Just when you have your links right, and your bookmarks saved, someone goes and moves blogs on you.
Sorry… but that’s just what I’m doing now! I just can’t get used to wordpress even after a year, so I’ve headed on back to blogger where I know what I’m doing 
I have moved to: http://hippygeekyme.blogspot.com/
Hope to see you there!
My son: You’re pretty.
Me: eh?
My son: You’re pretty!
Me: I don’t feel it… but thank you.
My son: Yeh, not like the people on the front of magazines or anything, they’re about 1% pretty and the rest is make up and fake stuff.
Me: I think prettiness comes from the inside – even good looking people can seem ugly if they have an ugly nature.
My son: Yeh, and you’re pretty.
Awww shux
I picked up a Dyson vacuum cleaner on Freecycle the other day. The woman giving it away said it wasn’t working very well and wished me luck. I brought it home, cleaned it up, opened up some bits that probably hadn’t been opened in years, pulled out ugly clumps of dirt, dust, grit, hair and the edges of somebody’s rug, put it all back together… and I’m now the proud owner of a working Dyson vacuum. (I hear your roar of applause, thanks.)
These things are worth stupid amounts of money, so I’m very happy to have picked something with such a good reputation without even handing over any cash. Score!
And to top it off, it’s super funky – bright purple and green. Perhaps it will cheer me up… Vacuuming is no fun affair around here in a house with two grown males, a pre-teen, and 7 cats. That’s 7 lots of cat hair, people. That’s one busy vacuum, it had better live up to its reputation!
It’s been one of THOSE days. A real cliché Monday. A wrong-side-of-the-bed sort of day.
I woke up with unexplained high blood sugar. This is just one of those random things that happens to an insulin dependent diabetic every now and then, I’m used to it. It must have been high for most of the night though, because I woke up feeling like I hadn’t slept at all. In fact it felt more likely that I’d dozed through being dragged around town behind a truck. A jab of insulin, a cup of tea, and a shower improved things greatly.
From there on in though, things seemed to steadily go downhill. I forgot to go to my Nana’s place to do her cleaning this afternoon, because I was struggling to fix my sister’s computer in time for her to pick it up. Stoopid bloomin computer drove me nuts! The apologetic phone call to my Nana was hard work… somehow I always feel quite small talking to her.
A pipe burst in our front yard creating an impressive display and a rather large puddle, and resulted in a major game of leave-a-message-and-be-ignored that went on all afternoon between me and my landlord, and me and the plumber. When I eventually got hold of my landlord at 8.30 in the evening I found she’d just got home from her father’s funeral.*cringe* I’m no longer annoyed at her ignoring her cellphone! She’s arranged a plumber but we’re left without water until about 9 tomorrow morning. No flushing toilet, no shower, no tap water to drink or make a cup of tea with until then.
Pleased to say though that my hippie tendencies have come in handy here – I tend to keep a bucket of water or two hanging around outside (rain water) in case of dry spells, so I can always water my seedlings without dragging the hose out. They’re now toilet flushing buckets of water. I also keep a 4l bottle of water by the fridge, just in case… so that became kettle-filling and drinking water, also for hand/face washing. I think we’ll manage
This is the 4th plumber visit in the last month. All three of the last water-wasting plumbing issues have happened on a Sunday on not been dealt to ’til Monday. This hurts my inner water-conservationist! How Murphy’s Law is that though, all of them on a Sunday?! And the 4th would have been a Sunday too if only I’d noticed it a day earlier!
Seeing as my last post – omg all the way back in March – was a moany-groany life-is-hard sort of post, I’ll leave out the rest of the details of my crappy day and move on to the good bits.
We’re past the shortest day of the year – that’s the great news. Spring – although it’s still months away – IS coming. And to celebrate I’ve bought more seeds, dug over some garden, and mentally prepared myself for a seriously massive gardening spree. It’s time to attack my front yard and get some veggies growing in there. I’m a little torn with this – I very much want to start another vegetable patch, but I know it will take a lot of work, probably some cash (I doubt I have enough compost to make my sandy ground into good gardening soil) and a lot of time – yet I know that at the end of the year we’ll be house-hunting and I’ll leave it all behind. This saddens me – but can I NOT garden? Not a chance – I’m addicted now. At least the new tenants will have a fantastic selection of home-grown organic goodies to pick, and I will get heaps of it before I leave, too.
My new addiction, to see me through the barren-garden months of winter, is the game Farm Town on Facebook.
You can tell it’s an addiction, I’m nearly at level 30 (it seems most people give up long before that) and I’ve even created art in my farm… the welcome mat to start with and some other time-wasting artistic weirdness pops up every week or so. Ah, facebook, you have SO much to answer for.
And now that it’s after 3am, and I have to be up before 8 to meet the plumber, I really better hit the sack! *yawn*
Excuse my ignorance here, I’ve never grown onions…
Can you grow onions from onions? Or only from seed?
I have a whole bag of red onions, 20 or so of them, all sprouting and looking like they should be in the garden. If I plant them, do I get more onions?
I’ve had a bit of a break from all things normal in the last month. There will be no more gorgeous garden pics or exciting harvests for a while because it’s all been left alone for too long & most of it is dead. Let me tell you why…
Just when I was recovering from my dud back and getting back into a normal life, my much loved Auntie was going into hospital to have surgery on her spine. Touchy stuff, which left the family nervous – none as nervous as her of course, wondering if she’d ever be able to walk again or even have control of her bladder.
As we’re very close – in relationship and location, I had arranged to drive her in, look after her when I could, look after her house and cats, and look after my Nana’s housework and shopping which my Aunt normally does. A fair extra load on my plate when I’m already feeling strained and still have to go easy on my back – but geez I’d do anything for my Aunt, and what’s 4 days? No biggie.
The hospital screwed up in almost every way imaginable – except, thankfully, for the actual operation which was a success – so it was much longer than 4 days. Not so smart of them to give her Morphine when they already knew she was allergic to one of the ingredients – she ended up in ICU. And then she couldn’t even return to her ward afterwards because they’d given up her bed and had none spare. The day after she finally went back to her ward she was back in ICU again after having a seizure – again due to the hospital giving her pain meds with the same ingredient that they should have already known she’s allergic too. How pathetic is that? Oh but it gets worse. They sent her home with another pain medication with – you guessed it – the same ingredient, so she spent her first few days at home getting progressively sicker until my Mum looked up the meds online and discovered the balls-up. I haven’t even started on the rest of the mess – like how they were going to take her in for a stomach operation instead of spine! Eek.
During this time my son got sick for the first time in years (7? maybe 8 years?) and it turned out to be Rubella (or something very much like it) so I couldn’t visit my Aunt, or help my Nana, or do much else. Of course I couldn’t take Kiddo anywhere – especially not to the hospital to visit! Thankfully we contained his bugs and he didn’t spread it around to anyone that we know. A huge relief, especially knowing one of his friends is on meds that cause him low immunity, I was really worried that he’d end up sick!
A few days before all this I was in the dentists chair having an old filling fixed up. He discovered a cracked tooth that in hindsight I probably should have known about myself. It did hurt, but I thought it was just my sensitive teeth playing up. He fixed it up and I couldn’t wait for it to settle down – however it never did, in fact it got so much worse that I was having trouble eating and sleeping, and even walking sometimes hurt it if I put my feet down too solidly. So I was back to the dentist amid all this drama to have the thing removed. I just didn’t need any more farting around with a tooth when I’m already dealing with a sudden return of my menopause symptoms (Did you think I was younger? I am … for some reason my immune system decided to play with me and kicked off menopause when I was 27. Didn’t even know that was possible. Bah) Anyway, one tooth GONE. Peace, at last!
When kiddo started looking better (but was still contagious), and my aunt was still in hospital a week after she was meant to be out, I was desperate to see her. So I arranged for my sister to babysit, knowing she’d already had Rubella and couldn’t (crossed fingers) catch it again. I was so excited to finally be seeing my Aunt again!
What would normally be a 45 minute (max) drive in to the hospital became a 2 hour drive. As I was pumping air into my tyres I got a phone call from my sister. The tow truck I’d seen slowly driving down our street as I left was now parked outside my house, and the driver was busy trying to steal my van. My sister approached him, only to find he didn’t know my name, wouldn’t give his own name, and had no paperwork or proof of any kind to say he was meant to be picking up the van. My sister didn’t give in and wouldn’t let him take it without proof (yay for her, she has balls!), which made him angry, yelling and swearing and her and my son. But he left and I still have my van. It would have been nice if it was stolen to be honest! But we didn’t need the drama that went with it. Unfortunately no one could read his licence plate or even the name of the towing company, so even though the police were informed, nothing could be done about it.
So I was back to driving to the hospital.
15 minutes down the line and the traffic suddenly stopped. It appeared someone had driven their car straight into the side of the hill. I was about 10 cars behind all this, and there I sat, stood, twiddled my thumbs, wandered about and idly stared at the ocean for a good 40 minutes until the mess was cleaned up, the driver taken to hospital, and the car towed away. (Why they couldn’t let us pass is anyone’s guess!). I hope the driver is OK but I never heard anything about it afterwards.
It was while I was sitting there in a lonnnnggg line of bored travellers that I thought to call my flatmate, in case he knew of anyone who would have come to tow the van away. No, he didn’t, however he had news… his brother in law had just killed himself, upset because his wife (my flatmate’s sister) had left him. Ohh myy gawd.
So, with all of this happening in the space of about an hour, I was wondering if it was wise to keep driving to the hospital! But I did, and I’m glad, because seeing my Aunt made everything seem a lot better.
I called a friend to let him know about my Aunt’s condition after her seizure – when we were all worried that we may lose her. He decided to fly down here to be with us, which was nice of him – I needed the support! A couple of days later it was time to take him back to the airport, which was when my car’s overheating warning light decided to play up, making me think that my engine was about blow up. We pulled over a couple of times to check everything and all was well, so we can safely assume that it’s a bad sensor, but I was quite nervous driving it the rest of the way and then all the way home!
The drama isn’t over yet. Oh how I wish it was… A day later I hear from my father – he was in a car crash. I freaked. He and 2 of his brothers were on the highway. As they were passing a truck, the truck driver decided he also needed to pass the truck in front of him. He mustn’t have seen Dad’s car for quite some time, as Dad was pushed into the other side of the road and left to chose between hitting a lamppost on the other side of the road, or driving into a ditch in the other side of the road, or flat-footing it to pass the truck. He put his foot down and almost made it… but the truck’s bumper caught his car. He managed to keep control of the car but with a fair amount of damage along the side of the car (and he and his brothers all swearing, wide eyed and freaked, of course!). OMG I had visions of his car spinning and ending up under the trucks wheels and other horrible things that could have happened! Dad is fine, his brothers are fine, and the truck driver was very apologetic and takes full responsibility. The car looks a little weird but is still ok to drive. COULD have been a horrible story – but thank god for a happy ending.
Things did calm down for a bit after that, though once kiddo was definitely not contagious any more we were back to helping out my Aunt & Nana, and offering a listening ear for my flatmate. The only thing we had to deal with now was arranging the routine flea & worming treatments for my cats. Sweet – back to normal life! It felt good to get out and do something normal. However…. of course there’s more, this is very ‘Days of our Lives’ isn’t it… as I stepped out of the shop I noticed a woman a fussing over something by my car. It turns out she’d scraped my car as she was pulling into the car park. Her front bumper was well damaged, dented & cracked with a nice scrape of my car’s paint embedded into it. My car is fine – just missing some paint, which is no big deal – the bumper is plastic and I don’t need to worry about it rusting.
After all I’d been through in the last while I just couldn’t take this seriously – I laughed it off. I made sure she was ok, ooh-ed and ahhh-ed at her car’s damage, but refused her details. It’s only a car, I didn’t want her stressing over things and having to deal with insurance companies etc. I wonder if I would have reacted the same way if I hadn’t have had such drama before that? Probably – but my reaction surprised me, I really couldn’t have cared less about the damage (as mild as it was), I just wanted to make sure no one was worrying about anything. It seemed to have made her day, although she still has her own car’s damage to worry about.
So this, my dear readers, is why I haven’t been blogging, why I haven’t been watering my garden, why most of my plants are dead (*bawl*) and why I’ve had so much practice in not getting stressed in stressful situations (I actually sort of succeeded, too. Sort of. Argh.)
So please, life, can we keep it calm for a while now… I’ll beg! Please?
What is this?
It’s HUGE, it’s got a hole in its side, and it’s in camouflage colours. Never seen anything like it before!
I assume it’s some kind of slug – some sort of alien slug coming to eat us all up I think…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After a bit of research I’ve found this is called a Leopard Slug, a very fitting name. A large percentage of Google results about the Leopard slug involve their mating process, so I checked it out. You might want to, too… it’s, uhh, different!
Jetstar had a special today, $1 flights… and as usual when these things happen, I couldn’t complete my booking on the website because of site overload. However this time the story has a happy ending – I called them and they were willing to put the flight through for us
So, at the end of July, my kiddo and I are taking a day trip across our beautiful country. Woohooo!!
It’s a bit funny that $1 flights end up costing us $12 all up – they add an extra $8 credit card fee. I don’t like that – in fact, if they were $10 flights and I ended up paying $40 for the whole thing, I’d be happier than paying $12 after finding a hidden cost just as I’ve signed on the dotted line.
BUT… who am I to complain? My son and I get quite a major day out for just $12. Oh, plus the petrol costs to get to the airport and back… and we’ll be out for all 3 meals of the day… and no doubt we’ll do shopping while we’re there… But who cares! It’s not like we get to do something like this very often
(Flying in a blue dream is the name of a Joe Satriani album in case anyone wondered. Not my favourite, but the self titled album wouldn’t have made a great heading for this post, would it?)
I do not wish to offend anyone here, and I’m sorry for those people who believe that men & women are equal in all ways, but I’m afraid I’ve found it’s just not true!
So here I am, day 5 of not being able to do anything apart from lie down and occasionally sit out in the sunroom (see previous post about dodgy backs). I’m unable to do anything, especially if it involves bending, twisting, or standing for any time. So lets recap the conversations I’ve had with the two males in the house over those 5 (lonnnng) days.
Flatmate: If you need anything just call on me
Nice! Thanks!
I need something… so I call him. He doesn’t come. In fact, over the last 5 days, he’s spent almost all of that time buried in his bedroom.
Son: Would you like a cuppa?
Yes, please!
10 minutes later… no cuppa. “Kiddo, where’s that cuppa?” “OH yeh! I’ll go make it now.”
20 minutes later… no cuppa. “Kiddo! Are you still making me a cuppa?” “OH! Yep I’ll do that now…”
30 minutes later… Yeh, you get the idea.
However, two of those times he’s actually gone and made the cuppa and brought it into me with fresh-from-the-garden cherry tomatoes on the side and once with a pretty flower too.
Last night, 6pm rolls around and I realise no one else has even thought of cooking. I talk to Son who offers to cook sausages and chips but refuses to do any vegetables with it. 5 minutes later he comes back and says he can’t cook alone (He’s always had help with cooking and isn’t confident doing it alone yet… fair enough). So he asks Flatmate for help. Flatmate can’t help til after 7pm. Ok, so it’s going to be a late tea. Kiddo defrosts sausages and peels some carrots (AHA! Some veggies snuck in there, good on ya kiddo). 7.15 rolls around and Flatmate finally wanders downstairs to help with cooking.
8pm and I’m starving. Still no food. Son is lost because Flatmate has taken over cooking and Son thinks he’s been growled at for being in the way.
8.30 and finally we’re eating, and the food was good too, and wow, Flatmate has even mostly cleaned up after himself… not the dishes of course, he doesn’t DO dishes, he doesn’t LIKE dishes. (Who does?)
Flatmate: Do you need anything at the shops?
Yes, please!
I had that moment of thinking maybe I’d been wrong, maybe he is being helpful, maybe he can grab some stuff for dinner, some things we desperately need for the house (I, of course, haven’t been able to get out to the shops for nearly a week). So I was hopeful and started telling him that we’d need a few things…
Flatmate: Actually I don’t have time – I’ll grab one thing for you but then I’ve got to get to work, and I wont be around ’til 7pm. (I think that was his way of telling me that he can’t cook dinner tonight… what are we eating tonight? Air and water!)
Me… deflating fast… oh, ok… well… thanks.
So, I’ve spent most of the last 5 days not only being in pain and getting frustrated with what I can’t do, but also being pained by the lack of help, the complete inability of the people around me to cope without me, and nothing really happening to keep the house together or keep us fed. I thought these were basics that anyone would be able to manage. *sigh*
Now lets compare this with the females in my life.
On Saturday Flatmate said he’d do some shopping for us and buy us something for tea, and then he went out for the evening and left us with nothing at all (!!!!). Thankfully my sister is back in town and responded kindly to my txt asking for help. She jumped up, wanting to help and offering all services. She went to the supermarket and grabbed us a couple of things while also getting something to cook us for tea. When she arrived she asked how I was going, made me a drink and left me comfortable and well looked after. She cooked tea, while entertaining Son and cleaning up.
She made sure there was enough food for us to have something for lunch the next day, she did 2 loads of dishes (because of course no one else had done any for all that time), cleared the table, offered to do our washing, and hung around for a few hours making sure things were tidied up and that we were OK for the night.
Nice.
When my Mum found out that I was temporarily disabled, she came up to see me, with a bag of goodies – some basic groceries and chocolate (emergency munchies that I very much needed while I was sore & grumpy!). She offered to make me a cuppa, talked about things that might help my back, spent some time with the lad (he’s bored, he’s basically been alone for 5 days), and left me knowing that I could call her if I needed anything. She lives an hour away so I wont bother her unless I have to but the offer is very very nice – especially when I know she means it, not like Mr Upstairs who is 20 seconds away and can’t do anything even if he does offer it. Hurumph.
Even Daniel, who lives on the other side of the world, is hurting because he can’t help me – I’m not sure whether he’d be MAN help or woman help (heh) but being a male… well, who knows, but he says he’d want to make sure I was well looked after and that he’d not only be happy to do stuff around the house but that it wouldn’t be any different to a usual day because he’d ALWAYS be doing stuff. He reckons it’s his responsibility to do household stuff – not ‘helping me’, because it’s not just my job. Wow. But so far it’s all words and right now, with the experiences I’ve just had, I don’t know how far I’d trust a man to mean what he says on that matter 
I hope that my back is ok real soon… because the house is getting steadily messier and the landlord is coming for an inspection next Tuesday! I’m going mad wishing that the 2 males in my life could actually be helpful, but I’m learning now that it’s just not going to happen. I don’t think this is right! I’ll be out of action for a few more days yet, and then unable to do anything that involves using my back for weeks! Imagine the state of the house if no one else does anything. It’s already shocking, which adds to my stress – are they really going to leave all of this for me to do? Ugh.
Things have to change around here. But will they?
