Tropical Summer

It seems that after a few dry years we are finally having a tropical summer. In the late afternoon the dark clouds roll in.

 

Thunder rolls in the distance and big, fat raindrops fall.

All this moisture on the ground ensures that the humidity levels through the day never go below wiltingly high. The moist grounds have also provided a fertile patch for my very own mushroom crop, right under the clothes line.

Like this it looks amazing, but get up close and in macro and it looks beyond belief. A landscape of a different world.

I know that Aunty Evil rather likes a fungus in macro. These photos are for her.

Up and at ’em

My daughter is a pragmatic, practial girl. She is a lot like her father that way. It is a quality that I don’t always share.

She read my previous post when she came home from schoolies. She looked at me and said, “You don’t know who you are? You are Tracey. That’s all there is to it. You are Tracey.”

Of course I am. I should have realised.

Did I mention that she wants to study psychology at university? I think she’s made for it.

Thanks for your comments and emails. Up and at ’em!

(Oh, thanks to that person who found my blog by doing a search for ‘young, cool quilters’. You have made my day.)

Who…..me?

I feel like I am having a minor crisis of confidence. I’m not sure where I belong.

I look at my blog and I see ‘my kids did this…’, ‘my kids did that…’. I don’t like to define myself by my children. I find people who do that to be quite sad. Their own self-esteem lives or dies by the achievements of their children. They put pressure on their children until everything implodes around them. That’s not me.

SO I don’t want to write a post about my children.

I sew. I’m quilty and crafty, but somehow I don’t seem to have my mojo. I’m not even sure when it left me. I don’t seem to be making anything of quality or of excitement. I’m not even sure of what to make. The harder I try to think creative thoughts, the more elusive they become.

SO I don’t have a post about my craft.

I think my problem is transition. My girl is going. My son needs surgery. I can’t stop any of that. It will ripple through my life without stop. I am a cancerian. We like a steady ship. I do not have good sea legs.

Frustration

I am doing the rounds of doctors with my son. I feel like I have walked into the middle of an old boys’ club, a secret society.

My son has had an echocardiogram done, but no one will tell us the results. I have asked, but not been given a straight answer. The surgeon who agreed to see our son has told us that, no, he cannot perform the surgery. However, he “has two pectus excavatum cases now and if [he] can just find a third [he] can get his mate to come up from Brisbane to do it here while [he] assists.” Is he advertising for one more? Do we wait for six months until a third case shows up? Do we scout around ourselves and hope to find a third? 

Do we consult with the other doctor  first – before he arrives here to operate on our son? No, it’s OK. He’ll ring his mate later and talk to him about it. He’ll just let us know later what is happening.

We are told that our son’s heart has been displaced by his ribs – it has been pushed too far to the left. We are told that he has a heart murmur that he has NEVER had this identified before. We are told that he has a significantly reduced lung capacity because of the shape of his ribs. THEN we are told that the procedure we are seeking is purely cosmetic.

I asked, “When does it move from cosmetic to medical?”, and I reviewed all of the above information. The surgeon told me that no causal link could be proven. What does that mean???? An enormous hole in your chest might be a contributing factor, but we can’t prove it. How about we pop a hole into his chest and see if he has any ill effects.

Today I rang the college of thoracic surgeons myself. I spoke to a lovely lady, who didn’t mind at all when I got teary. She told me to go back to my GP and seek a second opinion. She gave me her phone number and wants the GP to ring her.

I love that lady.

Schoolies’ Week

Can you believe that a whole week of partying is devoted to the finishing of school. Apparently they deserve it after twelve years of school.

What about my week long party after twelve years of school lunches, band rehearsals, sports training, dance practice, forgot my library book, can we pick ____ up,  need a note for that, excursion attendance, sponsorship, uniform washing, shoe providing, sock searching, hair braiding, assignment checking, homework reviewing, reading log completing work?

Instead of a week off to party I had a week off with laryngitis. I hate having to be quiet. It has almost killed me. I am better now.

Formal Night

I have lost my voice. I am without words. Just look…

The End is Nigh

Year twelve formal tonight. Just hours of school left in her whole life. Is there a more exciting time in your life?

Plan B

I have been concerned that when my daughter goes gallivanting off to France I will once again have to take up cooking duties on a daily basis like a responsible parent.

 But wait….

Surely there is a Plan B?

Oh yes, plan B (with a little bit of encouragement) is working out very nicely indeed.

Breakfast burritos are a perfect dinner-time food.

My Name is Tracey and I am a Grammarian

That’s a word. It expresses my fondness for grammatically correct written English. It may also let you know that I am a snob about these things.

If I read your blog, then you must be able to formulate a sentence and use an apostrophe appropriately because nothing will make me drop you faster than poor grammar. Isn’t that disgraceful of me! It just disturbs my sensibilities to see a clunky, chunky sentence. Or worse one that begins with a conjunction. (note that irony)

I hate reading signs and headlines which have not been spell-checked or grammar-checked. There is just no excuse for it when helpful microsoft will give you that red or green squiggly line. I know that system is not infallible, but it is helpful in that regard.

Having said that,  I don’t expect that everyone leaves school with a perfect command of grammar. It is a skill and, like all skills, it does not suit all people. I don’t think that it is a measure of intelligence, nor that it makes your thoughts and ideas any less worthy if you do not master these skills. It just grates on my nerves.

I struggle with this when I am blogging. I want to give a sense of emphasis, a sense of the voice and inflection and tone that will help to convey the meaning behind my writing. I use… three dots (too much) and (brackets) too much as well. I can even over-use the humble dash – and the exclamation mark in my quest to see my writing as I would say it!

There is a swag of blogs out there devoted to this very thing. Grammarianism. My absolute favourite is apostrophe abuse. Sometimes I even leave anonymous comments extolling the virtues of a correctly placed apostrophe and correcting the finer points of its use. I often see abuses, but have not yet photographed and submitted them to the blog. I’m certainly not beyond doing it though!

Today I found this article about blogging to preserve grammar. I love people passionate and peevish enough to start a blog over a grammar misuse. Bless their fastidious, judgemental hearts. They make my day.

Domestic Queen

This is not a title that I claim… usually. But tonight… hell yeah! Tonight I cooked. You may have read on my blog or on Sussanah’s blog me jokingly saying that next year when my daughter goes to France we will likely starve. Well, it’s not a joke. She bakes and makes and cooks and roasts. She enjoys the kitchen. Who am I to come between her and a love of feeding my family? I willingly relinquish the kitchen to her at least four nights a week. She even shops, or tells me when I need to shop.

Not tonight, though. I COOKED. I love this recipe website. I looked there for inspiration and came up with two recipes – oh, yes… I cooked dessert too. Generally when I photograph food it looks like vomit – especially that time I photographed chicken soup with bits of carrot floating in it. Tonight, however, it looks as yummy as it tasted.

Gourmet pizza. Well…except that I couldn’t find the eggplant dip in the recipe so I used spinach dip instead AND I added prosciutto (because if it has no meat product my Pete doesn’t believe that it is actually food) AND I topped it with baby bocconcini. Nothing like the recipe to which I linked, except for the potato!

Custard tarts. Except that the blueberries looked nicer and were cheaper. So again, not sure why I linked to that recipe.

How domestic is that? I need to lay down now….