Flat Turkey Chicken

The other day Henry asked me if we had any "Flat Turkey Chicken". I wasn't sure what he meant and so questioned him until I realised he was in fact talking about shaved turkey breast.

"You know, the kind of turkey chicken that's flat"

At this point it could have been either but since we'd recently had shaved turkey several times which he devoured like a kid who'd only ever been fed lentils I deduced that this is indeed what he meant.

I told him I'd add it to my shopping list so I did. "Flat turkey chicken" went right on there right below "toilet paper".

Today while we were shopping for groceries I looked at my list to make sure I had everything on it and saw "flat turkey chicken". I stifled a chuckle and headed right for the deli. When my number came up I almost asked for said turkey chicken.

From now I'll tell him that pork, fish and any other white meat is just plain old "flat turkey chicken" and see if he eats it.

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Fighting the evil aliens

I'm afraid my son watches far too much TV. Right now he's a bit hooked on Ben 10 and Transformers neither of which are particularly bad in small doses. Henry has consumed so much of them though that he spends much of his day "transforming" (lying flat on his stomach on the floor, making machinery type noises and then jumping up ready to fight the enemy)or turning into a Ben 10 Alien all set to fight evil forces everywhere.

This behaviour is kind of cute and by no means is his evil fighting attitude terribly aggressive, it's just that I would like him to widen his interests a little so today I took him off to the library. All was well in the reading world until he discovered the rack of DVDs which housed a Ben 10 movie which could be borrowed free of charge. He jumped up and said "right, I've read enough books and got this so let's go". I quickly dived back into the stack of books to find something amusing enough to hold his attention without success. He had his Ben 10 movie and he wasn't budging on his decision to go home and watch it. "Besides", he reasoned, "there's just too many screaming kids in here". I quickly grabbed a handful of other, non Ben 10 DVDs from the shelf and we made our way to the checkout. Henry grabbed Ben 10 as soon as it came off the scanner and hugged it to his chest. We left and he was only briefly distracted by the playground outside the library. Even there he said "mum, it's too noisy here, let's go home".

So here we are, home again and Ben 10 Alien Force has been immediately placed in the DVD player with Henry almost glued to it, his face contorting appropriately to the fine display of heroism shown by Ben 10.

How lucky am I?

Only 30 degrees (86F) here today in the Sunshine State but 45.6c (114.08F) in Adelaide, South Australia.

I wonder how many elderly people, who lock themselves in their homes because they're frightened to let the outside in, babies and obese people suffered today. I'm sure the numbers are high. Even those who are in peak physical health would have been suffering in that.

The humidity here has been exceptionally high for weeks but we've not once reached 40 degrees. All I can say right now is thank God I'm here and not there.

New beginnings

Henry had day one of his new pre-school today but instead of pre-school they now call it pre-prep. I never understand why they have to continually change things. I think that's why half the population suffers from anxiety. Just when you think you've got a handle on something they go and change it.

Either way I think we can safely say pre-prep was a hit although I had my doubts about it after our conversation this morning. I greeted him warmly as I always do when he woke. He jumped with a start and said "I need to get up but I can't go to my new pre-school today because they won't let me have yoghurt there. Oh well, I'll have to go back to my old daycare".

It's true, they don't allow yoghurt because apparently it's too hard for the kids to clean up if they spill it. At this pre-school the kids are encouraged to do most things themselves, including cleaning up after lunch and washing their own dishes. This is fine by me but the poor boy loves his yoghurt.

He is only there until 2.30PM so there is no time for afternoon tea but the time between start of the day and finish is jam packed with all sorts of exciting things, including growing their own edible garden.

Ben and I walked him to the door, signed him in and took him down to the playground. It was there that he immediately shrugged us off. As I bent down to kiss him goodbye he whispered "don't kiss me, everyone will see". He'd also told me that morning not to put powder on him when he got out of the shower because all the kids would see it. I guess boys really are more concerned about keeping up appearances than girls because I never remember Maya telling me such things.

When Ben went to pick him up at 2.30PM he wasn't going to leave readily. There were too many things to show him. He brought home a painting with three different coloured brush strokes on it and when I asked him about other things he'd done he said "oh I just don't remember". Apparently he couldn't remember his teachers names either but he did remember that he made friends with a boy named Oscar.

Happy Australia Day

And what does one usually do to celebrate this day? Well most people are attending back yard BBQ's, eating lamb or prawns or going to the beach to fill their bathers with sand (it's a tradition). Some are even stealing every Australian flag that has been hung from all official buildings across the country.

What did I do to celebrate Australia Day? I spent it in the emergency department of the local hospital hooked up to IV anti-biotics. Hopefully I'm on the road to recovery now but time will tell. I thought I would have been better by now but the high temps hadn't subsided, nor had the aches and pains. I made a quick call to my doctor friend and she suggested I go to the ED and get IV anti-biotics and a full blood work up so that's what I did.

Now I'm home and I've got a lot to do before the week starts and Henry starts his new pre-school tomorrow and I HAVE to go to work as I have so much to do before the first week of Feb when I have to spend a week up in the far north for work.

Ho hum. Life is never dull but sometimes I wish that the ABC TV would display it's coloured out-of-broadcast image along with some background chamber music for an entire 48 hours. Then I would know that it was ok to just shrug off the expectations.

Because apparently I'm a bit stupid...

Just a word of advice that I'm sure none of you need because you'd all be smart enough to go to the docs and get treated for an infection rather than wait until it started to take over your whole body and send you into a shaking, quivering mess, and have you swearing black and blue that the 35 degree temperature outside has suddenly dropped to 0.

I am prone to infections in a certain part of my body. I refrain from mentioning it here because most people don't like to hear about it. I've known I had one for weeks but always, or so I thought, was too busy to get to the docs. It seems my body had had enough of trying to fight it on it's own and started to let me know that it was time to get something done about it. Yesterday, while someone quite important to our future was here, I began to feel the onset of what I thought was the flu. The tingling in the spine, goosebumps, headache. Within half an hour I was a shivering, shaking mess and had to take myself to the bed to get under the doona covers. I could have sworn a sudden cold front had moved through and that it was the icy weather that was making me shiver. Everyone else in the house was dripping with sweat however and were as red faced as they would have been if they'd been eating chillies. It was this, coupled with the pain that made me hide in my room under the bed and call the doctor and tell them that I thought I was dying. Of course they didn't react as though I was dying - just said they'd send the doc around and he/she would be here within 3 hours.

By the time the doc arrived I had taken some pain killers and the shivering had subsided but my temperature was still high. She took a urine sample and confirmed the worst and then tut tutted a bit about how I should have had it seen to when the symptoms first came on.

I guess I've learned my lesson - things can kill me and I should get them checked out. If only someone will lend me some more time.

What????

I'm sorry for the distinct lack of posts lately but I've got to tell you that life is just too darn busy. What with the learning and remembering the one million passwords and pin codes that I need to access such things such as banks, online databases, office doors etc. Not to mention remembering the dates my children need to return to school, swimming lessons, guitar lessons, the meetings I need to attend, keeping food in the house, paying the bill to keep the power on, washing dirty underwear, making sure my ears are clean, that we're all getting enough vitamins, exercise and sleep. On top of all that I need to remember to breathe so that I stay alive long enough to get the aforementioned things done.

Aside from all those things there's nothing interesting to report...well unless you count the fact that Henry wouldn't eat his home made hamburger because I put the cheese on the wrong side of the bread or that I dared to even use BREAD and not a hamburger roll.

Now I'm going to drown myself in the shower and hope that when I come up for air that I've forgotten everything.

Christmas 2008 Part 2

View from out tent Christmas morning.


Just to take a step back...this is the pool at the family home of the friends we visited the Tuesday before Christmas. This property is spectacular. This pool is built overhanging a steep ridge which drops right down into the rainforest below. There are about 100 steps wrapping around the giant boulders leading down to this pool. The view from the house was breathtaking.



These children were so patient waiting, waiting, waiting until someone gave the go ahead to tear into those presents. They were like patient puppies ready to dive into their bowl of biscuits.



So now that I have that out of the way, Christmas Day was hot, not unbearabe but plenty hot enough for the massive water pistols to have been put to good use. The temporary inflatable pool also got quite a work out and all of this before lunch which was not served until approximately 4PM. Because there were so many of us (23) we kept it pretty simple - turkey, chicken, ham and salads. My sister's new oven was christened with Ben in charge and they both did a fine job. Later the guitars were pulled out, the drinking continued and the voices got louder. I guess it's fortunate my sister lives on several acres of land and the neighbours are far enough away not to have heard how bad we all were.



Boxing Day we all piled into several cars and headed to the beach. The weather was perfect for it and the waves were just big enough to enjoy. Henry is not at all scared of the surf and would happily stay in there all day. The bigger the waves the more he loves it. That's a little scary for me as I know what the surf is capable of having been badly dumped quite a few times in my life. All Australians like to think they need to teach their children to have a healthy respect for the ocean and I'm hoping Henry develops his sooner rather than later. I did not take my camera that day so have no photos of him screaming with delight or building enormous sand castles and digging holes to wait until they fill with water so he could lie in them.




The following day my brother in law took advantage of the manpower around the place and finally got his wood fired pizza oven built. In his usual form he had collected some bricks free of charge from the worksite of the old hospital in town. He also had some type of giant concrete tank that was a remnant from the school his children attend. The only thing he had to purchase was the mortar.



The old bricks had to be cleaned of old concrete before they could be used and this job took many beers to do. In fact the building of the entire oven was probably about three cartons worth. I think it was the consumption of so much beer though that contributed to the few design faults that saw the smoke escaping from places it shouldn't once it was lit. Still, it cooked a damn fine pizza just like it was.






What leak?



See, it works just fine.

After all that fun it was time for most of the family members, including Ben, to head home in preparation for their return to work or to enjoy the rest of their vacation elsewhere. Henry, Maya and I stayed for a few more days and visited the beach a few more times and caught up with old friends we hadn't seen in a while.New Years Eve was completely uneventful for me. It was incredibly hot that day, the hottest and the last day of the year. The temperature rose to almost 40 degrees (over 100f). We tried to stay cool in the air conditioning of the local shopping centre but everyone else had the same idea and it was still hot in there but considerably cooler though than outside. That night we went to celebrate with pizza and a swim at a friend's house but the pool was like a warm bath. I promptly fell asleep while watching a movie with Henry and was back home in bed by 11PM.

It was hard to return home after being in vacation mode for almost two weeks but I returned home to a much changed work enviroment (for the better) and Henry was keen to get back to his friends at daycare. Maya is making the most of her holidays and has spent perhaps all of about one hour per day at home so I've seen very little of her. When the school year resumes at the end of January life will get hectic and stressul as Henry starts at his new kindergarten and Maya starts her last year of highschool. Stupidly I've opted to be on the committee at the new kindy and I'm pretty sure they're going to make the most of that.

On the Move

I'm still working on the Christmas post but in the meantime...I think the people who own the house next door plan to start major renovations this year. I'm not sure I'm ready for that. It's stood empty for almost five years now and soon they'll be here to destroy our peace and quiet. They look as though they have money to burn and I imagine the renos will take forever and the house will be enormous and they'll then move in and all privacy we had will be lost forever. They'll hear me yelling at the children (they don't appear to have any) and they'll start to complain about things and then they'll start to snub us in the drive way...and then I'll start to get a complex about something...Bring back the old neighbours I say.

2008 Christmas of Excess. Part 1

My almost 18 year old nephew had some great idea that he'd make a helmet out of a watermelon, mix it up with some long socks and bad shorts and parade around like that all day.



christmas morning in the tent



The heavily laden tree



Dog city




I must say it is nice to be home and by that all I mean is it's nice to be able to sleep in my own bed. I could quite easily still be relaxing out in the wide open spaces.

Christmas 2008 was such a busy time. We headed north on the Monday before Christmas to sent up camp in my sister's gargantuan backyard. We wanted to get settled so we could head slightly south again on Tuesday to meet with some old friends I hadn't seen in years. That was a surprise meeting and it was an absolutely wonderful day. My friend and her husband recently had twin girls after 15 years of trying. They were well worth the wait and quite possibly have the calmest parents around. My friends, who I hadn't seen in years, were visiting her parents at their home for Christmas. My friend normally lives in northern NSW on an organic vegetable farm without running water or a functioning toilet or even electricity. They are doing precisely what they have always wanted to do - to live self-reliantly. They get power from the sun and a generator, they eat from their garden, they have very few modern day luxuries. They have no phone and therefore no internet although they said they were planning on buying a laptop because it's become increasingly difficult to communicate with banks etc without access to the world wide web. I have to admit in some ways I am very envious of them. Not necessarily because they are living withouth a flushing toilet, but because they've pursued their dreams and they made it happen. They are right where they've always wanted to be and they are healthly, both mentally and physically.

Christmas Eve was a whirlwind of cleaning and organising in preparation for the arrival of the masses. Henry slept contentendly that night in the tent with his santa sack beside him. When he woke in the morning he looked around almost forgetting what day it was. Half asleep he spotted his santa sack and pulled everything out while muttering occasionally until he got to the Transformer. He would have been happy if that had been all he got.

Christmas Day saw us drinking champagne at 8AM and eating ham and eggs for breakfast. We had to wait for some of the other family members to arrive before opening all the gifts under the tree...

Part 2 to come.

Welcome to 2009

Happy New Year everyone! It feels like forever since I last posted and I guess it almost was. We had nearly two weeks away and I have to say it was fantastic. It was very hard to come back here to reality but I have a feeling 2009 is going to be a fantastic year. To celebrate Ben and I went out and bought a new vacuum cleaner. I know you're all thinking "so what" but let me tell you that for at least this afternoon my husband has been more attentive to housework than ever before. Just look at how happy he is to have that thing in his hands. This house has been dusted like it never has before. We could eat off the floor and the walls and even under the beds if we wanted to...that's how busy he's been with it.

I'll get busy with posting more news and photos of our very eventful and extremely busy Christmas vacation back to my home town as soon as I've had a chance to get myself sorted and things back to normal.