Awww, this is cute, I got a 'nudge' from sidherian to let me know that it's been 18 weeks since I posted.

Argh. It feels like it too. Thing is, when L was made redundant 2.5 years ago he had a business thing happening on the side so he decided to make it the main earner, if he could. And he took over the family pc with the internet access and it was hard to argue given my continued desire to eat and keep the kids in shoes and socks.

After 6 months I mentioned that I missed Journaling and could we perhaps, think of a way of letting me have some access before 8pm??? So he got a laptop with some kind of blue tooth connection and ran into the same problems with it that we have with mobile phones up here in the middle of nowhere. The reception doesn't.

Which means that I just cannot get at what used to be my machine at any time that suits me. The double whammy came when work installed a new improved filiter that wouldn't let LJ through on account of the porny underbelly and the disgraceful language contained in some of the most delightful entries and suddenly I can't even catch up on my FL over morning coffee.

That's the bad news, the good is that L has finally realised that survival is not success and a cash flow is not a profit. He's looking for contract work where you get paid the old fashioned way. By someone else.

I'm posting now 'cos he's off being interviewed.

May the Force be with him.

We're running out of shoes and socks.

Walked out Thursday morning to discover that the hot water service had become a Water Feature overnight. Water flowing out of the top and in a graceful waterful working its way out of the shedlet, which some past person installed to keep the thing warm, out across the concrete path and into the herb garden.

Doug the plumber has been the source of much material in this journal but he came up trumps this time, turned up when he said he would and had a unit delivered by COB Thursday, Friday at 9am - colour me stunned - it was installed and heating.

Unh, and bye-bye $1800.

I was saving up for some Noro silk garden,(For a visual click here, and select Noro) wonderful, multi-coloured luxury yarn with a bit of crunch, ach well. This is why knitters and quilters have stashes: to tide us over the sad times when frugality bites.

And I'm getting a bit jack of those modern day versions of the chain letter that have been landing in my inbox. I don't care how good the joke is or how deep and meaningful the message the minute they end with some version of: ‘send this to 10 of your friends within the next 30 seconds and you will receive Good Luck between 4.00 and 4.10 pm next Wednesday, fail to do this and BAD LUCK will haunt you through the Hills of All Eternity. Do not break this chain, those who did have died nasty deaths', I'm done.

I refuse to participate in this kind of crap.

I always break the chain.

Probably accounts for the hot water service karking it.

(Or maybe it had more to do with it being 15 years old?)

Yours in raging cynicism...

Hmm, well, I had the best birthday I've had in a few years and mind you, I haven't had any bad ones that stand out. It was just that this weekend was particularly good and get this, it was good despite the fact that this year if fell on Saturday and I worked 9.30-5.

Work, for the first time in a long time was devoid of the requisite fruitcakes that add spice to the Librarians' lot. No angry folks complaining vociferously about their .40c late fines, no rude people insisting that they needed computer time NOW even though they had not booked and clearly every pc in the place a body before the screen, the computers themselves managed to stay on line all day with nary a hiccup and the automated booking system refrained form crashing. Plus all the staff who were rostered on believed in getting the job done - as apposed to avoiding as much work as possible given that it is the weekend - which spread the load and made the day zip by.

I came home to a dinner cooked by L and the company of the friends who gave us Eddie and Milo. There was much conversation, good food and an overabundance of wine. Dinner was followed by the best laugh any of us have had in a long while thanks to vrya. My friend the 'Blue Collar Comedy Tour' was a riot. We were all wiping away tears, for local colour it travelled really well. 'The glass house' is going to seem amateurish and puerile by comparison (but the accents alone are probably worth 10 minutes of your time).

I did extremely well in the loot department too. Not so much the what was given as the thought behind it. Alex gave me a miniature rose the blooms of which are so small I have never seen the like before. Ellen chose four different shades of novelty yarn (Feathers) in complementary hues and L was springing for the Western boots that I have been lusting after since 5 minutes after I walked into McDonald's Saddlery 6 years ago.

(The Saddlery is an amazing place to find in the Marsh. Not because they have more horse doodads than you could point a stick at but because when you get past the bits, halters, leads and the $4,000 Saddle that looks like it's worth 4K on account of all the tooled silver and leatherwork they have a roomful of Rodeo gear, much of it imported from the US. Fringed jackets, sparkly shirts and boots straight out of Midnight Cowboy.

Although my heart runs to the genuine red and black leather with a mountain of decorative stitchery at $450, our pocket ran to the more practical uni-coloured, lightly stitched 'Made in India' copies at $195.)

So I knew what was coming from my spouse and was very happy with it, then he surprised me by 1. filling the house with flowers (three bunches is my idea of filling, this isn't the movies and where do they find all the vases?) and 2. producing bottles of my favourite perfume and liqeur as a surprise.

Dad gave me garnet stud earrings (my suggestion when he was jonesing for ideas) and a fine chain with a peridot in a dangling doodad. Wasn't expecting this kind of spoilage.

Am very happy woman.

Sunday we took Dad out to lunch at the Myrniong Pub. An interesting old building that's changed hands - and clearly Chefs - recently. The building is all bluestone and history and the food was much the same. Wouldn't eat there again in a hurry and certainly not until someone I trust tells me the food's good. Still the lunch was pleasant and the company happy.

Currently reading: Incurable by John Marsden (Book 2 of The Ellie Chronicles, his follow up to the Tomorrow series.)

Not my usual style so I'll immortalise the moment: January 10th and I have the Kris Kringle for my Knitterly Group, the fabric for half the KK for my Quilting Group and the makings of the other 50% of the Quilting Kringle ready to go.

Colour me stunned.

It' s my birthday this Saturday and I'm working 9.30-5 so today I celebrated in advance at the Hairdressers (or partook of the preliminary stages of my mid-life crisis, take your pick) by having my tired blonde with the 2 inches of even tireder looking re-growth re-coloured in three shades of red with a hot pink 'chunk' behind my left ear, just for interest.

Hot pink hair! My mother's doing a 360 in her grave and my friends will get a good laugh at my expense.

(Gotta do some serious frugalling for the rest of the month now, hot pink comes at a price.)

Hee.

Curently reading: Talk to the hand by Lynne Truss

(I have dropped the ball in the journalling department since the boy destroyed the hd. When I said to L that I missed writing, he asked why I'd stopped and it's just that I can't seem to find the time I had before the crash. Part of this is that he's nearly always around these days, running his business from home, and we haven't quite re-negotiated who does what when. Part of this also, is that age old truth that men see women's time as interruptable: When a man works you must leave them alone if they ask, but whatever a woman is doing is, by definition, able to be stopped so that conversation, coffee or the meeting of the needs of others may take place.

Having finally woken up to this truth I am going to attempt to force some private time out of the day. If I succeed in this for more than a day at a time, a ticket in Tattslotto will be in the offing.)

Ahem, holidays away are such wonderful things, a break from routine, new places, new faces and no interruptions from work, appointments or the rush of the daily trivia.

And then you come home.

Ten days away at Phillip Island: seals, Little Penguins (their name, which is also a reflection on their size. Clearly they were named by someone lacking imagination and gifted with a talent for the obvious), beaches of all kinds and qualities, and fire works on New Years Eve.

Lovely.

And then we came home and the garden is 50% dead, Ralph.

And our waterer tells us he was here every second day and that there must have been a killer wind but the thing here is, he was also collecting the mail. The mail gets dropped in the box with a thick elastic band around around the daily dose. There were four thusly banded bundles in said box on our return. Four days with no water? One garden pretty much gone. L is heartbroken and peeved off. I am equally sad, there is not a rose in this place that was casually purchased: I studied books, guides, talked to Rosarians and made my choices carefully as those of us with limited funding do.

The weather wasn't very co-operative on PI, 42C one day, a full day of pouring rain 48 hours later. I just sat on the couch and watched it through the fly screen, rain, rain, don't go away. A steady, soft, pitter patter all the beautiful day.

So coming home to fried leaves and wilted, struggling bushes that had been, if not rocketing with growth when we left at least steadily getting stronger.

So, and I didn't expect to be saying this before I got too old and doddery to manage the place, now we are seriously discussing moving.

I don't know where or when but one of the key criterion is going to be rainfall.

There has to be some.


Happy New Year!

I used to like catching up on the reading of LJ at work. I would never post from work 'cos that would be risking my privacy but reading my FL over coffee was a pleasure.

Note I said was.

Alas Brimbank Library has switched from the faithful Content Keeper to the more vigilant Mail Marshall who tells me that LJ is full of 'Adult content', innapropriate language and that my attempt to access such filth has been logged.

It doesn't like Yarn Harlot (a pure as the driven snow knitting blog) either, but at least it's obvious where the problem there is.

Currently reading: Thud by Terry Pratchett

And it rained.

Oh my, my, did it rain. Wonderful pounding on the colourbond as I woke at 2 am to wonder why the front verandah light was on and shining in the bedroom window. (We close the curtains only on winter nights, to keep in the heat, as privacy is not an issue.) Thinking muzzily that I must somehow have turned on the outside house lights when turning off the gatepost light after L got home from the CFA around 9 I staggered out into the kitchen and found him checking for incipient flooding.

Our home has flooded in the past thanks to the 1" of fall between the front and back of the property. This being one of the many cases in life when a mere inch is an amazing thing. Hence the dry creek bed, installed as a matter of some urgency, to divert the water along the side of the house and away towards the back of our little patch of paradise. You can see pics of this in the last entry, the ducks are walking along it and the puddlet where they began their swim is the current terminus after which the water finds its own level: and aims for the garage.

Just behind the garage is the temporary sanctuary for the hen and her 8 little cuties.

Which is why I was to be found standing in the rain, at 2.11am, pointing my torch into their cage and checking to see if any fluff balls were in danger of being swept away by the flow.

(We do have plans to extend the dry creek to the back of the property but the Wild Child's orthodontist beat us to our shekels.)



Currently reading: Nickel and dimed: on (not) getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Currently listening to: Country of the blind by Christopher Brookmyre (Funny man, clever, biting, equisite turn of phrase. The Pratchett of thrillers.)

I'm going to go back to faffling on again really soon, I promise.

In the meantime, last Thursday, (yup, still catching up) I phoned home during my coffee break at work (as you do, 4-8pm, wanted to say Hi to the offspring as well as the spouse) and he says:

L: Guess what? Guess what's happening here and it's bewdiful...

Me: Rain?!?

L: Well, yeah, but that's not what's bewdiful!

M: It's not?

L: Well, it is, but that's not the point! We have ducks! Wild ducks on the back pond.

M: The back puddle?

We see one of these in our yard maybe once in 18 months, they rarely come down from the trees during daylight and we've never gotton close enough for a pic like this before:

The paperwork says Champagne Set which is so much kinder than Obsessive Knitters and Yarn Hounds and we meet once a month at each other's homes. The husband of one of our number had the good fortune to be off overseas and she invited us all to a sleepover in their weekender in the Otway Ranges the weekend before last. And I came home so relaxed I'm still catching up.

This is the view from the veranda:

Date:	2005-11-07 10:44
Subject:	Chick pic
Security:	Public
Mood:	cheerful

I remember a while back vrya suggesting that what we need is a mind to LJ dumping process when I was saying that I'd written an entry every day for the last week: in my head.

This week qualifies as much the same. It is one of journaling's ironies that the times when you have the most interesting things to write about are the times when you don't have five minutes to fire up the pc and log on, let alone wax lyrical about events. Naturally when nothing is happening and life is toddling along in pleasant routine one has hours to find the most perfect turn of phrase to describe how much nothing much is happening.

Anyway. Here he or she is,

Our first:

Picture the scene, no, here let me help, courtesy of Ellen the Happy Snapper:

Whew.

We text messaged the Lady of the House on Tuesday to ask if she'd recovered from the after effects of Saturday's wicked curry and heard nothing.

Unusual.

Thursday she 'phones us to say that she'd just been released from Hospital...

Where she'd been residing since Sunday arvo.

That curry burnt the lining of her stomach.

I didn't know such a thing was even possible.

We spent the weekend at Buninyong, a place I would have described as a small township outside of Ballarat but which L informs me is a suburb of Ballarat so I stand corrected, (yet again), with friends on their 17 acres of farmlet.

I took the camera along planning to bounce, or maybe crawl depending on the amount of Merlot consumed with dinner, out of bed and go a-wandering to take happy snaps of an area that is green and fertile and therefore of interest to me, surrounded as I am by spiniflex, succulents and scrubby bush.

Alas when we rose the Lady of the house was ill with what she was hoping was indigestion rather than something less curable. Now while I felt fine when horizontal, admiring the view through the bedroom window

Spring, and the days are warming, the breeze is soothing, and the Sussex Light hen has gone broody:



She has 5 eggs under her huffy little behind!

Paid employment consumed the better part of this week and housework the rest, today is so gloriously sunny I feel gulty for sitting here and answering my outstanding mail.

Soooo, here's hoping your weekend is as good as mine!

Currently reading: C is for corpse by Sue Grafton

Round the corner from the pond re-construction,

And the first rose of the season is the lovely Cymbeline:

Ftp Success!


What does a woman do when she loses her online connections and has time that would have been frittered away happily wandering through LJ land?


Why she attacks those UFO’s, that’s what! And now I have my ftp to Ozemail re-established, here for your amusement are my efforts.

Started this last year as veggie knitting, Sally Melville’s Where’s the opaque? sweater from her book The knit stitch.