35 weeks

Well, it was during the week, but I have been flat out here - hopefully finishing up the last big work project today, and tidying up the littlies early next week.

I will despair of the lack of income (like it was rolling in) but perhaps those "nesting" things you are meant to do - like pack a bag for hospital and setting up space for the new baby - will float to the surface. Otherwise we'll just have to roll with it, I suppose.

It seems all I have done is apologise for not going round and visiting all my Bloggies throughout this pregnancy, but I really hope to do a bit of that with the nesting.

Sweet dreams, hey?

Anyhow - latest bump shot and will (hopefully) be a more wordy (and nesty) blogger next week...



(oh - and I do have a top to my head, just that 'Salina was more concerned about not getting a red hand on the photo - something that happens with movement and a slow shutter speed - than framing)

Happy Birthday 'Salina

10 years ago about right now I was being given some heavy drugs after a horrible night of labour going nowhere (don't you wish there was more information on posterior position?) and finally gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.

She yelled for the first few hours!!

After that, the ill-advised sleeping pills I had been handed upon going to the hospital 20 hours earlier took effect and I crashed - to be woken by the wonders of learning to breastfeed (she had to learn also) and newborn nappy changes (NOTHING prepares you for that).

The good news is that MOST of the intervening 10 years have been wonderful.

Happy birthday to my wonderful little girl.

On a Platter

Happy Halloween (or whatever the greeting is - we are not learned in the art of Halloween here, to the bemusement of V)!

I do have a child, however, who has a birthday and an imagination suited to take advantage of this festivity - as always, 'Salina-style.

Five of her besties from school came over for a sausage sizzle and then FILLED the bathroom with make-up and hairstyle needs - an eerie premonition for adolescence.

Anyhow - the final product:




(She is a head on a platter - geddit?)

We took them around 2 local blocks for a total haul of 3 houses (the first 3 - 2 had been worded up), quite a few either "oh, is it Halloween? You girls look great, lets see what is in the pantry" or "oh, is it Halloween? You girls look great, sorry we have nothing" and one gruff "We are religious and don't do Halloween."

Still, there was more than enough sugar products to keep them all amused - and hatching even greater plans for Halloween '10.

The Last Post in the Electrolux Ecovalve Saga

Long-time (okay, long-suffering) readers will recall that me and my washing machine haven't always had the most harmonious relationship.

Waay back in July 2005, I was doing my washing while working on the computer when the power went out. The power went out because the old battle-axe that was my top-loader in my previous life had decided that not only would it cease to work, it would do so in an explosive manner and the safety switch had determined it - and everything else in the house (including my computer) should receive no more juice for it to work up into combustive manner.

Luckily, I had done my tax early that year, and the relationship with the Electrolux Ecovalve began.

Pretty soon after I moved to Paradise, it started to play up, and during an ongoing liaison with the LERF it has sort of behaved - right up until the day after the warranty expired.

Since then, it has been a steadily more unreliable partner in the washing stakes, complaining when the water wasn't draining quickly enough (that happens when the laundry tubs have tiny outlets), when the load was too heavy (a call that happened with lighter and lighter loads as time went by) or when the Moon wasn't in the right house.

Add to that the fact that the computer board within no longer took any notice of what programme you have dialled, it would only do one wash program (even if you asked for drain or turned it off).

By last week, it had gotten to the point where I was having to restart it 3 times per load - which when extrapolated against the time it takes anyhow to do a load meant that my 3 loads every two days meant I was washing all day, every day (it seemed) and getting my 10,000 Steps in on the back steps alone.

And then - and then on Friday, with a more than usually full laundry (great decision, that strip beds one, hey?) it got one and a half loads into the quota for the day - and decided it would thumb its nose at me, curl up its toes, emit a few piteous alarmed beeps and die.

As it hasn't worked properly for so long, it is more the financial and laundromatical aspects of our relationship being over that is causing any trauma.

We have decided we are going to save and invest in some quality engineering (possibly German) this time around, and in the interim the 28 year old Simpson has been hauled back into action.

I mean, it might be a brute, but it is fast (aka on laundry on SPEED), it tries hard and it is far better than handwashing - oh, and its lid-sensor has been deactivated, so only have to go down and encourage it once per load.

So please - sell me the vices and virtues of your laundry equipment - we have an idea of what we might want, but willing to be swayed with your reviews.

On pink clouds, orange cats and stupid birds

This morning was another beautiful start to a beautiful day.

Eddie gently (ahem - poetic license involved) nudged me from my slumber. The 5am sky was bright, tinged at the edges with fluffy pink clouds.

I like to be the first to wake. I like to drink my cup of tea (I know, second child, I allow myself a little latitude) slowly and alone.

My mind takes this time to arrange my day. It is the only time that I truly feel I have any control of it, and it is a fantasty that I can spin for hours.

Of course, I am generally joined after not too long by V and/or 'Salina. V is a "give me a double caffeine hit before small talk" sort of morning person, 'Salina has two morning modes - wide awake and bouncing or "why the heck am I out of bed?" lethargy.

But this morning - this morning I had just made my tea and sat at the computer to contemplate the emails and twitters and blogs that were available for respite through the day - I would say my "set for the day" meter was at about 35% when...

Well, one of the morning rituals is, of course, letting Eddie out after an evening of being locked in the house. I wait until it is daylight for this, as I figure it gives the local wildlife - especially the birds - a fighting chance. The fact that he is orange and therefore doesn't blend too much with foliage and lawn combined with the tinkly bell that accompanies his every move ups the odds even more, and his tally is rather paltry.

Paltry, but not zero. There are birds who are designed with self-preservation strategies and then there are birds who just ain't. Occasionally he chooses the latter...

This morning, he chose the latter. Of course, rather than capturing prey and dealing with it in the wilds of the back yard, Eddie is a social animal and would far rather share the delights of his expedition with the humans he most loves. Cue the sneaking it upstairs, bringing it into the living room and let it loose for a little sport.

Woke me up immediately, as you can imagine. Then he chased it into 'Salina's room. 'Salina has pretensions of being afraid of birds, so this was a lovely way for her to go from "sleeping" to "screaming". The domino effect of this was to rip V from horizontal to vertical. So the scenario - pregnant lady chasing cat chasing bird around the house with accompanying music of child eeking and husband adding a baseline of "what the..."

The time was 5.30am.

We rescued the bird, chastised the cat and - and that is how our Saturday started.

How is yours going?

Turtles, tourism exhibits and tummy

On Sunday, we went for a walk down to Paradise* centre as there was a gathering called "Joggers for Loggers" - not about timber, as one might imagine, but Loggerhead Turtles, one of the turtle breeds that chose a beach just up the coast for laying eggs (and therefore hatching).

There could even be a few under the water in this picture!

Of course, the term "Fun Run" is a bit of an oxymoron as far as I am concerned, and so we were more going for "fun swim" and "fun catch up with girlfriends" reasons than the free grub if you got all sweaty over the 8km on offer!!

Paradise* is a fairly elderly beach village (well, elderly in local terms which is fairly recent in other parts of the world), and still has some of the origial beach dwellings along the esplanade. While this wall is not a true "Kanaka Wall", it emulates the style found throughout the area.

"The Kanaka Wall is a well-preserved piece of history. Kanakas were Melanesians from the South Pacific Islands who were indentured to work in Queensland cane fields during the period from 1879 to 1904. Part of their work was to clear volcanic rocks to allow cultivation of fields. The rocks were packed together to form fences and these could be seen all over the district."

What the above fails to mention is "indentured" actually means a form of slavery - one of the nastiest pieces of local history is that of blackbirding, where many were stolen from Pacific Islands and brought to the region for cane cutting and land clearing purposes.

Of course, Paradise*, like many other beachside sleepy-towns, is growing more and more of these things as it uproots the old fibro shacks and grow with fertilising words such as "luxury" and "resort". If you want a few hundred apartments for your investment portfolio, I could even do a whole post on the "For Sale" signs.

This is the hustling centre of tourist activity of Paradise*. The Ice Cream options are fantastic at the Scoopery, not our favourite Fish and Chips outlet (but apparently does a roaring trade in excellent Pizzas) and a rather swish cafe - there is more activity around the corner, but I don't have a camera that takes shots around corners!!

This part of the beach has been developed beautifully for tourists, with shady picnic spots, a fantastic Turtle Park and a pedestrian/cycle path that goes for about 10km (part of the day was the opening of the new section that goes right around to Mon Repos). This is the boardwalk section.

Notice in the background the volcanic rock walls used to create beautiful safe swimming spots.

While there were organised Turtle Sculpting activities further along the beach, 'Salina (nor her friend, Mad') is not really a follower of organised activities (especially when there is some serious splashing or sandcastle building on offer).

I sat in the shade and dozed built my own air-castles while these two frolicked.

On our walk home, I contemplated showing you just how suburban Paradise* can be, but I could find no outstanding examples of mundane - those that fit were not really something I felt the requirement to photograph, and those I felt worthwhile of photographing would not have been an average enough representation. So instead I give you a street I walked.

I was knackered by the end of that morning.


Of course, this is what I was lugging around.

* Please note, Paradise is the term I use for this blog. My town isn't really called Paradise. No, really, it isn't!

The Letter

Humble Abode of Jeanie
Paradise QLD
Tuesday, 20 October 2009

Dear Mr C

On Saturday afternoon, I was grocery shopping in your supermarket as I regularly do.

Accompanying me was my 9 year old daughter, who enjoys greatly selecting things from your stationery display to spend her pocket money on. On this occasion she chose a notebook, valued at $1.72. Not a huge purchase but an important one in her mind.

To encourage her independence, I suggested she make her own purchase in the Express Lane while I put my groceries through one adjacent. She gladly queued behind the 2 customers prior to her.

As it became her turn to be served, two teenage boys appeared from an aisle and reached over her to place their purchases on the counter. What shocked me most was the checkout operator in the Express Lane at the time served these boys immediately, completely ignoring my daughter and her purchase.

As she was upset at this behaviour, she immediately came over to where I was putting my groceries through.

I realise her purchase was minimal, and she is only a young child and therefore possibly not as important a customer in the mind of your checkout operator as his peers.

However, I also understand that one of the tenets of retail is good customer service, and I feel that this incident on Saturday failed to fall into the category of “good”.

Had there been a more senior member of staff available, or had it not been as busy in the store I may well have been tempted to complain of his shortcomings in offering such service at the time, but I refrained.

I do believe, though, that such advice may be better coming from you and perhaps as a reminder to all staff. I do realise it is a slight infringement, and definitely not a sackable offence – but I also realise that this could be a learning moment for your operators.

I leave this in your hands.

Yours sincerely


Jeanie

Saturday afternoon shopping - fraught with dangers

I know I SHOULD be more organised and do the groceries basically any other day of the week. I work from home, I SHOULD be able to work around a grocery trip - but every week it gets to Saturday and every week I get to the realisation that I will have to stock up or feed my family soup until Monday and therefore every Saturday I do a little list and get shopping - with varying degrees of success.

On the good weeks, I meal plan, organise my pantry, consult the specials brochures (online and paper form) and have a cracker list. We get to Softball, go to the library and then do the health food shop (always fun), the big smoke supermarket, the fruit & veg shop and the 2 local supermarkets and somehow manage to keep within budget and get nearly everything.

On the not so good weeks - we go to softball and get home, when I panic. I figure what we will eat based on what I see in the shops, I double up on things I think I might need and completely forget what was absolutely necessary, I am limited to the 2 local supermarkets and the budget gets blown with only enough good stuff for 2 days.

Guess which one yesterday's was?

It wasn't that dire - however little shops like that will strangle whatever financial sanity you have, and add a nearly 10 year old into the mix...

My gripes with the shopping yesterday, however, weren't about menu planning or meat specials or other customers lack of consideration of aisle usage or old beans.

They definitely weren't about the cutest little kids abounding on a Saturday afternoon at Local Supermarket Number 2 (the blow in). I don't think it is cluckiness, I think there just happened to be a mother-lode of cute little kids at that particular time at that particular place. One little boy was so chatty, he struck up a conversation with me whenever I was anywhere near - even though I declined his offer of a drink (he has worked out all the smooth moves before the age of 3!).

It wasn't about the gorgeous, slinky young things in backless togs and towels in the toiletries aisle - they looked to be having fun together far too much for me to work up a full grump about frumpy matrons, it just made me smile.

It wasn't the fact that my "oh my goodness how much is she growing up" girl disappeared on me for most of the shop for "her favourite aisle" (she is a stationery junkie), reappearing at opportune moments to ask "can I have some money?" (the answer to that is generally no, but she still has to try it), "what is my allowance this week?" (a sliding scale where we hope she aspired to get 100% of, and often receives less - unfortunately she remains happy at getting whatever, and so the bribery is not as effective as it should be - I blame relatives (who do not read this blog) (I hope) who blow our economy with gifts of 3 figure amounts making the 100% of our weekly aspiration look paltry)... I am loving the fact that, in Paradise the supermarkets are not so big and faceless that she can't track me nor I her and she does get a little bit of liberty... Sob, my girl is getting so grown up.

It wasn't that last week's lotto didn't give us the $400,000 I was sort of banking on to solve all financial dilemmas and build a few of our dreams, but I did invest in another chance for fate to step in and do so for us this week. The only guarantee with lotto is that if you don't enter, you will NEVER win.

It wasn't even the fact that a lady in Local Supermarket Number 1 (the original) said "excuse me" in the stock and gravies aisle and then laid her hands on the bump and rubbed - I am far more perplexed by this strange behaviour than outraged, although the whole "personal space" issue can be a bit of a hurdle for me, especially when coupled with the transgression by complete strangers (it freaks me a little when closer acquaintances do it) but she obviously felt it was important enough and did apologise beforehand.

However, there was ONE EVENT that tipped me over the edge yesterday afternoon during the shop - and I am ashamed to say I did not do what I should have done at the time about it.

'Salina had found an object of desire fitting into her budget and was quite excited by the prospect of being the owner of this object (a new notebook - just her kind of candy). I suggested she go into the express aisle for her own purchase with her own money and she was more than happy to comply.

The store was staffed - sparsely - with all very young things - nothing wrong with young things if they do their jobs, and in general there is a certain amount who do and a certain amount who don't - but it is important to note there was not one person working there who I would have called a senior staff member. It comes into play later in my melodrama.

Paradise is made up of mainly by retirees and holiday-makers - families are definitely the smaller third group. 'Salina waited patiently while a few elderly and a few out-of-towners were served. Just as her turn arrived, two teenage boys reached over her to put their purchases on the counter, and Gra#me* served them.

'Salina turned to me to say "did you see that" and I did say out loud (which can be quite) that I had seen that and it wasn't on - and for all the effect that passive aggressive action had on the young thing staff I may as well have been talking from within a plastic bubble - or at least, outside of theirs. Thwarted.

I took her under my wing and put the previous notebook amongst my purchases, scanning the store for someone senior to place a complaint with - but my search was in vain.

My own personal young thing serving me was diligently avoiding any eye contact should I wish to complain to her, and by the time I was at liberty to tackle Gra#me, he had a queue to serve and I stayed silent, defeated into seemingly mute acceptance of this display.

However... However, Mr C, the local owner of Local Supermarket Number 1 (the original) will be receiving a letter, and because Mr C is neither Young nor seeking the admiration of teenage boys above loyal customers I am truly hoping that my Saturday afternoons shall not be ruined by any Gra#me's in the future.

BTW - to those who saw my desperate Twitter last night, inspiration answered my plea and the risotto was fantastic!

My formative musical years in Toto-lity

One of our Wednesday nights rituals here is watching Spicks and Specks.

V is a whizz at most of the trivia served up, having been immersed in musical culture from a very early age. I am okay at bits of it - mainly the trivial - but there are large gaps in my knowledge even though I may have lived through the eras that are represented.

But do I ever feel dumb about this? Not really (well, not unless it is THAT WEDNESDAY that hasn't come along for a few months now) because I have an inescapeable excuse.

I can blame my upbringing.

See, while others may have grooved out to their parents extensive album collections (like V did) there was a theme running through Mum and Dad's records that didn't exactly trill "seventies style". On the upside, any Charley Pride or Val Doonican songs ever featured on SnS are a shoo in for me.

Don't take too much pity on me - after all, there were occasional glimpses of life in the outside world - "The Best of Abba" did come into the family home (this shot is 1 side of the album - the side Mum chose to display - the other side was Dad's favourite - anyone remember why?)

We did get exposure to some exceptional tomes, don't get me wrong. When our next door neighbour married, he married well - a girl with a Hot Chocolate album in her collection. My uncle's marriage brought a fantastic aunt - and some compliations that mean bubble gum music is not a completely foreign concept.

Unfortunately there were not enough eligible local bachelors nor enough funky city chicks marrying them to mean that my grassroots understanding of hip culture was all encompassing (man, I have dyslexia this morning - that came out as emcomappsing first go round).

If I had to rely on the local media I was up the creek.

Countdown was accessible via the television station we could receive (in a very grainy grey, it must be admitted. I thought Big Bird was grey for years!) but only available if we could fool our parents into letting us turn on the TV slightly earlier than the news - that was not always as easy a task as it sounds.

The local radio station had a rather limited budget, and tended to buy 1 album a year - I remember the year that they invested in Toto (and see, I always thought that the album must have been called "Africa" - its not, its Toto IV).

I just checked the Wikipedia entry on the song and had to laugh to read this:

Without a doubt Toto’s most recognizable song, "Africa" was almost omitted from the Toto IV record prior to its release. Having spent a great amount of time producing the tune, the band became so tired of the song that they didn’t want it on the album.

Without further ado, here is the earworm that defined that year for me:



Another year George Michael got the guernsey. Anyone up for a rendition of "Last Christmas"? No, me either.

The good news is that the decades after I have managed to track down and bone up on my lack of education in these areas and don't appear to be too strange when matters wander onto pop culture during that era. I can fudge it pretty well, and even manage to answer some questions and appear somewhat knowledgeable. (A secret I have just exposed - I am fairly competitive when it comes to fluff)

However, if I occasionally look at you a little strangely when you ask me to hum the opening lines to "Can't Get it out of My Head" by ELO, its because there are bits of my youth I cannot recreate (but I can tell you what ELO stands for).

When was your musical awakening? And have you ever been hip?

Using the sunlight of others to guide me...

Yet another 3.30am start here - getting boring. The worst bit really about insomnia is not the lack of sleep, its the lack of energy come 9am - you know, when I should be DOING STUFF!!!

Still, I have put it to good use this morning. Yessirree - I have me a list already (shhhh for those who may say its really yesterday's list that didn't get done) and I have found my silver lining.

We don't have daylight savings - so really, that is 4.30 in those deluded Southern states - which I have moved into my "acceptable times to be awake" category of late.

In New Zealand, it is 6.30 - that is a really reasonable time, I could just pretend to be Kiwi (except I would feel all funny about losing my vowels like that).

Its 10.30 yesterday morning where V's mum is, so I can imagine a whole 'nother day at my disposal.

Its 7.30 last night where 'Salina's grandpa lives with a good night's sleep in front of him...

Thank goodness for the internet where I found those silver linings - because the howler from the North done blown away all the clouds and its far too dark a sky to find anything!!