fair bit pof praise for their EP “Black Patch War” and from the sound of things, the full-length could be a biggun. “Tobacco Road is due out in Septmeber from Massline.

MP3: Common Market - “Tobacco Road”

A Free Man has already declared his undying love for Welsh singer-songwriter Eugene Francis Jnr and had that love consumated in a delightful cyber interview back in March. So it should come as no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed the most recent single from his debut LP “The Golden Beatle”. If you don’t own this record already - it’s one of the best undiscovered gems of the year. Get it from .

M4A: Eugene Francis Jnr - “My Own Pollution” (Radio Mix)

Herman Düne is a French duet that’s been recording music for nearly a decade. This track, from their 2006 LP “Giant”, is playful, clever and horn-infused (always a selling point for A Free Man). Kind of a Magnetic Fields/Modern Lovers vibe. They’ve got a new LP coming out in October on Everloving Records.

MP3: Herman Düne - “I Wish That I Could See You Soon”

It’s been a long time since anything from Minneapolis has caught my ear, but High on Stress channels the city’s hey day. “Cop Light Parade”, from the quartet’s debut LP “Moonlight Girls”, is reminiscent of fellow Minnesotans The Jayhawks and Soul Asylum. A Free Man likes nothing more than well crafted Americana, and that’s what High on Stress is offering. “Moonlight Girls” is out and available from CD Baby.

M4A: High On Stress - “Cop Light Parade”

One of my favorite covers is Sonic Youth’s treatment of The Carpenters’ “Superstar”, it’s one of those rare covers that’s better than the original. I’m not saying that The Shock of Pleasure has superceded the Sonic Youth version, but it’s pretty damn good. I’m not sure what else the Dallas quartet has to offer, but if Kelley Christian’s vocals on this track are indicative, they’re worth checking out. Their debut LP, “It’s About Time” is out and available from .

I’ve no idea where the Roadside Graves MP3s that I heard this week came from. They certainly didn’t come through my Inbox, so I’m guessing that one of the blogs that I frequent recommended them. I like to give credit where it’s due, but just can’t remember. The memory is the first thing to go, they say.

Anyhow, Roadside Graves. Why is so much good alt-country and Americana coming from the Northeast right now? These guys are a New Jersey outfit who have just released their debut LP, available from .

MP3: Roadside Graves - “Ruby”

I’m fixing to date myself here, but Slowdive’s debut LP induced a sea change in my musical tastes in the early 90’s - away from the guitar heavy grunge that I had been toward melodic dream-pop. I still count “Just For A Day” among my Top 100. Neil Halstead, the male voice of Slowdive, has a new solo record out that’s more reminiscent of Nick Drake’s spare folk than the lush sounds of Slowdive. Outstanding nonethess. ”Oh! Mighty Engine” is out on Brushfire Records and is available from .

MP3: Neil Halstead - “Little Twig”

Closing things out today is Setting Sun, the nom de plume of upstate New York based Gary Levitt. Setting Sun sits squarely in the burgeoning, and compelling, “making music in your bedroom” genre. He recently released his third record, “Children of the Wild”, and is currently touring with A Free Man favorite, Quitzow. Check them out in a town near you and buy Setting Sun’s music directly from the artist.

MP3: Setting Sun - “No Devil Me No More”

Popularity: 98% [?]

I know that I’m about as far from objective as I am from my homeland, but this week’s installment of Dr. O’C’s recounting of pregnancy and childbirth struck me to the quick. I’m not one to be quoting poetry, but her post this week made me think of a Robert Frost poem that I must have read in college:

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain…

The green light to push. SHIT! Now comes the hard and painful part right?  Not so much.  I can’t feel anything with the epidural and am completely reliant on the midwife to tell me when I am in the middle of a contraction and when to push.  So I push for a bit, rest, push etc. I remember doing the breathing thing like they teach you in antenatal class and Chris doing it in my ear with me.  So far so good.  All very calm.  But then in come the doctors, they chat with the midwife over in the corner.  I (naively) assume that they are talking about someone else.  A doctor had been in previously to examine me.  But then they explain that because I had been in labour so long the baby’s heart rate wasn’t recovering at the end of every contraction.  They said it very calmly.  Explained that they were just going to help out a bit with a plunger! (Proper term is a Ventouse).  Turn the babies head or something and hopefully that would do it.  Chris started to get a bit panicky and so did I when I saw the size of the toilet plunger that was about to enter me.  Chris assured me later it wasn’t really THAT big, but at the time it looked bloody enormous.  Then things got a bit scary.  It is all a bit of a blur now, but I remember the panic in Chris’s face when a pediatrician came in pushing an elaborate life support cart.  I tried to reassure him, but was a bit frightened myself.  We later found out this was completely normal procedure.  A few more pushes and out came the baby, it was a boy - Z.  He was whipped onto my stomach for some skin-to-skin contact and then whisked away to the cart for some tests.  He was fine, but I wasn’t.

The long labour took its toll and I was (to put it bluntly) torn to bits.  I lost a litre of blood and knew that things weren’t great when several doctors spent time arguing about whether or not we could get access to an operating theatre.  All that kept going through my head was ‘But the baby is born, why would I need to be in an operating theatre?’  The lovely Irish obstetrician spent the next 55 minutes stitching me up.  I knew how long it took because I could see the clock ticking by.  I remember talking about Ireland, about my Nana who played camogie for Ireland (the OB played as well) and about other mundane things.  I remember Chris asking if I wanted to hold Z.  I mentally couldn’t.  This wasn’t the happy but exhausted holding the baby scenario I had imagined it would be after he was born.  Mostly I remember the OB telling me that it would only take 20 or so minutes and getting scared when it went much longer.  I remember all the bloody gauze that she seemed to be going through.  I tried to stay calm but 45 minutes into this ordeal I couldn’t.  I started to cry. She finished up, I begged Chris to get me a private room (which you could pay for if available).  Finally I was able to hold Z, but to be honest I don’t even remember it now.  I don’t remember the first time I held my baby.

A lovely midwifery assistant brought me toast and yoghurt and washed me down and got me into some PJs.  She helped me feed Z, which was a very strange sensation.  I was wheeled upstairs to a private room thankfully and we just sat and stared at Z.  I could barely move, Chris had to go home and here I was left with a baby who was big and swollen and surprisingly clean.

Chris came in the next morning with bundles of blue clothes.  Clearly excited and besotted and a little better rested than I.  Nurses, Doctors and Physiotherapists came by and checked up on us both.  They garbled a bunch of instructions at me but I was too exhausted to take much in.  We went off to the pediatrician to have him checked over and he peed on the intern.  We registered his birth and I begged to be let go home.  I didn’t want to stay in the hospital any longer than I needed.  In retrospect I probably should have.  I was weak, battered and probably in a bit of shock from the trauma of the birth.  I thought if I went home everything would be normal.  I finally convinced them and left with a bag of drugs to take over the coming weeks, and a kid!  I also left with explicit instructions not to lift anything heavier than the baby for 6 weeks.  I think in retrospect they should have told me to consider my wound as serious as a c-section because then maybe I wouldn’t have been so blasé about the whole thing and maybe it wouldn’t have gotten worse.

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Phantom Planet’s “The Guest” is available from and Amazon.

 

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More About Wordless Wednesday

Iron & Wine’s “The Creek Drank the Cradle” is available from .

 

 Iron & Wine - "Faded from the Winter" [3:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 75% [?]

“She’s got eyes of deepest blue
He’s got hair that’s green
Everybody’s got nice stuff but me
I wish I had the kind of cash
To make heads turn when I walk past
I wish I could live in luxury
Everybody’s got nice stuff but me…”

-The Dead Milkmen - “Everybody’s Got Nice Stuff But Me”

As our bus pulled away from Oxford on a cold late-March morning, Dr. O’C uttered the phrase that I knew would define the next month or so of our lives:

“We’re homeless with too much luggage.”

And that was the case as we trundled our way down to Oz, via family visits on the way. Living out of a few suitcases, going places but nowhere fast. It wasn’t easy, but it was manageable - especially with an end date, a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe I was delusional, but I figured most of the stuff that we shipped from Britain would get to Oz shortly after we did. I assumed that I’d be reunited with my computer, the bulk of my clothes, my books, my kitchen knives, and so on. If you had told me that four months after leaving Britain we would still be living out of the same suitcases, well, I certainly would have packed more socks.

But, nearly four months to the day that Simpsons Removal and Storage came and collected our worldly possessions I’m still cycling through the same handful of underwear, still staring at blank walls in our new home, still cursing at the creaky old Mac laptop. I’m still shivering my way to the bus stop in the morning in a completely unsuitable jacket (that I nearly threw away when we left Sweden). And Z has grown out of all the Georgia Bulldogs clothing that we brought with us. At least that’s what Dr. O’C tells me.

Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself, how long does it take for a container full of personal itemes to get from England to Australia? Is four months a long time? Average cargo ship takes 32 -40 days - less than six weeks - to make that voyage, which begs the question - where has our stuff been?

Well for the first two months, it sat in the Simpsons Removals and Storage* warehouse in Kent. You see, when Dr. O’C negotiated the deal with Simpsons (this was during her “Don’t Get Done, Get Dom” phase) they neglected to point out that despite being a moving company, they actually suck quite badly at moving things. This lapse in providing us with accurate information sort of foreshadowed the remainder of our experience with them. Customer service is not Simpsons Removal and Storage’s strong point. They neglected to let us know anything about our shipment, they neglected to let us know when we owed them money, they neglected to let us know when payments didn’t clear properly.

To be fair to Simpsons**, as uninspired I am to do so, it’s not all their fault. They finally got our container to Melbourne in late June. For the last month it has been sitting in Customs in Melbourne waiting for inspection. It was inspected and contraband was found in the form of a stupid little wooden seagull, common in seafood restaurants all over the Atlantic seaboard. Australian Customs prides itself in protecting Australia’s borders from the entry of illegal and harmful goods, potential terrorist threats and unauthorised people. And apparently tacky sculpture. The best part? We had the option of paying Customs $90 to destroy the seagull or $260 to irradiate it and make it safe for Australia. I guess you’ve got to pay for all that protection somehow. To add insult to injury, we had to wait another week or so for the customs agents to come back and burn the damn bird.

Barring any unforeseen circumstances the 36 boxes containing the physical trappings of our lives will be on our doorstep by Thursday.

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* I’m repeatedly naming Simpsons Removals & Storage, the shipping company from Kent (UK), because I’m hoping that when ‘Googled’ this post will be available for people who are thinking of using Simpsons Removal & Storage for their move. Don’t do it.

** That was Simpsons Removal and Storage.

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The Dead Milkmen’s “Beelzebubba” is available from .

 

 The Dead Milkmen - "Everybody's Got Nice Stuff But Me" [2:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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It was not my intent to open the Pandora’s box of punk rock for young Z over breakfast on Sunday morning. In the gamut of kid’s music, punk has some things going for it - loud, simple chord structure and often amusing, repetitive lyrics. It also has a number of fairly obvious negatives. But when my iPod randomly spun “Pretty Vacant” while Z was eating his yogurt, I got giggles galore by doing my best Johnny Rotten impression. So, I decided, damn the torpedoes, never mind the bollocks, let’s get hardcore, Baby Z. Oh, and his Mum was still in bed, so had little input in my parenting decisions.

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I’ve never really been much of a punk rocker. They heyday of punk was about a decade before my time, and by the time I got exposed to the genre it was hackneyed and kind of commercialised. For example, you could buy your own pre-safety-pinned leather jacket at the Oaks Mall in Gainesville. I came to age toward the end of earnest jangly rock and the beginning of grunge, so while I appreciated the paths laid by punk, it wasn’t really what got my musical groove going. I mean, I loved a bit of “Blitzkrieg Bop” but when someone turned on The Adverts, I rolled my eyes and wandered to more melodious pastures.

For a while, when I first moved back down to Georgia, I ran around with The Punks (TM). I can’t really remember why, but when I first moved to Athens, I was adopted into this group despite not really looking the part. I liked my jeans loose and boot cut rather than tight and peglegged, and my boots made by Tony Lama rather than Doc Marten. I had never sported a mohawk and my tattoos were a bit more reserved than most of the Athens punks. Nonetheless, they took me in and for a year or so were my best friends in town. They allowed me to be different, to stand out from the crowd and feel OK about it. By sticking with a group, I had both figurative and literal protection from the drunk frat boys that populate the streets of downtown Athens after closing time. (The irony here is that about five years earlier I was a drunk frat boy staggering the streets of a different Southern town). I could turn up any time of day at the local punk bar (Lunch Paper at the time, for my Athenian readers) and find a friendly face. Basically, I could be different in the cozy confines of a group of similarly different people.

Hanging with the punks didn’t make me a punk. I found the rules a bit stifling - which music you could and couldn’t listen to (Black Flag, yes; Nirvana, no), which beer you could drink (PBR, yes; Sam Adams, no) and so on. Thus, I was never a very good punk. But, in that year of cheap beer and additional tattoos, I learned to love punk rock. I had been exposed to the basics - The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The New York Dolls - but I never really got them until I started wandering the streets with my Georgian punk friends. I never really got the angst, the sense of persecution, the anger that these early punk rock bands shouted from the rooftops until that first year of dodging drunken alumni looking for someone to take their frustration out on after the Dawgs got smoked by Bama. I understood how three chords, strung together apparently at random, could provide succor when some bowhead from Macon made fun of your fashion decision. From the granddaddies, I branched out and learned to love artists like Patti Smith, The Buzzcocks, The Dead Kennedys and Pere Ubu. These were people who had changed rock music forever and from which sprung some of the “grunge” and “alternative” artists that I held up as heros.

I stopped hanging with the punks after a dark winter night following a particularly heavy session at the local. We headed to the Waffle House for some 2 a.m. sustenance. The details are hazy, as they would be after a night of PBR and Jim Beam, but something instigated a stand-off between my group of punks and a group of African-American guys across the restaurant. Starting off, as these things do, with a misinterpreted glance and escalating through strong words and big talk, it ended up in the parking lot with circling threats of violence. Fortunately it never got physical and everyone ultimately went their separate ways. For me, however, it was the beginning of the end of my running with these guys.

Something happened after that night, a veneer was stripped away. You see, in that Waffle House confrontation I saw my friends for what they were. Which, at the end of the day, was not much different from the drunk frat boys that they battled with. They hung together as a group, a group that relied on internal rules to dictate their behavior. The frat boys had their rules and uniforms, rules and uniforms that repulsed the punks. But as I stood back and watched that night, I saw my friends in their uniforms bridling against another group that they were different from and it got a little bit ugly. I saw the fear and insecurity that all that leather and all those piercings were failing to hide. And I saw a nastier, darker side that I didn’t know was there. It had never occured to me to discuss race with my friends, and it became clear to me from that night on that I had less in common with them than I had thought. From that night on, I decided that I needed to make my own way in the world, without a group, a herd, a tribe, to protect me.

I still like a good three-chord shoutfest now and again, though.

————–

And so, apparently, does Baby Z. He’s reached a stage of his development at which he approves quite strongly of disorder. It seems, in fact, that the idea of order offends him in some way. If you put his toys in the toybox, he rips them back out again. Given any kind of paper (news, toilet or other) he rips it to shreds and  scatters the remains to the four corners of the room. Given a container of any sort, Z will not rest until those contents are fully removed and preferrably destroyed. Maybe that’s why he appreciated The Sex Pistols so much.

“I am an anarchist
Don’t know what I want but I know how to get it
I wanna destroy the passer by cos i
I wanna be anarchy!”

My little anarchist grinned and giggled the whole way through “Never Mind the Bollocks”. I thought of pulling out The Ramones, but thought the boy might start pulling up the carpet or shaving a mohawk on the dog.

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The Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks” is available from .

 

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Broken Social Scene’s self-titled album is available from .

 

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Sometimes I think I’m a masochist. As I mentioned in my last politically inclined post, I listen to a lot of podcasts from all over the political spectrums. One of these is Bill O’Reilly’s radio program (The Bill-O The Clown Show,  if you listen to Keith Olbermann). Now, I should point out that I generally listen to O’Reilly for the entertainment value - I like it when he yells at people and calls them pinheads. O’Reilly is long on vitriol and short on facts.

As long as you recognize this, you can enjoy O’Reilly’s show for the humor of it and it is an indication of what’s going on in the mind of the Far Right. The problem is that a lot of people don’t seem to reognize that O’Reilly is one of the great comics of his generation. They take him seriously. They go to him for news and analysis of the news. That’s some kind of scary. It’s not the narcissism, you get used to that, it’s the repetitiveness. O’Reilly seems to subscribe to that idea that the Right has taken on recently that if you repeat something often enough it becomes true. No spin indeed.

O’Reilly’s ranting this week has been based a lot on the current economic woes. He likes to repeat the same accusations against his bogeymen - “the liberal media”, the “Far Left loons” and “socialist Europe” who offer “cradle-to-grave entitlements, big federal apparatus, high taxation, all the things that the Democratic Party wants to introduce here in the United States”. One of his shows this week was about taxes. How the Dems want to raise everyones taxes to pay for their social entitlement programs - standard Right Wing chatter from the “independent” O’Reilly. He cites the crippling tax rates in Europe and other “socialist” countries with enititlements like single-payer health care that prevents their citizens from dying.

A lot of what O’Reilly had to say this week didn’t ring true. I’m now paying taxes in my third different country and I’ve never really felt that there was that much of a difference in the amount that I pay in taxes in any of the three. So, I decided to do a bit of research into tax rates in various countries. I used my income as a gauge and compared the individual income tax rates in a “low” tax country like the U.S. with a “socialist” country like France and a couple in between - Britain and Australia - where the tax rate is higher, but government services are more plentiful. Things like single payer health insurance, government subsidized maternity leave and generous unemployment benefits. I’m not going to tell you exactly what I make, but let’s just say it would put me solidly in the middle class. When did that happen? When did I become a member of the bourgeoisie?

• In the USA someone earning what I do would pay 28% of their salary as federal income tax. Depending on the state in which I lived, I may owe up to another 10% in state income tax. Again, depending on the state, I would pay between 0 - 10% on all goods as a sales tax. For example, if I lived in Utah (god forbid) I would pay about 33% of my income in taxes before sales tax. If I lived in California, that pre-sales tax rate would be 38%.
• In Britain, I would be paying a whopping 40% of my income in tax as well as 17.5% on top of goods that I purchase (except necessities like food).
• In that bogeyman of the right, France, I would also be paying 40% income tax rate and 19.6% of goods and services, so similar to the rate in Britain. But as in the UK, health care would cost me virtually nothing.
• In Australia, I’ll be paying 26% of my income back to the government and a surcharge of 10% on top of goods. At my income rate, I add another 1.5 % of my income that goes toward the national health service - so a grand total of 27.5% before sales tax.

So, Bill-O’s got it half right - people in “socialist” France or “capitalist” Britain do pay more to the government - but depending on what part of the U.S. you live in, not much more. And if you tack on the amount you pay for health insurance in the U.S., the amount of money you lose when you take time off for maternity leave or are unwillingly out of work and the like, I’d be willing to bet that you’re paying more.

That’s the thing, I really resented paying taxes in the U.S. because it wasn’t clear to me what they were paying for - sure, I want to support the NIH, NSF, NEA - but in 2007 nearly 20% of the federal budget went to pay for defense and an equal amount went to pay down the national debt. In the same year in Britain the top two budget items were health and education. This is why, even though my tax burden in Britain was higher, I didn’t mind paying it.

Australia was a surprise. Before you consider any government “entitlements”, I’m going to pay less in taxes in  Oz than I would be in the U.S. Now, the Australian health care system is not as good as Britain’s or France’s. We may in fact, once Dr. O’C starts working, be required to buy private health insurance or pay an additional 1% of my salary in taxes. A Free Man, who is a big advocate of nationalized health services, was not impressed by this. Nonethess, the biggest budget item in Australia is social welfare programs. Unfortunately, number two is “general government services”, in other words the massive Aussie bureaucracy. So, Down Under, I’m paying less but maybe getting less as well.

The take home message? “You get what you pay for?” “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes?” I guess so. More importantly, be careful about what you hear, especially in this election season.  The other day, Bill-O was shouting about buying land in Ireland if Obama raised his tax rate to 60%. Now, I know you’re probably calculating whether or not it would be worth it, but let’s take a look at reality.

I looked at Obama’s website for information about his tax plan. Unfortunately, it is notably lacking in specifics, facts or hard numbers. So, Bill-O could be right as far as I know. But, the highest tax rate in the world is in Denmark at 63% and even though the Danes are the happiest people in the world, I doubt that Obama will be looking to Copenhagen for his tax policy. For comparison, I looked at McCain’s website and the Republican nominee is more specific. He says that he will lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% and will “keep the [individual] tax rate low”. These were the only numbers on either candidate’s fiscal pages. Unfortunately, McCain fails to point out that only the largest corporations pay a 35% tax rate.

The fact of the matter is that no matter who gets elected, most people will pay about what they paid in taxes last year. This is about what people in most of the rest of the Western world pay - plus or minus a few percentage points. What may be worth looking at is just what you’re getting for your money.

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Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Greatest Hits” is available from .

 

 Stevie Ray Vaughan - "Taxman": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The more observant (annoyingly retentive) of you may remember that I wrote a post a few weeks ago scoffing at, even mocking the Australian ‘winter’. I derided both the Aussie version of the bleak season and Aussies themselves for being fragile and delicate when the temperatures dropped below 15°C.

Well, I want to humbly retract that post. As I shivered my way to the bus stop this morning, grass crunching under my feet, I realized that Australia has a proper winter. For the last few weeks it has either been raining - and I mean raining, not drizzling, showering or sprinkling - or bright and cold. There’s no snow or bitter cold, but it’s tangibly winter. Short days, jackets, umbrellas, winter. It’s not that the winter here is terrible. No, I don’t get to the beach as I would like to, but it’s bearable. The problem is that in A Free Man’s world, winter never seems to ends.

If you’ll recall, having survived a fourth long English winter - the season that puts the blight in ‘Blighty’ - we left Britain just as the daffodils were starting to bloom. Just as the promise of spring was on the horizon, we were on a flight out of the country. After a couple of weeks in Sweden (as gloomy as Britain but with snow) and Florida (the closest I’ve seen to a summer in what seems like decades) we headed cross the equator into the Antipodean autumn. 

Eight or nine months of winter is one thing, but I’d like to argue that the ’summer’ of 2007 in Britain may as well have been a winter. It rained, rained and then, just for fun, it rained some more. The Thames came unstuck and Oxford was partially under water. Oh, and then it rained some more.  If you look at things in that glass half empty kind of way, it’s basically been winter for us since November of 2006.

As I write to you today, from my own personal Narnia, I’m beaten. I lay prostrate to the gods of winter. What will it take - a virgin sacrifice for Boreas? A snow temple to Skadi? Do I have to slay the White Witch? Because, I’m ready to do whatever it takes. Go on and get Papa’s slaying gear, Baby Z.

The good news is that there are only 39 days until the First Day of Spring. Glorious spring.

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Chet Baker’s “Chet Baker Quartet with Russ Freeman” is available from .

 

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With Dr. O’C returning to the ranks of the employed in a few weeks, this feature is likely short-lived. Maybe if we talk real nice to her she’ll continue - or at least get Baby Z born…

September 10, 2007

Chris and I had convinced ourselves that the baby was going to be late, so when my waters broke a week before my due date, I had to keep smelling my skirt to make sure that it wasn’t just a collapsed bladder.  I walked back to the house, leaking as I went, in a bit of shock, giggling almost hysterically.  When I get nervous I have a tendency to laugh.  I think the reality was finally setting in.  Poor Chris has to harass me to call the hospital to find out what to do next.  We call our friends to pick up the dog, load up the car, call some family and head to the hospital.  They confirm that my waters have broken (no shit, Sherlock) and offer us the option of either staying put and being induced or going home to see if things happen naturally overnight.  Two things go racing through my head at this point - 1) There is no way I am ready for this baby to come now and 2) I don’t want my baby to born on September 11th.  So, I convince Chris that we should go home and take the natural approach of wait and see.

We wake bright and early, after a surprisingly good nights sleep (for me anyway).  I call the hospital to see when we can come in but they are busy so we wait.  I have some email conversations with friends and we laugh and things are a bit surreal.  Contractions haven’t started, I am in no pain but I know that we are going to have a kid, like, soon.

We eventually get the go ahead to go to the hospital and get sent to a ward to start the IV antibiotics. Chris and I waste away the afternoon playing scrabble with Chris nervously checking his watch every 10 mins. His patience was wearing thin when we had been waiting nearly 6 hours before they would take us to a delivery room. For me, I would have been happy to wait as long as they wanted!

The next 54 hours are like an out of body experience.

I hate needles, yet I have them sticking out of both arms until I leave.  I hate pain and yet I know that labour was not going to be pain free.  In the words of one of my wise friends “There is only one way out now”.  I am a private person and yet I know that all types of people are going to be poking and prodding me and at some point it is going to get really messy.  I have drips coming out of both arms, a contraction monitor and a fetal monitor strapped to my belly.  Chris unplugs vital equipment to plug in his iPod stereo.  He had been working on the playlist for months!  I explain to the midwife my birth plan, which in one short word is DRUGS.  I further explain that red heads are scientifically proven to be more sensitive to pain and when she had a minute she should line up the epidural.  A natural birth was NEVER EVER an option.  Personally I don’t see the point.  The kid ain’t going to remember or care.

They start pouring the oxytocin into me. Contractions finally start and I cope well for a while.  They wire me up to a TENS machine which does nothing but distract me from the pain because it is inflicting another more annoying type of pain.  Some crazy substitute midwife (whilst the normal one was on a break) offers me a lavender footbath to relieve my increasing pain and I nearly tell her to fuck off, but restrain myself.  I start calling for an epidural but it was a few hours before they would let me have that and when they do the relief is immediate.  I love modern medicine- the whole keep-still-whilst-I am-shoving-this-needle-into-your-spine is a bit scary, especially when the contractions are coming hard and fast every minute or so.  But damn that needle is a godsend.

The next few hours are a blur - a mix of sleep, epidural top-ups and internal examinations.  But over forty hours after my waters break I am finally given the green light to push. Now there really is only one way out.

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Dr. O’C is the latest member of A Free Man’s household to crack the job market. After what will be nearly a year in the purgatory of stay-at-home motherhood (she would quite possibly use a different word), Dr. O’C will re-join the ranks of the gainfully employed next month. This is the latest in a string of successes in our new Antipodean home and reflects one of the reasons that we came down here. And looking at things as a whole, and knocking exuberantly on wood, things are going pretty good in our new home.

A fellow American in Adelaide who stumbled onto my site wrote a post the other day that got me thinking about immigration. Her point is that most expats (and other people for that matter) relish and toss around the word ‘expatriate’ but ‘cringe’ at the word immigrant. ‘Expatriate’ carries with it images of glamour, worldliness, champagne on the Seine and first class round the world flights. ’Immigrant’ conjures images of huddled masses in steerage, midnight dashes over the Rio Grande and closed doors.

I prefer the word ‘expatriate’ myself but the Australian government, probably rightly, would use the word ’immigrant’ to describe me. Maybe it’s time I started to use that word as well. Both Dr. O’C and I come from a long line of immigrants and maybe it was natural that we followed in their footsteps. Dr. O’C’s family emigrated from Ireland to Australia when she and her sister were quite young in the hopes of making a better life for their family. My great-grandparents emigrated from Europe to Canada in the early part of the 20th century to escape a continent that seemed to be in a state of endless war. My parents moved from Canada to the U.S. in the late 60’s to ride the tail end of the post-war boom. And I emigrated from the U.S. through Europe to Australia in the early part of the 21st century in search of a life that I didn’t think was available to me in the U.S.

I suspect that all of the immigrants in our bloodlines had the same goal when they picked up and left their  home - a better life for our families. All of them achieved that goal - they succeeded beyond what they thought possible in the Old Country. Now, with the unemployment rate in the Free Man household reaching 0%* we’re well on the way to that better life that brought us Down Under.

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* We’re going to give Baby Z a few years before including him in employment statistics. 12 or 13 maybe?

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