2012 Camp Bus Story

"Rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr!"

That's the sound a bus makes when it's got a flat battery.

When a bus goes "rurr-rurr-rurr" in an unfamiliar place at 9:00pm in the cold, wet weather and the bus is filled with tired, frightened children, the "rurr-rurr-rurr" sounds a little more sinister than I can make it look on the screen.

Mr de Elba, Justamum and I had taken seven children to have a fabulous night ice-skating and tobogganing, and we'd stopped at McDonalds to get 30c cones for the children on the way home.  We clambered back on the bus to make the 20-minute drive back home when the "rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr" changed our night from Fabulous to Potentially-Very-Bad-Indeed.

Mr de Elba kept his cool as he turned the ignition key again and again, but the bus didn't give any hope of spluttering to life.  One by one the children sobered as they realised what Justamum and I had realised in the darkness of the bus: we were stuck.  Justamum and I said little prayers while the girls cried and the boys prophesied doom.

Baby Rex decided he was hungry but he didn't want my milk, an impossible scenario he sometimes presents me with.  He alternated crying with screaming and I took him up the back seat of the bus, as if that would somehow minimise the noise for the other passengers.

As I sat there offering milk that was somehow offensive to a person smaller than my arm, I considered our options.

How to start the bus? No idea.

How to evacuate the children while someone cleverer than I worked out how to start the bus? Ah, there were several options there, each more unsatisfactory than the last.

I could call my Dad to drive our car (complete with baby seat for Rex and boosters for the others) to pick us up and take us home ... but he didn't have our house or car keys.

I could call Crazy Sister's husband who had the benefit of living close to where we broke down.  But he would have had to make several 40-minute round trips to take us all, and didn't have the requisite child restraints in his car.

Also, when I invited Crazy Sister ice-skating, she said with her characteristic charm that it sounded "damn nasty" and that she "just spent what feels like most of this year waiting for winter to finish."  Dragging a Crazy Family member out into "damn nasty" weather that felt a little like the winter that had finally just finished seemed defeatist at best and humiliating at worst, so I abandoned that idea.

The third option was "Panic Now."  But by that stage, we were too tired. Instead, we and the children said, "Dear God, we pray the bus can start, amen."

I hadn't noticed that a kind bloke with a really nice new ute had asked if he could give us a tow, so we could try a rolling start.  Mr de Elba had to back the bus up by allowing it to roll backwards down a slight incline.  My job, since Rex and I were sitting in the back row, was to tell him when to stop so that he didn't smash the car parked 10 metres behind us.  That was when I started to sweat a little.  "Panic Now" seemed a good option.

We rolled backwards without incident, the tow cable was attached, and we were slowly towed out of the carpark.  Then we started going faster to get up a fair speed before trying a rolling start.

"Rurr-rurr-rurr!"  No luck.

They tried again in a different gear.  Rolling slowly, rolling faster, rurr-rurr-rurr, no luck again.

A third try - much the same.

Fourth try, and they went much faster.  It was then I realised how difficult it must be to concentrate on getting up enough speed to start the bus while watching the ute's brake lights so that you could stop the bus quickly enough on the wet road so that you didn't smash into the back of the Good Samaritan who was trying to help you.

Then all of a sudden: BRAKELIGHTS-EMERGENCYSTOP-SKIIIIIIIIIID-stopjustintime!

We'd just avoided rear-ending a really nice, new, expensive ute with a really old, unreliable, shuddery bus.  "Panic Now" was instigated.

My choice would have been to pull out then.  No more tries, no more potential rear-ending of the Good Samaritan for his kindness.  However Mr de Elba decided to give it one more shot.

Rolling slowly, rolling faster, rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr, splutter, cough, START!  It had worked!  We were running again, and as often happens in these situations, the Good Samaritan congratulated us, we thanked him profusely, he said goodbye and then he disappeared into the night.

"Thankyou God, the bus has started!" we said together.  Girls stopped crying, boys were perhaps a little sad that the eventual doom didn't transpire because it seemed to have been quite an adventurous possibility, baby Rex had cried himself out and fell asleep slumped across my arms, and Justamum and I laughed silently in the darkness.  Because what else could you do, really?

And as we drove home in the dark wet night, we wondered what the ending of this story would be - the story whose beginning involved being stranded with a flat battery outside McDonalds late at night and whose middle involved driving that very bus packed with 20 excited teenagers three hours to the beach for a week-long camp.

Woody had no such qualms.  He sat happily beside me saying over and over again, "Fank God da bus has start."

Why I No Blog?

I received an email from my sister today, which said, in part, this: "Why you no blog? Things must happen."

Sigh. I shall attempt to answer her fully and truthfully.

Why you no blog? Because I bore myself.

Things must happen. They do, but if I don't care to write about them, does anyone care to read them?

Did you eat any good cupcakes recently? No.

Is anything growing in your garden? Only weeds. The horrendous state of my gardens does feature on my Massively Long List of Things to Do, but it's so far down the priorities that I probably won't get to it until it's way too late to salvage anything.

Do your children carry jugs of wee around the house? No, but I know someone whose kids do!

Would you put Joe's singing on your blog? Well now. That would require videoing and converting and uploading, and prior...

Here there was a nose injury from some silly play inside a sleeping bag on the floor, and I was distracted for a few hours with the possibility of a small broken nose (definitely small, probably not broken,) dinner, the coming home of Mr de Elba after a long and difficult day at work, bathing kids, dressing kids, brushing kids' teeth, reading stories to kids, and spending 3 minutes deciding that the first item on my Urgent To-Do list was too difficult.  And here I am again.  Where was I?

Putting Joe - pardon - WOODY'S cute little singings on my blog would require videoing and converting and uploading, and prior to that it would require caring enough.  And completing my list of things to do, which will take the rest of my LIFE so I don't like your chances.  Grr.  My life used to be so CLEAR and I used to do things like blog!

Is "Too Many Bandicoots" too depressing to write up?  Oh my.  That reminds me that there is a rapidly decomposing bandicoot currently in the sandpit.  Mr de Elba's schedule will not allow for the bandicoot to be disposed of by him, meaning that Buzz and I have to try.  But that will remind me that the lawn needs mowing and the passionfruit resembles a triffid and needs controlling, and the entire garden is a total disgrace.  And I really am in no physical state to be disposing of decomposing bandicoots, pruning triffids, mowing the lawn and claiming dominion over the garden.  Which brings me nicely to the next question:


Is your girth larger than your bust? That milestone always shocked me during pregnancy.  Well lucky, lucky you.  I remember celebrating that milestone in my first pregnancy, but then I struggled to see my girth deflate to be smaller than my bust ever since.  Is my girth larger than my bust?  My dear, my entire front looks like a poorly-disguised collections of basketballs vying for space.

I was within a few centimetres of my bust-larger-than-girth goal at the time I conceived this newest little one and thence began inflating again.  Over the last 48 hours though I seem to have had a growth spurt every-jolly-where, putting the extremely expensive recently-purchased maternity bras in definite doubt, and the recently-purchased maternity clothes in possible doubt.  Oh doom and disaster.  I bet you're glad you asked.

How did that whole mouldy roof episode end up - do you need to rant about insurance tradesmen? My insurer was very good about the whole episode, and although I wasn't left out of pocket in the end, the insurance company was.  The dodgy building company who outsourced to really good tradesmen were the winners.  That was a while ago, and I'd forgotten about it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 


Was that what you were after, dear sister of mine?  Would you like a commitment from me to regularly update my blog with such drivel?  I could, you know!  Well, I could promise, and then I would no doubt begin to bore myself again!

Blog your memories, keep on laughing!

I have been reading back through posts on my sister's blog recently.  Whenever I need a pick-me-up, I go to her "Too Much Information" tab on the left, and I am guaranteed a huge laugh after which I always feel better.

I was reading old posts the other night when I came across one that reminded me of one of the funniest nights of my life.

She was staying with me once and we were talking, talking, talking.  We must have been standing in the kitchen or somewhere like that, because she was in dire need of somewhere to sit.  After a while she announced her need to relieve herself, and find a place to sit.

Only she said, "I'm going to the toilet and I'll bring back a stool."

After reading that again, I laughed so hard that my tummy muscles were too sore to go for a swim the next morning.  But I think I'd got my workout anyway.

joke.doc - File Not Found

Tonight my sister and I were on the Google Talk, discussing how Dad was so awesome to think about putting fertiliser on our roses for us.  Unnecessary for her, because she had already done it; necessary for me, because I'd spent weeks being sick and hadn't got around to it.

I knew that Mum and Dad had visited Crazy Sister yesterday, but when I saw her say that Dad had made the trek out to visit her, I couldn't resist the obvious retort.

Sadly, this joke appeared to "go through to the wicket keeper" and I was left with no recourse but to post it on my blog.

Creative response

When I saw my sister sitting with pen poised above her paper and a faraway look on her face during morning tea, I just knew that she was composing a "blessing" that was going to be in rhyme.  As yet I hadn't read out the bit about "You get double points if you've done it in rhyme," but I could tell that she was going for gold anyway.  Mum declared her handwriting not fit for the final copy, and she kindly transcribed it.

I asked the audience to give her a round of applause for her effort, but told them I couldn't possibly read it out because it was a blessing for me, and it was so outrageously kind that I wasn't even sure if it was true.  The audience wasn't at all pleased with that and our host stepped up to read it out.  I'm still not sure if it's true, but these 2 stanzas of perfect anapaestic tetrameter are so wonderful that I'm glad this piece got its day.


Our sister and daughter's the one we want blessed,
She's here at the conference - unusually dressed
In a tall stripy hat and a big red bow tie
We're so blessed by Kate, and there's the tale why: -

She opens her home to all sorts, and she'll feed 'em,
She gives other mums kid-free times when they need 'em,
She'll unburden your woes with a nice cup of tea.
And so there you have it: "A Blessing on ME!"


In the next session, I did have many rhyming blessings to read out, all in different meters requiring some quick pre-reading and some even quicker thinking before opening my mouth and launching off into the rhythm that the writer had intended.  Many blessings, rhyming or otherwise, needed to remain unread because of time.

In all, I had about 120 blessings that didn't make it, either to be read out as an honourable mention or as one of the 4 prize-winning blessings, and that was quite gut-wrenching.  Not one of the blessings in the "No" Pile deserved to be in a "No" Pile of any sort.  On the following Sunday morning I asked the organisers if there was any way to hand as many blessings as possible to their intended recipients.  We hope they each can find their road back home.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Mad Hatters Tea Party

Back in May, my sister and I went with our daughters to my church's women's ministry Mad Hatters Tea Party.  It was a fun afternoon of tea, treats, mad hats, decorated tables and craft!

We decorated our table with a vase of fabric gerberas and rubber chickens:

The chickens were later be-hatted using the craft materials supplied. 

We wore outrageous headpieces ourselves.  My Crazy Sister had the best hat on the day (as informally judged by me) which featured her own hair issuing from the crown of her fabric-covered cowboy hat in a fountain of manic sparkly twists.  And this is why I love her.  Peanut looked splendid, as always, wearing both a pink tissue-paper headpiece and a Pleasant Attitude.

This second item was not worn on the day by Jessie, who would not be photographed in her gerbera-covered hat.  I was only able to photograph the gerbera-covered hat without its wearer.

I graciously put on about 20kg just for this isolated photo, in order to make everyone else in the room feel better about their own appearance:

Some of the other ladies and their decorated tables looked like they were going for a day at the races. La-dee-DAH. I am sure the word MAD was on the invitation.

As the speaker got up to speak, Mr de Elba delivered the boys to me as he was coming to church for a music practice. I thought that three children near accessible tables laden with teatime treats might be a little bit much to handle, especially since the speaker was expecting to speak, but I was saved the humiliation of trying to manage this impossible situation because Woody threw up violently all over himself and the car just as they arrived.  He came inside feeling much better and was gleefully given handfuls of chocolate slices and little cakes by his thoughtless siblings upon his arrival.

I disallowed this mass-consumption of sugar and immediately went home, washed Woody, washed his clothing and then attacked the horror in the car.  The End.

Phone Messages from my Sister

You have ... two ... new messages.

Message received ... Monday at ... ten ... thirty-seven ... am.

Hi!  It's me!  I've just invented a new MOP!  It's great!  You're related to someone who invented a new mop!  Anyway, have a great day!

Click.

To call back, press  2,2.  To replay, press 4.  To delete, press 5.  For help press 8.

Next message.

Message received ... today at ... eleven ... fourteen ... am.

Hi.  It's me.  It's all very depressing.  My new mop isn't all that great.  It sort-of works, but not all that well.  So ... yeah.  Bye.

Click.

To call back, press  2,2. To replay, press 4.  To delete, press 5.  For help press 8.

I mention it because it reminded me of this:



Ooh ... an update!

Piano Teachers

Some piano teachers
 Smack the poor dear children's wrists;
Some piano teachers
Make you want to curl your fists.
Some piano teachers
Teacher kids what music's about;
Some piano teachers
Freak their poor lil students out.

Imagine a new house is being built next door ...

The house is done, new neighbours in!
You've even met the Dad
The kids seem sane (at least, at first)
But the mother seems quite mad.

A post dedicated to my sister.

Oh to have a little sister

Just like mine is pure bliss.

Perfect skin, eyebrows and teeth,

Sometimes her hair's like this:

Phone conversation with my sister

This is a tandem post with THIS ONE.
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Phone rings)

Me: Hello?

Crazy Sister: Hi, it's your sister here.

Me:  That's a co-incidence, because it's yours here!

CS: What?  Is that you?

(She was on her mobile, I was on speakerphone.)

Me: Yes.  How may I be of assistance?

CS: I need some advice.  I'm standing outside the Bank ...

Me (thinking): Oh no, she's been arrested...

CS: ... The automatic teller machine ate my card the other day and I'm trying to get it back.  Now they've told me there are three cards on this account, but we only have two.

 Me:  That's weird.

CS:  Yes.  And the other problem is that we didn't know which cards to cancel, because we don't know which ones are the extra card and the lost card.  So she's sent me outside to call Yummy Hubby to work out which card he has, so we know which two to cancel.

Me: Okay, so ...?

CS:  Okay.  So.  Now I've just looked in my purse and I've actually found the card I thought I'd lost.  I've had it all along.

Me:  That is SO something that would happen to me.

CS (laughing):  So here's my dilemma.  Do I continue with this charade of having a missing card so I don't lose face, or do I just go back in there and admit it all?

Me:  Ooooh.  Tough one.  Um - what about you go back in and ask the teller, "Hypothetically speaking, if I just by pure chance found the extra card in my purse, should I tell you about it or just go through with this lost-card charade to save face?"

CS: I guess that's the other option.

Me: Are they nice in the bank?

CS: They are ... officious.

Me (assuming officious means "efficient" but finding out later that it doesn't): Hm.  Well.  I'm not sure if my advice is any good.

CS (laughing): No, it was good.  Thanks for your help!

Me: I was a HELP?  Seriously?

CS: Yes, I think I'll do it.

Me: Okay then!  Best of luck!  Bye!

CS: Bye!

Ten minutes later, a text from Crazy Sister came.

"Bank lady just laughed and said, "Oh Bless!  You must have been stressed!"

I'm Proud and Thankful for 2009

1.  Firstly, I am thankful and extremely sobered by the fact that I am alive, as is my dear little boy Joseph Samuel.  But for modern medicine, we would both have certainly died.  Many women and babies died in childbirth in the past because of problems like placenta praevia, as do many women and babies in third world countries today.  Thankyou God, from the bottom of my heart, that the doctors were able to make a potentially tragic circumstance into a quiet, low-key medical miracle.  Thankyou very much.  I love him so much, and I can't stop rubbing his round fuzzy little head.

How could I not give a small donation to provide a birth attendant in a third world village?  I plan to make this donation each year on Joseph's birthday to show my gratitude.  (Want to check that link out?)

2. I am thankful for my wonderful husband, who, at the end of the year, still loves me.  I am thankful for his skills in assembling a play kitchen for Anna-Lucia. There were what seemed like hundreds of little pieces to fit together, not to mention the screws and things ...  Wow.

3. I am thankful for Nathaniel and Anna-Lucia, and proud of the fact that I have kept them alive, healthy and happy this year.  They are the dearest little delights who ever sought to kill each other routinely before 7:00am each morning.  I am proud that I made it through a year of kindy without ever forgetting to pick Nat up once, and for finally managing to give him the Kindy Birthday he's always wanted.  I am proud that when we moved away from Mr de E's Aunty's awesome Family Day Care arrangement, that with my mother's help, I was able to have Anna-Lucia at home full-time and still manage.

4. I love my extended family, and thankful that Crazy Sister and her family will live closer next year. Tune in to my Post-Christmas "I Am Thankful" post in 2010 to see if I'm still thankful! Aarrr, kidding! I really am most excited to have them closer.

5. Around the House:
(a) I am proud that after many months, I tidied my drawer of containers.  Now I have containers stacked with their lids beside them, and I also have precious little of anything round.  Children's cups now have their own spot, and are restrained from taking over the world.

(b) I am also proud of the curtains I bought for the PlayRoom, even though the PlayRoom is still a work in progress.  I will be monstrously proud of Mr de Elba and myself when it is completely finished!  Again, tune in to the Thankful Post of 2010.  It may just take that long.

(c) I am proud of my Wee Bro for starting me off on the transformation of the Overgrown Corner With Wasps into The Sandpit, and of my own work to finish the job.

I am sure that many more items for this list will come to me over the days. But for now, that will do.

So when I shout "Happy New Year" it will not be with the thought that the new year may bring nothing but sunshine and rainbows. It will be with thankfulness for 2009 in mind, remembering the things I was proud of and thankful for in the year.

For some Thankful Reading, check out the thankful lists by Scurrette, Crazy Sister and Femina.  In turn, I am thankful and  proud to call them my friends.

Vicar? Cauliflower?

No rhyme.  No reason.  Just a wacky suggestion.  Please direct all queries relating to why she took my advice back to HER.

Random

1. I studied for an "A" and I keep getting "F"s

It's so depressing. I love tidiness, but I can't keep my home tidy enough that my family can't mess it up in a heart beat. I love and treasure my family, but in return they use me as a dumping station and a refuelling station. I'm not sure how much of this taking-for-granted I will accept before I book myself into a nice place with padded walls. Heard of the concept of the "love tank"? Well mine always runs on Low but now it's so Empty I can't seem to fill it up by myself. I am exhausted. Other mums are doing so much better than me. And this is not the time to say, "Oh no they aren't ..." because I've seen them. I've seen their homes. I've seen how their family treasures them. It would be kind of you to lie for me, but really, I don't need it because I know the truth.

2. But 2 year olds aren't supposed to get PMS

This smile:I just haven't seen enough of it lately.

3. Funny texts in sensitive situations

It wasn't just my sister - a good friend of mine (a very good friend - someone who made me feel welcome when I moved here, who helps me help others, one of those totally awesome friends you want to hang on to all your life) also turned 30 yesterday. I was at her party last night while Mr de Elba was home with the baby Joseph who cried a lot, Anna-Lucia who did an inordinate amount of crying, saying that "Maisie* is making me sick" and Nat who was still awake at 8:30pm** and I was getting concerned as I received more texts to this effect.

The speeches were lovely. My friend's mum, dad, grandma, cousin, friends and husband all gave speeches that would make anyone cry if such nice things were said about them and in The Moment, I got another text. Eek. I thought I'd better check it.

It was not from Mr de Elba, it was from my Crazy Sister. "Why am I always so gassy when I've got my period?" she asked. Hard to keep a straight face.

* ... who is Maisie? This is Maisie ...

Yeah, makes her SO sick. Boo hoo.

** Now why is he so tired today? Why so naughty? Why did he throw a rotten mango on the freshly cleaned floor? Splat. See? I could keep this place clean if it was just me. But I think I need them, rotten mango and all.

4. Q&A

Nana Tantrum: Oh, I hope so! Please tell me that you have just a little bit of snow! We've had a heat wave here and it's been unbearable. When we moved up the mountain to our new place we thought we wouldn't get this uncomfortably hot, but not so, it seems.

Scurrette: We only got a few drips of rain, then it stopped. Just enough for some pictures with umbrellas, not enough to put much in the tank which I appear to have conveniently drained by leaving the tap on (scoring another F.)

Veiled Turnip: Yes, I do as much editing as I can in Picasa - Photoshop is quite beyond me, but I plan to learn more about it.

Hippomanic Jen: Anna's disappearing jeans did indeed get wet, but not really wet enough to discard. Just wet enough for a small child to get all cranky and demand for them to be discarded.

LOLz

Oh hai!

Crazy Sister has given me an idea. She's made a LOLkidz over at her blog:

and it reminded me of when I made some LOLNats when Nat was little:







Apologies to Femina for that last one. I am hoping she is busily writing thousands of words instead of reading my blog, but something tells me she just read this and got a bit of a fright at the sight of Jaz the attack collie purporting to have just eaten a kitty. She didn't. It was just for the LOL.

So they don't always follow the rules of the LOLcat, but they're fun to make.

I was wondering if we could all do a post on our own blogs with a LOL? Would you like to do that? You can do a LOLkid or a LOLhusband or a LOLboyfriend or a LOLdog or LOLcat or a LOLgerbil or a LOLhouseplant ...

If I was REALLY clever, I'd set up a Mr Linky so you could all put the URL of your post in and we could visit each other that way. But as yet I am NOT THAT CLEVER, and as I have been awake since 2:00am this morning, I thought I'd better get to bed instead of learning how to do Mr Linkies.

Would you like to make a LOL, post it on your blog and leave me a link in the comments? If you need a LOL generator, try:
☺ http://wigflip.com/roflbot/
☺ http://bighugelabs.com/lolcat.php
☺ http://cheezburger.com/lolbuilder.aspx

I'd love to see what you come up with. In the meantime, just to show you that I'm not after anything too awesome or clever or funny, this is the best I could do on the sleep I had:

A Memory From My Youth

I was just chatting with Heather and I remembered this gem from when I was younger and living back home.

There were many occasions when I was relaxing in my room and my younger sister would walk by. She'd mosey on in and start chatting to me while looking in my mirror and examining her teeth - yes, HER TEETH - in minute detail.

This gal could inspect her teeth for a full ten minutes. She loved those teeth, the reason being they were perfect, and still are today.

One day when she was in situ in front of my mirror and I wasn't paying any great attention, I heard this:

"Aaaaa-CHOO!!! Oh. Sorry about your mirror."

Worrying.

Cold Turkey

My small niece, Peanut, is going through dummy withdrawal.

"dummy" = "pacifier"

I was talking via Google Talk with my brother-in-law, Constable Crazy, about this.

Me: Is Peanut managing without her dummy?
Const: The turkey is cold but living.

Oh dear. So what does a mother do when she has a number of dummies in the house and doesn't want to cave in and give them to her daughter in a moment of sheer desperation?

She sends them to her sister. Express Mail too, unless that round yellow sticker on the left is a breastfeeding joke.

I assume these were sent with the explanation that "the baby will need them."

Ah yes. Thanks. I will -er- keep them, and then I will -er- I will ... umm ...

Still. A kid sucking on a dummy is probably better than:

Caller ID

Crazy Sister: I got your message and rang your mobile, but you didn't answer.

Givinya de Elba: Oh - that was YOU. I had just strapped a moaning kid and a not-moaning kid into car, and was driving and my mobile rang in my back pocket and I had to pull over and get the mobile out from under my giant backside, then you hung up and didn't leave a msg so I just gave up and drove on.

Crazy Sister: Mum's trained me to hang up when it goes to message bank, even though I don't agree with that philosophy. And the dumb thing is that when you called me at mum's place the other day, I ran past the nearest handset to the one with Caller ID so I could peer at the readout first.

Givinya de Elba: You didn't!

Crazy Sister: Yep - just like Mum does. It's learned behavior.

Givinya de Elba: That is very sad.

Crazy Sister: I know that.

Givinya de Elba: Whenever Mum and Dad get a call they peer at the caller ID, then get their glasses and peer at it again, then discuss at length who it could possibly be, and if they recognise the number etc., etc., all this time the poor schmuck is ringing and ringing! I think Mum and Dad could do without caller ID. One of these days it will ring out while they are reading the number out loud and asking if it's one they recognise.

Crazy Sister: But I can't imagine them deciding not to answer based on not knowing the number.

Givinya de Elba: So there's no point in using Caller ID to screen calls, is there?

Crazy Sister: No. I have caller ID and talked to a pervert for over a minute.

Givinya de Elba: Er-what?

Crazy Sister: I'm not too bright sometimes.



This is where the conversation got weird. I will let her tell you in her own words. For an account of how she managed to talk to a telephone pervert for over a minute, you'll have to head over to her post on

"Graze if you want to, but don't eat dirt."

Another go at Rehab

Remember last year when I needed to get away and visit my Crazy Sister? She decided to name her brand-new house "Rehab" so I could tell people that things were getting on top of me and I was off for a quick visit to "Rehab."


Well, Sonny, Smoochy and I have just been for another two days at "Rehab." Unfortunately, this time we had our naughty Puppity Doggity as well as Crazy Sister's dog Dash to keep separated so that Dash didn't lose her life. (My dog is naughty, and I don't like her very much.) So after a few days of worrying about dogs, I feel like I wouldn't mind a quiet little rest in a real rehab facility. Rehab For People Who Don't Like Their Dogs, for example.

ANYWAY.

While I was there, I discovered to my immense dismay that it appears that my belly button is turning into an outie.

I hate that.

I had an outie when I was a young kid, and I hated that too. There was much rejoicing when it decided to become an innie.

There was again much rejoicing when my first two pregnancies did not cause it to become an outie.

And at the best of times, I am a bit "thingy" about my belly button.

I don't CARE that those who have carried babies will all say yours turned into outies but went back in. I just don't think I can handle this.

So Crazy Sister and I decided I'd better put a marble in there and put some strapping tape on top.

It's the only way ... unless you guys have any better ideas?

Random Photos

I've been taking photos on my phone to blog about, but when it comes time to blog, I am embarrassed about how trivial the topics are and how crumby the photos that come from my phone camera are. But I think, since it's been 5 days since I last posted, it might be time to share the low-quality stuff that's in my mind and on my phone.

1. Way back on the 6th, Heather asked me to go outside and soak up some sun because the weather was freezing over her way. I went outside to take some pics, and the day became cloudy and overcast. Every photo of my house looked ghastly because the lawn was in DIRE need of a mow. So I lay on my back and took this one of tree, clouds and sky.


2. Did I say the lawn was in need of a mow?


3. At work last Saturday, I had a very slow day. I had a slow day booked, then 2/3 of my speech therapy kids couldn't come. Afterwards I wondered if I could afford to go shopping for kids clothes, and I dcecided that since I'd worked that morning, there'd be no reason why I couldn't take $50 and get some clothes that actually fitted my kids, who are currently wearing clothes that are embarrassingly short and tight. I went to K-Mart and found that the summer stuff was all marked down, and in addition there was 25% off everything! I loaded up, hoping I wasn't going too far over the $50. Some things were $3, some were $4, and there was one nice plain black t-shirt for Sonny that was, after the two markdowns, $1.87! I got to the checkouts, worried I may have gone WAY over $50. But guess what - the total was $49.33! How GOOD am I?


4. My neighbours, who bought the house next to us in 2007, bought a house that had just had its roof restored. Imagine my surprise when I saw they were doing the roof yet AGAIN, only 2 or 3 years since the huge, expensive job was done! Imagine my ongoing surprise when I saw what colour the roof now is. Is this the brightest, reddest, most headache-incuding roof you've ever had the pleasure of looking out onto? I think we have to move.


5. I found a leaf that looks like a pair of lips.


6. My sister is a clever little chickie, but I caught her in a gullible mood one day. We were lying on our backs on the back deck, looking up at the evening sky and the TV aerial on our roof. On the spot, I made up a silly story about the three straight bits at the top being for the three commercial Channels 7, 9 and 10, the straight bit down the bottom being for the ABC and the final one being for SBS (national multicultural and multilingual broadcaster) with the attached squiggly bit being the Foreign Language Decoder. She believed me! It was a triumph for me, as I can't tell a story like that with a straight face and I can't fool anyone about anything.