Today’s guest poster is Lily Mae Martin, a visual artist currently living in Berlin. I found her personal blog several months ago (she has another that focuses more on her career and artwork) and consider it to be one of the most engaging and inspiring I’ve read.  She writes about the challenges of living abroad, the daily struggles of parenthood and the battle to honour her artistic drive and maintain a focus on her career. I get the impression that she writes straight from the heart without second-guessing herself. That takes courage. Her sketches are as important to the posts (for me) as the writing. Without getting too gushy – I can’t draw to save myself so I am in awe of her artwork. And I’m very happy to include two originals that she made specifically for this guest post. I asked her to tell us a bit about herself and about being a parent and an artist and why she started Berlin Domestic. Join her Facebook Page here. Thanks Lily!

I've been AWOL and I'd like to apologise. I started a course with The Australian Literature Review in February. It's a Novel Manuscript Development Course which will end in July. If I have a decent, completed, manuscript by then it will go straight to the editors of some major Australian Publishing houses for consideration, bypassing the slush piles and the opinionated, overworked interns. So, I've committed to it and have been writing 5000 words a week on my novel Waxy Flexy – a supernatural horror/thriller.

You know, I find it sad that in this day and age we are still going over this subject. As I write this, same sex marriage is not permitted by Australian law. To most of us marriage is a demonstration of our love for one another. A demonstration of our commitment. But no matter how deep the love and no matter how desperately same sex couples need the privileges and protections associated with marriage, two people that love each other are denied the honour of marriage.

Love, to most of us, is what keeps us going. It's what makes us smile even when everything else is falling apart. I was 16 when I succumbed to it. I will never forget the moment I realised I was in love, it felt like nothing else. It was a completion of my heart. He was/is the other half of me.

Nine years later he asked me to marry him and I couldn't begin to imagine how I would have felt if someone tried to tell me that I couldn't marry the man I loved. I know it may sound cliché but marrying my husband was truly one of the best days of my life.

To allow myself the time to wallow in self pity I have turned to the ‘melancholy playlist’ on my Ipod, which includes such teary classics as Sad Songs by Elton John, True by Spandau Ballet, and the song I am currently listening to – Night And day by Al B Sure.

I’m walking through our new home which at this point is still a shell – no paint on the walls, no interior doors or taps or anything remotely home-y. The completion date has been put back again and again and our predicted six month stay at the in-laws has moved on to eight and possibly ten months. I can still see the glaring positives of our situation, but I find myself stuck in a mental battle which I navigate daily.

As I walk down the long corridor of our new house (sad but still grooving and even spontaneously shimmy-ing because of a freaky genetic ability that forces me to respond skilfully to all forms of music) I notice the empty take-away packets the dozens of tradies have left behind and my feet drag through the rubble and broken tiles.

For this week’s Fantasy Foto I thought I’d hijack the Mum’s Lounge FacebookPage and place myself in their hugely popular segment: Arsenic Hour.

Arsenic Hour basically amounts to a ‘drool pic’ of a male celebrity hottie. It allows a Mum to disassociate from her day-to-day mayhem and recharge courtesy of her deviant base chakra and all the earthy things it offers.

I always click over to see the Arsenic Hour pic in the hope that it’s me and, so far,I’ve been bitterly disappointed. I’m thinking I haven’t made it yet because I’m the pinnacle and when they put me up every other male pic to follow will be a bit of an anticlimax. So they’re holding out.