Thursday, February 18, 2010

Vanity and Irony

"...live together in perfect harmony/side by side in my peabrain,/ o Lord...

I've just had a medical checkup, largely because my nice young doctor enthused about how I was at the age where it was Government-funded so wouldn't cost a zac. Hmmm. All sorts of tests. Blood pressure is always low. After Running Boy's birth they wouldn't let me out of recovery for ages because they were waiting for my blood pressure to go up. In the end they believed me when I said it never would and let me out to cuddle him.

For many, many years I have used sunblock every day, even in winter. It never got rid of any freckles but the blood tests showed it did achieve something: I have appallingly low levels of Vitamin D. Normal is 120-140 thingummies and mine is 30. This may explain why I am always tired and usually flat. Now I have to chug 3000 micrograms of D a day for three months and get eight minutes of sun exposure daily.

And go back in three months to...check on a suspicious-looking mole on my ivory (but freckled) decolletage.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Paradise Lost















...and paradise regained.














Sorry Milton.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Remembering

A year ago today we had our housewarming. It was less organised than I'd wanted because the car broke down in the heat that afternoon, stranding me by the road. I was home late and far too hot. Instead of taking Princess Pea to her friend's birthday party I got a lift home from a kind stranger while the CFO took her over in a taxi. Instead of preparing salads and things and tidying up, I went to the bottom of the pool for as long as I could. The CFO kept his eye on me until I was no longer beetroot coloured and was again talking rationally. Each time I surfaced the air was apocalyptic hot.

It was a great party, faces everywhere, pool thick with kids and everyone mixing and talking and dancing and drinking. We love our friends.

While I was getting heat-stressed, homes and towns were burning. While we were cooling down and having fun, people were dying. The news took a day or so to come in. BY Sunday afternoon everyone know it was bad. By Monday that day was named Black Saturday and the toll was still rising.

A year on many of the survivors' stories have come out. When I find the link, there's a community-based book that can be ordered online. There's another more official one with funds going to the CFA. I'll edit this post later with the details.

If you have a strong stomach, read the Royal Commission's interim reports: http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Interim-Reports . But please do more than that. I'm old enough to remember Ash Wednesday as a young adult, and we all said then "never again". If enough people force things to be done, instead of the Commission's findings and recommendations being buried or ignored, maybe Black Saturday will be the last.

God bless and heal; rest in peace.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Summer roundup

School resumed on Monday. Everyone likes their teachers and (generally) their classmates. Nobody likes the heat. I chucked a wobbly when the predinner squabbling led to fights over a small fan at the dinner table and culminated in Cheekus Weekus knocking the big fan right over. Their collective punishment was - and this shows I am a Bad Mum - to be ordered to go for a swim in the pool instead of using electronic entertainment. To work off my shame I was the first in.

So...this summer we learned to ride a RipStik; raised an unknown number of froglets (one turned up in the pool tonight); found that guinea pigs love to free-range; saw Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jnr yum yum), Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakwel (Running Boy says "OK") & Fantastic Mr Fox (RB says "excellent I really liked it"); hosted a Chaos Dinner and some barbeque-y sorts of things; worked looong hours, as always; bought lots of fabric but did nothing with it; got a second car; started scrap-booking; watched Hoodwinked so many times on DVD we know the lines by heart; went to Rickets Point and caught crabs; went to Philip Island and say giant stingrays; got totally nicked off about the local council closing down the local oval to joggers, dogs and kids for FOUR WEEKS over the holidays for rehabilitation but let the cricket club keep training and playing weekend matches that whole time when it has two other grounds to use, not that I am a bit fixated on this, having three lively kids, oh no;


...did actually bake an orange cake; made up fabulous Base Stations and flying cars and things from Lego because it's more fun than making power miners & stuff according to the directions (though we did a fair bit of that too); were delighted by my baby grand-nieces and celebrated their beautiful mother's birthday; built a new fence; saw baby ducklings being rescued at Daylesford; completed Boot Camp; and took up jogging.























I really did mean to blog about most of these things but I think this is about as far as I will get. And I've lost all the pictures somewhere in the hard drive.

But I can manage to mention a giveaway: go and have a look at Knot Sew Crafty...http://knotsocrafty.typepad.com/knot_sew_crafty/ (and no, I have no idea how to do a link properly so shoosh up.)