intestinal infestation

This blog is a place for me to lay down the happy stuff for keeps. It is not that I have a morbid sense that at any moment it could go belly up and in a haze of misery I will long for tales of the good old days. It is more an attempt to live in the present and see the happy in my days. And I have a lot of happy.

I also have a fair share of the horrors. But I choose not to blog them - I choose instead to deal with the horrors by sitting comatise with my head in my hands and a drink at the ready. Or when things are really bad - just going to bed and sleeping for twelve hours knowing that when I wake up something will have changed - even if it is only my level of tolerance for the horror. But blog it? Not a chance. So the result is a kind of skewed magical version of the life here at number 55. Which is lovely. But is only 7/8s of the pie.

Case in point - on Sunday I had this conversation with Sam...

Sam: Mum, why does it sometimes look like there are worms wriggling in your poo?
Me: What?
Sam: Well sometimes I look at my poo and it looks like there are worms in it.
Me: What?
Sam: They are white.
Me: 
Sam: And skinny.
Me:
Sam: They look like worms.
Me:
Sam: Mum?

Yep - that's the world here that doesn't get blogged. I tell you with authority that the top selling worm treatment "chocolate" coats your mouth in a way that can not be washed away with any amount of red wine.

I will also mention that in search of information I turned to Google. What has been seen can not be unseen.

ps:

Amber just emailed a photo of the kids at the beach this afternoon with the email subject: wagging school. Perfect.

tuesday afternoon

 

It was hot and muggy today so Milly, Amber and I busted Sam out of school an hour early and we went to the beach for the afternoon. There were a few people there but we were the only ones swimming. Milly has grown a foot since last summer so was (mostly) holding her own in the waves - her resilience in the face of occasional dumpings was a joy to watch.

advent 2011

It all starts on Thursday. One jar a day for 24 days, each one holds a treasure - a treat, outing, activity or challenge - designed to make the kids smile every morning in December.

all done

Milly painted and I bustled around getting everything on the list done. I can recommend the bathroom as the prime site for a very quick declutter (case in point: mouth ulcer ointment from 2009). Now we are busy hatching plans for a happy afternoon of mad adventure...

write it and it will happen...

 Tuesday:

• finish making the advent calendar (then take photos of it because it is lovely)
• vacuum (urgh)
• get birthday present for Rosie
• clean bathrooms (at the very least, a cursory wipe)
• remove two bags of clutter from the house (this involves a random walk with the timer on, scrambling through junk drawers to de-junk them)
• write a christmas present list (super budget conscious this year - leave a comment if you have any ideas in this direction)
• email my book depository list to mum (she is ready to give up on us)
• organise a playdate for Milly so I can get started on end of year reports a bit early.

The photo is of a modern art quilt by Heather Bennett (from here) who hand dyes fabric then pieces and quilts them. I think they are very beautiful.

it's all in the pose

(a tiara helps too).

rainy day lucky dip...

...meant a day of collages, uno, carpet bowls, balloon rockets, film making, smartie toss, disco, jigsaw, monopoly.

We each write down three activities we wish to do, fold in half and bury them in a cake tin full of our dyed pasta and do whatever gets drawn out. All of us do it together, noone is exempt. It makes for a fun, if somewhat exhausting family day. As I type, the rain is still coming down. I am not sure Mike and I have the energy up for a second day.
(photo by Milly)

milestones on a thursday

What is missing from the first photo may not be immediately apparent but is something of a big deal for Milly. Rather than stuff Teddy into her backpack, she plopped him onto her bed with the pronouncement "I don't need to take Teddy to kinder any more" and just like that, we walked out the door.

On the same day Sam handed in his first "project" and I am proud to say that he knows more about France than I do, having done the project himself.

flower friday

Verbena Bonariensis and a very grey sky, this one was taken this morning (saturday), a day when it has rained all day without relief.

note to self:

Not too much going on here at number 55. I have had blood tests and await results. Exhaustion and parenting is not a combination that I would recommend (nor is exhaustion and teaching Year 9s). There are great things happening though so I need to remind myself of them - Amber and Russell are home after living in Queensland for three years. The garden seems to be thriving on very little love. The kids are playing together in a way that makes life easy. The weather is glorious. The holidays are a month away. I have started making a necklace that will either be amazing or awful. I am seriously whipping Michael in an ongoing game of scrabble. It's the little things.

saturday

Junior Sailing was cancelled due to horrible weather. Which didn't stop us, a lone boat in Port Phillip bay. Friends came with us and the kids were intrepid, splashing and running around. As for keeping warm and dry? Obviously overrated concepts. However, I am on now the lookout for op shop wetsuits - size 6 and 8.

flower friday

Agapanthus shielding the chickens. This shot was taken in the gloom after the thunderstorm that brought welcome relief from the 37 degree (98 F) heat today.

crabapples

We have eleven crabapple trees in the front garden. They are three years old but when they were one and a half we transplanted them and they have been sulking ever since (tree #12 actually took sulking to the extreme and died). They have never been particularly successful, it is a boring story along the lines of: wrong species of tree in the wrong place, too much money invested, pulling them out would kill me, transplanting again would kill them. Not my finest arborial hour. But today...

... as I climbed out of the car and squinted through my grove of trees into the sun to check the letterbox I saw a cluster of blossoms. The very first - with six pretty flowers. There are no signs of any others following suit, but it seems that tree #4 has stopped sulking and come to the party of doing what crabapples are meant to do. It has flowered, which means it will fruit. Which means the others might catch on and next year I can make some pale pink sour-y sweet crabapple jam. And then I might sit on the verandah and look out at them lovingly, instead of the looks of disappointment I give them at the moment. Perhaps a horticultural corner has been turned.

summer plans

Our 2011/2012 summer plan is to spend as much of it as possible at the beach and sailing. Sounds marvelous, although it is a little problematic as I loathe sand. I used to think I didn't enjoy the beach. Somehow, somewhere I realised I love the beach, it's the sand I hate. I love the waves, water, sun, the potent mixture of complete relaxation and exhilerating physical exertion. And mostly I love watching the kids, their sheer abandonment to the whole experience. But there is the issue of sand. I have learned that through meticulous packing everything on 'the beach list' that the horrors of the sand can be somewhat countered.

My beach  list is both extensive and hilarious to those around me (who apparently have no issue with the discomfort of a sand filled gusset):

• 2 full size plastic buckets. Various uses whilst playing at the beach (can be used to fill the moat of sandcastles to great effect). However, their primary purpose is to be filled with water for rinsing sand from body parts during the beach experience (sand free sandwiches - only possible after rinsing). They are used in various ways for various reasons all day but their final task is to rinse feet and thongs/crocs a millisecond before getting back into the car.
• at least 2 rugs, size large. To spread out and ensure a sand free sitting zone. This year I have been buying large heavy 70's bedspreads from op shops and I am thinking they will be perfect.
• a shovel. To dig small moat around rugs to mark out the no-go zone, ensuring that children do not step on rugs with putrid wet, sandy feet (shovel may be played with by children once rug area is secure).
• (when milly was small) a small inflatable wading pool. To fill (using one of the buckets) for baby to sit and crawl around in without becoming as putrid as the aforementioned feet. I am still tempted to leave it on the list but am willing to have a trial beach day without it before deciding.
• ziplock bags (size large). For protection of telephones, keys, wallet. Can also be used when children insist on bringing home sand drenched foundlings. Very handy for sunscreen which can become grit filled within moments of use.
• beach chair. The type with low legs. I may look like I am sitting on the rug, but I actually have another line of defense between the sand and myself.
• enormous sun hat. For hiding behind so that I am unrecognisable as the crazy lady who has brought a dozen anti-sand measures to the beach.

Our first beach and sailing outing is planned for this Saturday so I am spending time this week preparing items on the list.

For the record, I look at families who arrive at the beach with nothing but sunscreen and bathers with both awe and respect. Did you know that some people don't even bother with shoes? Or a towel? Imagine.

Wichelsea Festival

We have friends who try to convince us to go to the Geelong Show each year. Each year we refuse the lure of spending an exorbitant sum to walk around in the dust, eating fried food and dodging crowds of screaming kids (and adults). This year we took them to our idea of a show - the Winchelsea Festival. It has woodchopping, sheep shearing, sheep dog demos, dog high jumping (Milly and I love it, we can watch it for hours), tractor demos and snow cones.

Winchelsea is a 40 minute drive from here, the show takes place on the town's oval and the kids spend hours running from one stall to another. There are rides and showbags and fried food but they can't beat the lure of the SES cutting up a real car, watching a white dog called Red jump an 8 foot high barrier, eating cordial flavoured ice shavings or seeing a man called Max win the overage axeman's championship on his 71st birthday. Got to love a country fair.

maintenance

Milly and Michael got their hands dirty in the kids' vegie bed this weekend, harvesting gnarled and knobbly radishes, thinning cauliflowers and planting more leaf seeds so we have our middle ages inspired salad crop rotation system working for us.

lately

This seems to be where I am spending most of my time, generally feeling knackered while the kids run around in circles. I went to work yesterday and was completely exhausted. I feel like I have been a spectator to the goings ons here lately, although always with the camera, so this morning I am delaying answering the call of my verandah chair and catching up on some blog posting.

kids have been snapping

Top photo taken by Sam, bottom by Milly. Milly has asked for a "real life" camera for Christmas. She also told Sam to take photos "really, really close up, then boring things look better" - advice that worked for the chink of light coming through the fence.

storm

At the end of a very humid day on Wednesday we had a storm. While other parts of the state lost trees and had roofs fly into adjoining properties it was much less dramatic for us. We had rain, thunder, lightening and dinner on the verandah. My favourite place to be in the rain is our back verandah, protected from the wet but exposed to the chill and noise - really beautiful.

flower friday

 

Sam went to school today wearing a Remembrance Day poppy. It was sobering to explain to him the significance of the day. Fittingly we have poppies in our garden at the moment.

enamelware

Mindless internet browsing in the 10 minutes before we walk up to get Sam from school can be a dangerous thing. I have discovered these lovelies, from here. I am not sure which I love more - the special edition pillarbox red or the traditional white with blue edge? Would I choose the pie set or the bake set or both? They are so beautiful. Alas, no International Shipping so this is a dilemma that does not need to be solved.

Now off to get the boy...

number 13

Amber and Russell are coming back and this is where they will live. We could not be happier. It has happened in a flurry and they will be here in 10 sleeps. And they will live close-by again. And we will all be light of heart and smiling our most smiling-est faces.

hot day, cold milk

...and chocolate wafer biscuits used as straws makes for the perfect beverage.

adelaide kids

The Popeye is an institution in Adelaide, unfortunately I didn't take a full frame photo of her in her blue and white painted glory. She hasn't been gussied up at all and looks as she did when I was a kid. She is a clunky fibreglass monstrosity of a motor boat that cruises between the weirs of the River Torrens. Riding on her is part of an Adelaide childhood and when Shirley joined us for the day by the river we were three generations who had been on it as children.

The other half of the duo of River Torrens childhood delight are Captain Jolley's Paddle Boats. The Paddle Boats haven't been gussied up so much as Occ and Safety-ed up, now installed with umbrellas for shade and requiring children to wear lifejackets. Deceptively difficult to pedal around the river, the kids and Michael had a grand time dodging swans and ducks and playing the game of pedalling tantalisingly close to the spray coming from the fountain...

In more mundane news, the sore throat I woke with yesterday refused to be banished and has morphed into a full head cold. Just as some glorious spring weather settles in. Poor Me.

littlehampton

4 acres in the Adelaide Hills. Fruit Trees. Original 50s house. Separate building for a studio. Dam in the top paddock near a forest of small gums. A ruin (albeit currently spider riddled and scary). Large vegie patch fenced off from the sheep who clustered under the mulberry tree. And of course - the rope swing.

Covetous much? We were. Michael's Aunt Lesley and her partner Susannah bought the property this year and are slowly working their way around it. Lesley has a lovely orange and grey ride on mower which makes it sound like no work at all to tend the rolling hills. In reality I think we are too slothful for this kind of adventure but the fantasy makes for lovely daydreams.

friday follies

After feeling less than gung-ho about a return to work on Friday after a week away it was actually a nice day. The kids were happy, I taught my lessons then attended a staff trivia night. Said trivia night may have been the least intellectual I have ever attended, which is very important to keep in mind as I revel in the glory of being on the winning team.

Then home to tuck the kids in, eat dinner prepared by Michael before making a cake for tonight's dinner with friends. The rest of the evening was spent lounging on the couch reading my freshly delivered copy of The Perfectly Imperfect Home. A lovely way to end the week.

I have woken with a sore throat though so that will need to be banished...

flower friday

Achillea (Coronation Gold) starting to flower in the front bed - morning and afternoon. Amazing what the different light can do to the same spot in the garden. Which is surely the best argument for spending an entire day sitting in the same spot - the ability to never move and have the view change around you.