I’d forget my head…

Maybe it was the dizziness – which has, thankfully, pretty much retreated. (*touches wood*).  I did feel like I was in a bit of a fog there for a while. Functioning. But not quite all there.

Or maybe it’s just me on the way to senility. I’ve just had an .. amusing.. couple of weeks in regard to remembering stuff. The family have been somewhat bemused. Heck, even I’ve been somewhat bemused.

I”m sure I’m not normally THIS bad.

The before school/after school logistics around here do present some memory challenges, though we try to put the onus on the kids to remind us of where they want to be, when, and to make sure they pack any gear required by them – and required by me to be brought along on one of the many shuttle runs I do, picking them up and dropping them off.

The scene.

A Thursday. (A few weeks ago.)  Ms 16 usually requires early lift to school (for Dance Ensemble or some such.)  After school she catches a bus directly to town, amuses herself for a few hours – in the shops, and/or doing homework at Himself’s office – then they head off to play Touch Footy together.  Usually she makes sure he takes her Touch gear. And usually he is in control of his own Touch gear too.

Usually he drops her off at school, but this particular morning he needed to be at work even earlier, so we tell her she’ll have to miss Dance Ensemble.  Before she leaves for her normal school bus he rings her. He’s forgotten his Touch gear.  And of course, she’s not given him her gear (otherwise that would have reminded him, right?)

But never fear, Mum is here! Fortuitously (and the reason I’ve skived off dropping her at Dance early) I’m taking Ms 11 and friend to school district swimming carnival in town. I can drop their gear off at his office after the carnival.

“Put it in the car”, I say. “In the back, as I have to pick up another kid.”

Ms 16 does that. “I’ve put our stuff together!” she tells me, as she heads out.  Note: at this point I also happen to have Ms 11 in tears because her tummy hurts, so she’s on the loo, as suggested by both myself and her big sister. And I’m on the phone ringing the other kid to say we might be late, but I’m slightly anxious that Ms 11, who is in the first race, might be late.

No problems though. We get there. They swim. We leave. And I detour to Himself’s office.

“I’ve put our stuff together” was the line that I remembered. In my head I think “.. in the one bag”.. so I grab the bag Himself usually takes, bolt into his office, leave it on his chair, and bolt out again. Job done, I think.

Fast forward to about 6.45pm, and I’m heading home with Ms 14 after her swimming squad class. My mobile rings, and she answers it.  Seems I’ve only left ONE bag at the office (Himself’s), and thus Ms 16’s bag is still in the back of the car.  I get out and look. She has used one of my coloured ‘green’ shopping bags (which I chuck in the back of the car), and even though it was purple (or pink – can’t remember) it kind of blended in with all the rest.

Their game is at 7.00. And I’m about 25 km away.

Cue an unplanned ‘quick’ drive into town. Ms 14 rings Ms 11 at home to let her know we’re taking a 50km detour.

We pick Ms 16 (and a spectator friend) up from the office – she gets changed in the car – as I drive them a further 5 or more km to the grounds. (Himself has gone ahead so as not to be late for the game.)  And Ms 14 and I finally get home to start doing dinner at around 7.30.

And somehow, my line of “If you two hadn’t forgotten YOUR stuff this morning, all this wouldn’t have happened”  fell on deaf ears as my two darlings roll their eyes at ME.

Fast forward to the following Monday.  After school I have to take Ms 14 (and two others) to netball, then continue on to school and pick up Ms 16, whose after school HSC Dance unit class overlaps with her rep netball training. (ie. she’s in a rush.)

She leaves her bag of netball gear with me – with a great big blue bow on it . Bless her. So that her Forgetful and Unreliable Mother can tell it apart from all the other shopping bags. She doesn’t put it in the car this time as we’ve had some car issues and I’m not sure what car I’ll be using that afternoon.

Guess who forgets to bring the bloody bag.

And she has organised to leave Dance early this particular time so that she doesn’t miss the fitness component of her netball training. I have to drop her in her dance tights (and painted Converse shoes), zoom home (5km), get her gear, and zoom back again.

Not a great carbon footprint record here, is it?

The next time I need to take her stuff, she does the bow, AND a pink post-it note on the front door, AND on the side door (in case I use that one.)

.. ..

Bless her, eh.  Anyone would think her mother had been a bit FORGETFUL lately.

You make me dizzy Miss Fizzy

It’s kind of spooky when one of the cartoons in Wednesday’s local paper reflects EXACTLY your current state of being:

Funny how the whole merry-go-round allegory is kind of appropriate too.

The chiropractor did help a bit – on Thursday. He said that 9 out of 10 times dizziness can be caused by your neck being out.   I’ll either have to go see him again next week to knock it out of me completely – or just get used to being in a constant state that I can only describe as like being  ‘tipsy’. (Only a bit different.)

Himself thinks that I shouldn’t complain – people pay money for alcohol to achieve that state.  He, however, DID NOT understand, the other morning just how hard it is to focus on discussions about banking issues when I wake up with my head feeling like I’ve just sculled a few glasses of white. (As I walked about the kitchen trying to deal with the making of the school lunches, the amount of movement required to walk around (thus causing my head to move around)  being in direct correlation to the amount of dizziness I was feeling).

It’s weird. It comes and goes. I just hope that one day I’ll wake up and it’s gone.

Meanwhile – in a kind of unrelated issue this week – except that it rhymes – I’ve had to go buy a few bottles of fizzy drink.

Let me explain.

We’ve had a tradition in our house of saving fizzy drink for celebratory occasions. Apart from parties, and visitors, if someone ‘achieves’ something, we go buy a bottle of fizzy for the girls to share over dinner.

It’s been a source of amusement at times. For instance, when Ms 14 (now) got Dux of her primary school a few years ago, the first thing she said when I went to give her a big hug at the end of the presentation was: “So can we have fizzy drink tonight?”. (What?! Is that all she could think of?!)

Anyway, I’m starting to think we should revise this tradition – or put some sort of cap on their achievements. Because there’s been far too much fizzy drink consumed this week. (Far too much achievement round here – it’s got to stop!)

On Monday Ms 11 lobbied for Fizzy because she had her Student Council induction assembly.

On Wednesday Ms 14 went to the high school Zone Swimming Carnival, and sent me a text during the day to go buy fizzy drink. She’d won her 50m freestyle (and ‘beat that Grafton chick who is always pretty fast’). And they won a few relays.

On Thursday there was the primary school District Swimming carnival, where Ms 11 was in a few races. She came 1st in her backstroke, and 2nd in butterfly.  We did the ‘fizzy’ at the corner shop on the way home. (Don’t always have to share with the sisters…)

And then the next day she found out that she had made equal Senior Girls Champion – how, we don’t really know – because she didn’t place in the 100m freestyle, or the 4 x 50m medley.  All the rest of the placings in all the other races must have really been shared around.

She suggested that this was worthy of yet more Fizzy – but I said that REALLY, I think we’ve celebrated achievements enough this week – and the trophy – and the lovely surprise she got would do.

Well, I don’t really think they should put a cap on ‘achieving’, but maybe we need to revise the celebration system!

Today Ms 16 has been a bit off colour, and kind of dizzy. (The bad mother part of me hopes that it might have hopped over from me to her…)

Dizzy. Fizzy. Enough, ok!

A sense of achievement is soooo romantic.

Well, what else would you want to be doing on Valentine’s Day, but working up a sweat clearing the yard?

You might recall this shot (in our front yard) from last weekend:

Well, lookee now:

It’s all got to go once the extensions begin – so you’re not meant to exclaim “Hey, nice garden!” ! But it looks doable now. We won’t need to clear away a jungle to make way for the garage.  (Those bloody ferns are a pain in the proverbial. Can’t believe the idiots who planted them.)

So, anyway, on our first (of two) trips to the tip – or rather the local waste depot place – the Lions Club guys who operate it said to me “Gee, you’d think he’d take you out somewhere better for Valentines Day!”

I did laugh. It didn’t matter. We just aren’t into Valentines Day. At all. Never have been.  But, really, when it comes down to it, it’s not a bad thing to be working at, and achieving something, together.  Perhaps I could have done without the sweat trickling into my eyes. And the ants crawling on me. And the sawdust falling on me (as I made like ballast on the bottom of the ladder, while he sawed at some branches on high – the ones that were too thick for the super whammy deluxe lopper).

But I’m counting on the fact that all the physical exertion involved (when I wasn’t being ballast, but dragging armfuls of branches to the trailer, or wielding the Super Duper Lopper myself) burnt off a kazillion calories.

And we had some time together, just the two of us, without the kids. (OK, so it was driving to and from the tip!)

We’ve achieved something that’s been needing to be done for the past – oh – 10 years.

I’ve had worse days!

And I think I’ll sleep quite well tonight.

Like a woman possessed…

Last weekend when we were doing the big scrub clearing job –  using, alternately, a bush saw and a pair of secateurs – our young neighbour came over and offered us the use of one of these:

Holy moly – talk about awesome. We couldn’t believe the size of branch they just chomp through – like the proverbial knife through butter.  (Something like 40 – 45mm diameter.) I had a go, but thought I’d better when my ‘iffy’ shoulder started twingeing a bit.   (And I did end up paying for my gardening exertions during the week.)

Well, today Himself went out and bought us one.  We’ve still got lots to clear, front and back, so it’d be a worthwhile investment, we thought.  So much quicker than a saw. And it’s got a butt-kicking name to match    … “Heavy Duty Ratchet Anvil Lopper”

Only problem is, I think he might have to hide it from me.

This afternoon I got impatient waiting for him to chomp off a couple of branches that were getting in the way of the clothesline.

But once I started I couldn’t stop!

How can I put it? It’s just very, VERY addictive. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. Shoulder twinge.  Meh.. what the heck. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.

(I’m not sure what that says about me!)

I told myself a few times to ‘put the lopper down, and step away’…  only to find myself, 20 minutes later, back out there again, hacking into ‘just a few more branches’.

It’s not that it’s too much being pruned, it’s just that it’d be pretty stupid to spend the next week (again) dosing up on voltaren for my dodgy shoulders and elbows.

Needless to say, with the cuttings left over from Himself doing a Heavy-Duty-Ratchet-Anvil-Lopper blitzkrieg late last Sunday, and these  exploits of mine this afternoon, we already have another trailer load worth of green waste to take to the tip first thing tomorrow.

Then Himself got home from a driving lesson with Ms 16, and I think it has some sort of hold over him too, because he spent the last half hour of daylight hacking away out the front again.

(Make that TWO trailer loads!)

Guess what we’ll be doing tomorrow…

Images of a Sunday in February

Ms 11 likes her cereal. One packet doesn’t last that long when, every day, she fills
her bowl like this.  No idea where she puts it either…

“Legs Eleven” would be an appropriate moniker for her…

Anyway.. back to today…

The heavens opened during the night (loud enough to wake us up) – and once again I have this fabulous water feature in my garden. Under the clothesline. (Jamie Durie, eat your heart out.)

Hanging out the clothes in gumboots – ankle deep in water…   reckon it could catch on?

Very remiss of me, but I neglected to take a photo of any more of our reverse gardening exploits. We took yesterday’s load to the tip, then hacked into it for most of the rest of the day, and just made it with another load before tip closing time at 4pm.  The rain stayed away till one downpour mid-afternoon.  Little wonder it keeps building up – it has been INSANELY humid. All day I was unsure whether the tickling sensation on my neck or back was rivulets of sweat, or ants and bugs jumping ship from the vegetation I was man-handling around. (Either/or, it was.)

My t-rusty dryer is also now fixed – so it’s getting a bit of a workout tonight.

And after my workout today, I’m looking forward to bed.

There was movement at the station…

Well, I’ve managed a new photo up top there. That’s something, isn’t it?

Slothing kids on summer school holidays, and Australian Open tennis on one’s still-a-novelty widescreen telly aren’t conducive to much in the way of writing action.

The good news is that school holidays are over! They’re back at school (two yesterday, one today). Which means that pretty soon I’ll regain my headspace! Mind you after a 5km walk this morning, there wasn’t much action of any sort around here. Except that I got my bike out and rode 5km (to pick up the car I’d dropped off earlier at the mechanic’s).. and that I started back at my Friday night swim squad.

Otherwise- I’m such a procrastinator!

Weekend tomorrow, then business as usual from Monday. Which may or may not result in more frequent blogging!

Roll up for the magical medical mystery tour

It’s an interesting journey I’m on here at the moment. I’ve got the joint stuff happening… the ‘most likely it’s arthritis’ thing. The thrice daily doses of Panadol Osteo have taken the edge of it, but not really stopped it. It’s been still a bit random. I wake up in the morning wondering “Hey body, what part is going to be the worst today?”, but my left wrist has been the most recalcitrant. The right shoulder has still been letting me know it’s not done with the whole pain thing. And in the past week my right elbow decided to get in on the act. (Up till then, the elbows had abstained but I guess it’s the whole peer pressure thing.) The knees have, on the whole, been surprisingly well behaved. (Touch wood).

When I talk to people they express surprise that it hasn’t been diagnosed with pathology. I can’t help but wonder the same thing. And I have to admit I’m not entirely happy about just popping pills ad infinitum, yet I’m wussy enough to be quite happy with that aforementioned edge taken off the pain I’d originally experienced. So I take them religiously.

Of course

Ms 16 has work placement in town all this week.  And, as the Daddy works in town, she and I had the logistics of the to’s and fro’s all worked out.

But OF COURSE, he has had to go away for work!  Today. Till.. well.. he’s not even sure what day. And, of course, even this morning, he had to leave earlier to catch a plane, so he couldn’t even take her in.

I do wonder about fate sometimes. (Or is it karma? Did I do something wrong?)

So that’s a couple of 46km return trips to town each day for the next few days.

This morning also started with a 5.45 am drive to drop Ms 14 off for a one-day school excursion to Dreamworld.  (Nearly 4 hr bus ride each way.)  It’s an end of year ‘reward’ excursion for them (kids not on positive welfare awards don’t get to go) – but I’m feeling like it’s some sort of punishment for me! [Oh – ok, I suppose these theme park excursions kind of let me off the hook of having to take them there myself, so I shouldn’t grumble.]

I don’t do early mornings very well though – so I crawled back into bed, even though Himself was up and packing.  I really, really shouldn’t do that, because I drop off, and have weird dreams, then wake up again an hour or so later even more groggy.  And cranky. And emotional.

This week, it’s just hard to see myself as anything beyond being a chauffeur for my children.

Um…cake

Let a couple of 14 year olds loose in the kitchen, and this is the sort of cake they come up with…

So the bottom layer, round, is plain vanilla cake, coloured green, because Jayde likes green.

The middle layer is caramel, but coloured pink. As you do.

The top layer – a heart – is chocolate.

And the frosting.. well…   purple goes with chocolate – obviously.

They had fun.

++++

[Edited to add: And probably the best bit is that I’m not the least bit tempted to scoff into it!]

++++

[Edited even later to add: … except maybe the chocolate part…]

Wheelings and dealings.

“Can we have everyone round for a big sleepover? On the 5th. As a farewell party for J?”   A joint request by Ms 16 and Ms 14.  They’ve become a bit more.. friendly.. lately. Getting on together. At last. Part of it is just maturity. Part of it is playing in the same netball team this year.  And J, in between them in age, played with them – her first year of netball, and she took to it so well she was trying out for one of the rep teams next year.

And then she suddenly found out that her father had landed a job in Queensland, and, whammo, a few weeks notice, and they’re moving away.

Throwing her a farewell ‘do’ is a nice thing.

But I’m not normally a fan of the whole sleepover thing, and Himself even less so.  Our house layout makes it a bit awkward for girls wanting to do the dvd thing yet have some privacy.  (Only one TV – I know! The Dark Ages!) Providentially Himself was going to be away for the weekend (playing Touch, what else),  so in a moment of madness I said ‘ok’.

Ms 16 offered me the use of her new laptop for the night. In other words ‘Can you please rack off upstairs so we can have the run of downstairs.’  Well, OK, I said. (It is easier to rack off upstairs when it’s just me – Himself wouldn’t take too kindly to the idea.) Littlest sister will also have to rack off upstairs, but she also has access to a laptop, so I guess we can be refugees together.

Ah, but don’t think they’re going to get away with it all that easily!  Naturally I put ‘cleaning’ out there as an ultimatum, with the threat that I’d quite happily pull the pin on it all at the last minute if things weren’t done.

Maybe I should let them have sleepovers every other week.  They’ve been busy little bees with the vacuum cleaner, and general tidying up.   What’s more, the two of them are working together amicably. It’s awesome!

I may not think it’s quite so awesome when the house is full of noisy, giggly girls.  The lounges have been pushed back, and they’ve already heaved the sofa bed futon downstairs.  Their bed mattresses are also apparently heading this way as well, plus some airbeds. I don’t know, I’m leaving all that to them.

I made up a pot of bolognaise last night, and I’ve said I’ll make them garlic bread.

Ms 14 has one friend here already and they are making a triple decker cake, of different flavours and food colouring. It’s.. um.. going to be interesting.

Anyway, tonight I’ve got myself plenty to do on Ms 16’s fancy new widescreen laptop too. Some articles to write, and a plenty to watch on ABC’s iView.

Well, I may not think it is quite so awesome when I have to nag to get everything cleared up tomorrow. Some more wheeling and dealing may be in order I think.  Any ideas?