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….

Oh Sussanah

For some reason our doorbell keeps randomly playing ‘Oh Sussanah’ (the song, not my sister). There is no one at the door and Oh Sussanah is not our selected doorbell tone. Just every now and then it has a little fritz and plays Oh Sussanah.

Today when I looked outside I found a giant stick insect on the wall near the front step.

This guy was bigger than my hand.

Highly suspicious, wouldn’t you say?

An Exciting Purchase

This week I have had the pleasure of quilting the most beautiful quilt.

Lots of hand embroidery expertly stitched with a single strand of hand-dyed embroidery floss. Just lovely.

I also made an exciting ebay purchase. Can you guess it…(you never will!)

It is old and heavy.

It’s a mangle to go with my new concrete tubs.

How lucky is that? Flo and I plan to use them in the garden to wash out our fabrics after we dye them. We think that it is very cool. Our own little laundry in the back yard. The mangle needs a make over. My Pete will get to it with a can of WD40 to see what he can do. They are very difficult to find. I have been looking out for one for ages. I paid $25.50 for this one….but the postage was $50.00. Oh well, that’s how it goes sometimes.

While I am being all quilty, here is a new version of our cupcake quilt. The original one went to a very good home.

Must go and pack now. I am going to a sleepover at an aquarium with twenty-five ten year olds tonight. Apparently I have to sleep on the floor…

Watch out, I’ll be cranky tomorrow.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

Man, I hope not!

What a week! I have leached money in the direction of almost every medical institute in Townsville. Are you ready for this?

Last Friday we took our son to the paediatrician about his chest. This is a little more serious than we realised. He has always had a dip in his chest, but with the onset of puberty and his rapid, practically superhuman, growth over that last eighteen months it has become much more pronounced. Initial chest x-rays indicate that his ribs are touching his heart and altering its shape. There appears to be just a matter of two inches from his spine to his sternum at one part of his chest. The doctor found an innocent heart murmur which has never been a part of our son’s profile and that he has a significantly reduced lung capacity. His height falls on the 50th percentile while his lung capacity is on the 10th percentile.

On Monday our daughter had a mantoux test. This is a requirement for her visa to have a student residency in France next year.

On Tuesday our son had a CT scan done to create a 3-D reconstruction of his rib cage. Amazing!! It shows us that his right lung space is much smaller than his left. This asymmetry is caused by his heart propping up the left hand side of his rib cage.

On Wednesday Thomas the dog had surgery to repair an aural haematoma. I will spare you a photo of the result. BLAH! He now has a sponge stitched through his ear with what appears to be kitchen twine! (I’m sure that it is not kitchen twine, but it is certainly not a fine thread!) He will need to wear a plastic bucket on his head for the next two weeks to stop him from touching or scratching his ear. He is not impressed!

On Thursday our daughter had a BCG injection. Again I’ll spare you a photo of the blister that is forming. This used to be a standard vaccination in Australia, but TB is no longer considered a problem here. This is good for our country, but it makes getting the vaccination difficult. It leaves an ugly blister that will take twelve weeks to heal. The nurse administering it was kind enough to do it at the back of her arm, so it won’t be as visible when she wears her tiny formal dress. (If she doesn’t like it she can always just forgo France and stay at home with her mother forever and ever and ever!!)

Today our son has an echocardiogram. It is to rule out any problems with his heart before we proceed any further. It is just precautionary and it is not expected to find anything.

In a couple of weeks we will take all of this medical information about our son to a surgeon and proceed from there. We don’t really know what to expect, except of course that he requires a surgery. We have a million questions and will seek that many answers before our final decision is made.

Damn, I guess there will be a lot more doctors in our future!

Conspiracy Theory

On Monday my Pete flew to Brisbane for work. He’ll only be gone a few days. I may have mentioned before that I hate to be alone. I’m not even really alone, the kids are here, but it just doesn’t feel right to sleep in an empty bed. I get very little sleep when my Pete is not here. I roam the house at all hours of the night. On a positive note – in lieu of sleep I get lots of sewing done (actually unpicking today, but that’s a whole other story!).

SO my Pete left at about 5pm on Monday. At 9:30pm I discovered that one of the dogs has an enormous swelling in one ear. Interesting, isn’t it, that these things happen like this. Now I’m not saying that in any way that my Pete has caused the dog’s ear to swell, but he is in this house for three hundred and fifty days per year. On those days he would deal with any dog / vet situations. BUT… just hours after he has left the city, a dog / vet situation has arisen and I am the only one here to deal with it. It is very hard not to think that in some way the universe has conspired and caused the poor dog to suffer an ear swelling condition. It could have happened on Sunday or Thursday next week, but it happened today.

Thomas (the dog) has broken a blood vessel in his ear and today I am taking him to have a minor surgery to repair it.

BEFORE my Pete left:

AFTER my Pete left:

Poor Thomas. Poor me. Bloody universe!

For My Listening Pleasure

On the weekend I discovered quilting podcasts. Who knew that they were out there in the world wide web? Really it shouldn’t surprise me. There is so much available that it astounds me!

 

So I loaded up my beautiful blue ipod and listened to discussions about thread and fabric design and quilting inspirations while I quilted. (Fascinating, I know) I quilted for the longest time without taking a break. The time just seemed to fly by.

It made me think that perhaps I should buy some audio books and listen to them while I quilt. I enjoy reading, but I often feel guilty because I like to take a whole day to read a book. I hate to read for ten minutes now, then half an hour tomorrow. If I start a book I want to finish it right away. Taking whole days at a time to read seems, to my mind, to be a little self indulgent. BUT…. I could listen and quilt at the same time! Good thinking!

Off I went to itunes to see what was on offer. Now, here is the stumbling block, audio books are damned expensive. $45.00 for a book. Can I justify that? The actual book is half that price. Is my time more valuable than the price of an audio book? Does any one else use audio books? Where do you buy yours? Please share your ideas with me!

On another note I would like to wish my fair nephew a very happy birthday for this weekend.

My kids were so delighted to have a new cousin when he was born. They continue to delight in his company.

Oh and his doughnut cake was delicious!! I had the white chocolate doughnut. Sussanah refers to it as white mocklate, because it makes a mockery of real chocolate.

Day Dreamer

Every report card that I ever brought home to my parents from school said that I was a day dreamer. Even now I spend a lot of time in my head. I love looking at things and seeing their details then just thinking about them. I would like to say to all of those teachers that it’s not such a bad thing. Every now and then it turns into a germ of an idea which I follow through, but most of the time it just makes me happy to think about stuff.

My husband and my children are dreamers too. I like it and I imagine that we’ll be dreamers forever!

I think that it was supposed to be a negative comment on my report cards, but I am very happy to embrace it.

What about you? What are you happy to embrace about yourselves?