Why 'Life at no. 9'?

My name is Nessi and I live at no. 9 with my mother, Ellen, brother, Charlie, three guinea-pigs and the dog. My mother and I are both doing this blog.The bush around the village is thick'ish. I have a friend. She and I have made a secret cubby house but three people know about it. And now soon the whole world will know!

Hi there, Ellen here! :)  Nessi, Charlie and I moved to No.9 about two months ago.  It is a place I had had my eye on for a few years.  It is our own (rented) cosy little unit in an 'eco-village' that is in its birth-stage.  This has been a transition:

• From no sense of financial security to an ability to start to save, and a feeling that even in financially hard times the community will look after one-another's basic needs.
• From a five bedroom house with an average yard to a two-bedroom unit sharing pool and sauna, play area with basketball rings, tennis-courts, goats, chickens and ducks, laundry (with drier - yay!), 19acres of paddocks and bush, a creek, and vegetable gardens, industrial kitchen, tool sheds and entertainment shed.
• To a small community (including the town where we are situated) where everyone knows each other, which has medical, postal, school, skate-boarding, library and internet facilities.  We are also five minutes walk from shared kayaks and canoes just ten metres from the edge of the largest, most sheltered bay I have known.  Great fishing toboot!
• Nessi is no longer confined to a house and yard but has -within certain parameters- freedom to roam safely that I could never have given her under any other circumstances.

To begin with I was anxious to contribute to community chores.  However my constant companion two-year-old Charlie made sure that this would not be a regular exercise.  I have been relieved and reassured by community leaders who have acknowledged that I 'have my hands full', and tell me that I am not in danger of being a burden to the community.  It is so unusual in my experience to receive this message, although I did note recently in the children's version of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures (We Are All Born Free, Amnesty International, Tien Wah Press, Singapore 2008) that 'mothers and children have the right to be cared for'...  Now I do what I can when I can, and in time I imagine I will lose the 'debtor's complex'!

Charlie needs nuggles...