Beaches

We did manage to have a few beach days this summer just past. Usually, we go to Rickets Point where the swimming is almost boringly safe. On the last trip though as Princess Pea and I swam/crawled over low-tide seagrass, something bit my foot. It hurt and swelled up and for a little while everyone was quite excited about whether I had been bitten by something daramtically poisonous, but the swelling and pain had pretty much gone by bedtime so - no.

Own Brand isn't the same

We wanted to make mousse. Melted chocolate was called for.

Chocolate is expensive so we used the Safeways home brand cooking chocolate.

It refused to melt. (It also tasted horrible so there was less sampling by Cook's Helpers than usual. Actually there wasn't, but there was less sampling by Cook.)

In the end we used it anyway, and the mousse still tasted good.

I checked the packet expecting to laugh at a ridiculously low cocoa butter percentage. Do you know what? There wasn't any cocoa butter in this stuff, only 7% reduced fat cocoa powder. Dear Safeways, even cheap cooking chocolate should be capable of being used for cooking. Please consider.

In Which It Is Evident We Are Not Practised Churchgoers

Possibly we need to take the kids to church more often than Easter, Christmas, christenings, school CRE celebrations and the occasional additional visit.

A local church runs Easter and Christmas craft and Christianity workshops for primary school children. It's not our church, but the kids have been happily going. This year, Running Boy flatly refused. None of Princess Pea's friends turned up, and she has decided she is too old for it too. (It didn't help that a dear little churchlady insisted on helping her wrap up one of her creations, squishing the icing.)

At dinnertime, Princess told us that Cheekus Weekus possibly hadn't quite got the point. "Cheekus died" she said. "Pardon?" "Cheekus lay down being dead at the front when we were supposed to be going up to learn a new song. He wouldn't move. A little old lady all hunched over patted him on the head, I think she was asking him to get up, but he just screwed up his eyes and lay there." It got worse.

"I tried to escape" he said. "You know all those long chairs in the church? I crawled under them but then I gave up. The someone spotted me and I got really embarrassed." Yes, rather than learn a new Easter song, in church, Cheekus tried to get away through the pews but was rumbled by another little old lady. At least he was embarrassed!

Growing up

Princess Pea had her ears pierced as a birthday present. She has been nagging for years, and I had always said not until she was sixteen. Then I remembered how two of my younger sisters dealt with a similar edict: behind the garage with a cork and a needle.

This was the week she was able to take out the piercing studs, so we went out to our local hideous big shopping centre and hunted earrings. Princess chose some very lovely luminously bluegreen studs made, we were told, of crushed opal and some cheeky little ones for everyday. (She hasn't quite settled on her style, there were agonies of decision over the artfully mismatched skulls vs the cute little animals.) We had to track down a particular type, because everyone was wearing them, but didn't buy them, because everyone is wearing them and she wants to be individual. Oh to be twelve again!

Poor poss

Last night we had a refugee make a nest under the folding chairs on the deck.

A few days ago the kids found a boules set which we've carted from house to house for a fair while without anyone caring too much about it. Now they've decided it's what they'll do on warm afternoons when they are kicked off electronics. While the boys and the CFO were playing, they saw a very small possum scuttle up the stair handrail into the crabapple tree that hangs over the deck. It began to forage in the leaves. There wasn't much to forage for, we had very little blossom and virtually no fruit this year.

The CFO managed to sneak some apple slices onto the deck railing just below the tree and the little possum came down. It was desperate. It ate three pieces straight off even with three small fascinated humans hovering well within its personal space. It was very young, probably last year's baby finally kicked off mum's back. Brushtails are not actually very attractive but this one was so little and clutched its bits of apple while peering at us with round red popeyes that we all fell in love with it. It crept down onto the deck where the CFO had put a small bowl of water, crawled into a nook behind a chair and started to lick its tail. A dog must have been at it, the tip was gone and there were red nicks and notches and knotted fur. Poss curled into a ball and slept.

Sometime in the night it moved on. We hope it finds a proper nest and no more dogs.

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.

Paradise Lost

...and paradise regained.

Sorry Milton.