Mum, what does this spell?

We've had four nights away at the Sunshine Coast!  It's been great!  I just want to post this before I fall into bed for the night.

Buzz, calling from the toilet in the cabin where we were staying: "Mum!  What does this spell?  L-A-D-I-E-S?"

Me, deep in a task, and not really paying attention: "That spells 'Ladies.'"

Buzz: "What does this spell?  P-L-E-A-S-E ..."

Me:  "'Please.'  So you've got 'Ladies please ...'  What next?"

Buzz: "D-O-N-O-T."

Me: "Donott?  What's?  Ah!  That's 'DO-NOT.'  'Ladies please do not...?'"

Buzz: "F-L-U-S-H."

Me, still absorbed in something else, and not seeing where this was heading: "'Flush...?'"

Buzz: "S-A-N-I-T..."

Me, deciding that right then wasn't the best time for that talk: "HEY!  Buddy!  You get to go with Dad to the beach this afternoon!  And then after that you can have a sleep and if you have enough energy you can head out to bowling tonight!  That'll be great, won't it?  Blah blah blah..."

In my front garden

A magnificent hot pink azalea, sitting amongst the gazanias

The first rose blooms of the season with which something strange is going on. I'm not sure what is causing it yet.

A little outdoorsy boy who likes eating mulch and crawling towards the road.

Daisies in between the roses.

Kalanchoes stretching towards the sun. But only if you lie on your tummy and photograph them that way.

Ubiquitous petunias.  The word ubiquitous reminds me of this post.  Terrible, wasn't it?  It still makes me chuckle.

A beautiful butterfly who brings her own special brand of "help" to my garden.  On any given day, her help could involve watering plants or having a tantrum on the front lawn.

The back garden, now, it is something quite different.  All I have to show you is this collage I made to send our sponsor children.  I notice that it's out of date too, as all of these seedlings are much bigger now.

Maybe later this week I'll show you what the little plants are up to, take a picture of the straw bale garden that we've planted, and perhaps even tell you why Bullseye the dog is now canis non grata at our place.  But I say "maybe" because I know all too well what happens when you're in a blogging slump: you promise blog posts that never eventuate. 

And then you put up a post of pictures of your gardens.  Sigh.

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All photos SOOC for reasons of lethargy and apathy.

The nasty side of blogging

There is a blog out there that I lurk about sometimes.  I like the author.  She doesn't always agree with my thoughts on various topics, and sometimes she posts and picture or a story that makes me think, "Well, I wouldn't have done it / seen it that way, but I think it's interesting that she does."  And then after a pause, I often think, "I hope there aren't any unkind people out there who would give her trouble about it."

The other night, she alluded to negative comments on her previous post.  That post had caused me to think, "Wow that was brave," but I moved on.  Perhaps other readers hadn't been so accommodating?  I decided to check her comments on that previous post.

They were ignorant, selfish, petty and unkind.  One commenter used pious, holier-than-thou wording and finished with the information that she had "cross-posted" at a different site.

Curiouser and curiouser.  I did a search for this other site, and what I found shocked and disgusted me.

It was an entire blog devoted to the mockery and humiliation of that poor blogger.  Everything she blogged about was treated as a dangerous catalogue of poor parenting, a greedy grab for more "clicks" on her pages, or a conspiracy full of lies waiting to be researched and blown apart.

It was mean, it was nasty, it was vitriolic.  It sided with Christian organisations who had a beef with the blogger, pretending to be close to them, while other blog posts were filled with foul language and excessively un-Christianlike behaviour.  It claimed to be worried about the welfare of her children despite having called them derogatory names.

The hate blog is evidence of hours and hours of careful research, attempting to unearth dirt and inconsistencies while tearing down any opinions held by the original blogger herself.

For a day after reading it, I felt a little ill.  That I live in the same world as people like the hate blogger is nearly unbearable.

I've never felt the need to hide our complete identities on my blog (just enough so that we can't be tracked down easily) but I have felt the need to hide from hateful people who could dish out the same vitriol onto the happy chronicles of my life.

So what will I do about the potential for nasty people to tear me down?  Stop blogging about life?  Where would that finish - should I stop writing about life?  Stop telling people about life?  Stop living life?

No way, I won't stop.  But I don't feel the need to advertise my blog or grow my readership either.  The small, loyal, kind readership I currently have is just fine, thankyou!

Dear Gmail,

I love that you think that I need to see ads referring to content on my current page.  But quite apart from the obvious unnecessary advertisements generated from keywords in innocent emails in recent years discussing unpleasant pregnancy symptoms was the gastronomic insult appearing above my SPAM box today:

Spam Vegetable Strudel, in case you can't quite see that.

I hate a good spelling/grammatical error

This post refers to the previous post - if you're new here you'd best read the post dated 8 September first.

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Sigh.

Today I received an email from my Dad.

So - did you mean to spell "permissible" wrongly on the blog?
I'm thinking you did!
But it was a great posting!

Who knew?  For 33 years I have been thinking that permissible is one of those -able words.  It's now firmly imprinted on my brain.  When I say it, I am even thinking, "permissable" in my mind.

And it's wrong.  And I made a mistake.  In public.  On my blog.  In a post about spelling errors.

Sigh.

At least Dad was so gracious about it.  Thanks Dad, I'm glad you emailed.  (Perhaps he was gracious because I said in my post that pedants are annoying?  Sorry, pedants.)

Anyway, again I say, "Si-i-i-igh."

permissible ... permissible ... permissible ... permissible ... permissible ... permissible ... permissible ... permissible ... permissible ... permissible ... permissible ... permissible ... permissible ... permissible ...

I love a good spelling/grammatical error

I used to be a pedant. Then I realised how annoying pedants are, and I decided it was cooler to know the correct spelling and grammar but not to be all "I'm right - you're wrong" about pointing it out. 

It is however permissable to blog it.

And that is all I will say on the matter.

Wiggles Car Breaks Down: Wiggles last seen hitchhiking towards Brisbane

Cousins at play

Suspect Line-Up adds Macabre Twist to Minibeast Mystery

It's lovely now that our children are getting bigger.  When once I would have to get up to their cries and attend to them early in the morning, now I lie in bed beside Mr de Elba, listening to Buzz and Jessie getting up and chatting to each other, then going in to Woody's room when he starts stirring.  I am usually aware of the sound of Woody's cot rail being lowered and Woody being lifted out of the cot, and then I hear his little hands going pat-pat-pat on the floor as he crawls around after two sets of little feet running and dancing in the early morning.

They are only allowed to get out of their beds and do this when they hear the radio alarm coming on at 6:30am, so this doesn't happen too early in the morning.  Then at about 7:00am, the sunshine floods through our bedroom window and lights up the whole room, warming my face as it splashes over the bed.

Last Sunday morning, the bliss of this perfect moment was ruined by a Sound No Mother Wants To Hear.  There are many sounds in this category, including breaking glass and that sound you can easily replicate by slowly dribbling a stream of water onto a dinner plate with a few layers of folded towel on it.  That sound.

But these weren't the sounds I heard.  The sound that spoiled my Sunday morning lie-in was Jessie's little voice saying, "Oh no.  Mum.  Woody ate a creature."

Woody eats a lot of non-food items.  He eats so many non-food items that I am unbothered by him picking up discarded food from the floor and putting it in his mouth, to the shock of my Play Group friends (sorry girls.)  We often joke that he is so heavy and solid because of all the sandpit sand he has eaten, and it's quite common to hear anyone in Woody's vicinity saying the words, "What are you eating Woody?  Oh no.  Spit it out."

So it came as no surprise to hear Jessie claiming that Woody "ate a creature."

But what sort of creature?

I asked three year old Jessie many questions regarding the size, shape and number of legs on the particular creature allegedly eaten by her baby brother, and ended with the hypothesis that perhaps he had eaten a millipede.  However, no residual odour of millipede lingered around his mouth, so I wasn't entirely sure.

Fast forward to tonight.  Woody had not suffered any lasting effects of eating the alleged creature, and I had all but forgotten this episode.  Then tonight while reading Jessie her stories, I came across this page from Wombat Stew:

A page of creatures.  I took a wild stab and asked Jessie if she could identify the culprit from this comprehensive line-up of minibeasts.  "Which creature looks most like the one that Woody ate, sweetheart?"

"This one," she replied, with far too little hesitation to ensure me a good night's sleep.

Did I do okay?

Today Jessie asked me, "Why do we have chins?"

I answered, "To hold our teeth up."

Was that right?