Christmas came and went II (the real thing)

How much can you write about christmas? Guess it was busy.

So, we went on chrissy eve (after church, and the packing of the entire car, cos we couldn't do that on saturday could we, including all mum/neville/em/thom's presents- our car looked like santa's sleigh) and all stayed in a holiday house (me and pete, sister katy and partner, mum and neville and little bro and sis). And sister mim and nephews were there in the daytime/s.
The cooler weather was nice cos it meant our chrissy dinner was a bit more climate-appropriate. In the afternoon, I kept moving to the quieter end of the house, but there wasn't really one. Hence I kept moving.

Boxing day we had birthday celebrations for the one sister at a park. All went back to the house and 4 of the adults holed up in corners with their christmas present books. We left around 8 or 9pm, minus my oven mitts, as I later discovered.

THEN (oh no, I'm not done yet....), Wednesday we had a 'rest' day ('rest' day meaning i got to sleep in past 8am, wash all the clothes again, water the garden, unpack the presents and repack the suitcases).

Thursday we drove down to my dad's, in south gippsland. Seeing as I am still digital-camera-less, here's a photo that was taken last year, from dad's back house yard fence, looking at what is some of their land (down to just past the bottom of the hill, and off to the left). they have about 25 acres.



So that was very peaceful and pleasant. Dad was back at work the days we were there, but we didn't leave until saturday (last) night. Got home not long before midnight;)

He now has two clydesdales (named Bonnie and Jay), to add to their two dogs (Bobbie and Muffy) and their 6 calves (5 little black angus cross bull calves and a jersey heifer calf called lily-beth). And a crimson rosella and two umm turtle doves? That I am serious about, although there's no partridge in a pear tree. Last time we went they had a galah called spud but he is flying free with his galah kind nowadays.

We did a lot of gardening and yesterday dad was in there picking up some stuff and he grabbed hold of a tiger snake. I was standing near him and saw him pick it up and fling it down again. Lucky it was half asleep. I ran in one direction. Sharon ran in the other. I threw him a big stick, Sharon threw him a shovel. Lucky it didn't know which direction to run either. I think the being airborne bit confused it as well. he hacked at it and chopped off it's head and we all stood around for the next half hour a bit dazed.

After we recovered from that, and loaded up the ute and trailer with a bunch of rubbish, we went to...dah dah dah daaaahh... The Tip. I confess we did. I remember going when I was a kid. Not since. I made pete go a couple of times in sydney/nsw and dump some stuff, but that was at weird sanitized? regimented nazi versions of the tip where they make you pay your weeks grocery bill to get rid of a few bags of rubbish, and looking around at junk is strictly forbidden.

This may make me sound like a weirdo feral to some people, and perhaps confuse others, but oh well.
This occasion was just as i remembered it from my fond childhood experiences, although slightly more regimented. Although dad was friends with the (tip officials, for lack of a better word) and so we could discreetly fossick to our hearts content. 'Tip-ratting' is what we used to call it. The object is to find things you either want/need for something, or can sell to someone else who wants or needs it. I think there is a grand continuum that goes op-shop, clearance sale, tip. The stuff from some should be at the other and the stuff from the others could be at the first two. (Depending on your level of bother, general cleverness and depression-era mentality. And people really shouldn't put rubbish in op-shops. Just throw it out. Ask Neville) Can't be bothered explaining my continuum any less cryptically. (It's an hour to next year and I feel like I should have gone to bed before. Looks like I might actually stay up and see it in this year.)

So, as I was saying. The tip. We were there so long (an hour?) and there was no shade except under the car and in some blackberry bushes, so I got very sunburnt. I had a hat on so my face didn't. This morning in church people kept commenting and I must have said 20 times 'yes i'm sunburnt, it wasn't intentional' and when they asked how i would reply 'i was in the middle of nowhere and there was no shade, except under the car in the gravel, or in a blackberry bush' and my mum wondered why i was so evasive to everyone until i told her i was at the tip. I couldn't be bothered explaining 20 times that I was at the tip, cos i would have had to explain being at the tip to most of them as well. A bit too much on a sunday morning at church. And i was singing up the front too. Except for the sunburn, I probably didn't look like i'd been at the tip. (Did i tor??? ;) )

Pete is watching some old dick tracy mystery movie.

Some of my little green tomatoes, when I got home from holidays, had been blown off their plants by the wind and were lying around the vegie patch, and one had gone so far that it was lying way on top of a pumpkin-vine-leaf, and i only saw it when I stood up.

I think this post is far too long and if i forgot anything it sure can wait.

Christmas came and went

Now that I am back from our annual wanderings, I can record this year's official christmas report. For posterity and all. Now that it's New Year's Eve. And I am not going to bother doing anything else this new years eve. Just go to bed when I feel like it, possibly rather early :)

This would have had to have been the most rushed christmas i can remember. Although this year I actually did my christmas shopping before they sold out of everything in the shops. I finished the wrapping on Christmas Eve eve (unless you count the present i bought on christmas eve and wrapped at the destination). The christmas eve eve saturday was also when we put up the christmas tree. So we had not quite a day to properly enjoy it, because we left on sunday (but I haven't put the tree away yet and am in no hurry either:)).

There's always a moment when it 'really' feels like christmas. You know? This year it was when we'd started wrapping the presents (the week before), and we had this neat, pretty little pile of christmas presents sitting in a corner of the loungeroom. And I looked at them and thought 'oh, how nice, it's christmas isn't it?'

One of my favourite pre-christmas moments was the annual Rotary fruit and vegie market. I have not participated in this marvellous occasion for many years. Since we moved back here. Last year I think I was working.

My mum and I organised to get there at 6:45, to check everything out before they start selling at 7am. They block off part of the street, and this year they moved it from the traditional place, to behind the main street, so we drove around frantically wondering where it had gone. I had a fleeting panic that they'd cancelled it. (Which would have been interesting seeing as that's where we get all our christmas season fruit and veg supplies.) And when we found it, they wouldn't even let us near until 7am. Shoulda known. So we got a coffee at the bakery and were 5 minutes late instead.

We couldn't carry all our stuff so I had the job of minding the crates and bags, while my sister and mum shuttled them back and forth (the wheelbarrow wouldn't fit in mum's car, and we didn't want to wheel it all the way back to her place. Would have had a trail of mangoes and nectarines through the streets. And sore legs...). Besides, I don't think all our stuff would even have fit in a wheelbarrow.

It would have looked interesting from the main street. There were people with wheelbarrows coming from all directions. I don't know what would have looked stranger. The people speeding with their empty barrows or the ones tottering along full of fruit and vegies. I mean, we may live in the country, but you don't get a lot of people pushing their wheelbarrows down the main street.

While I was minding, a total stranger senior italian lady asked me to look after her vegies and then kept coming back with more supplies for me to mind. She later returned with another complete stranger (to both of us), having borrowed their wheelbarrow to push them in. I don't know what their arrangement was for getting it back. A man with a sense of humour came and asked me if I was setting up a shop, and then later 'i think they'll go quicker with the prices on'. Then another lady asked me to mind her vegetables. It was all very community minded. I can't wait til next year already. I actually have so many bananas i can't choose which way to use them.
We had to use the combined might of our three fridges to accommodate it all. And half the fruit just got stored in our fruit bowls.

On the friday night we had our church 'christmas party'. Because it rained it all went indoors, including the bbq smoke (well it just blew in). We had an animal show involving a crocodile and snakes and a giant cockroach and the like. I got to hold one of the pythons later. Does that mean I'm a big kid or just strange?

I made wonderful christmas food creations (mini chocolate christmas puddings and rumballs) and we did our choir thing for the final time. I had to do all the food on wednesday night, thursday night and friday morning ( i asked the boss if i could come in an hour late to work). How ridiculous. Well you only do it once a year....

Sing along with the Bottle Top Bill Theme Song!

I discovered this show last year and it became part of my morning eating-and-preparing-breakfast ritual. I wish they'd put it back on. Now you too can sing along.
http://www.abc.net.au/children/bottletopbill/goodies/themesong.htm

I also wish they'd put back on the Aerobics Oz-Style on Channel 10. That was great and as no-one could see me in my lounge room, I didn't feel ridiculous.

I am hanging out for the day we get a digital camera. But I might go all snapaholic overload and then not use it at all. But I doubt it. I can't figure out how to get a pic of bottletop bill on this post. He's probably copyrighted anyway.......

Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night

That about sums today up. Too tired to think properly so Merry Christmas til whichever week I get back on here! (going away to various relatives for a bit) and hope we all come back smiling :)

where there's smoke there's fire woohooo

phoebs that's funny (nice funny) you remember my mum's wedding. It's a bit of a blur for me :) they had their tenth anniversary in may.

Dave, the other tech here, said it was heaps smokier the place he just came back from, and it reminded him of lord of the rings, how in the book especially they go on about how the air and sky was grey and grimy and then like dusk or something all the time. I thought that was a very poetic adventurous way to see things. Although in the book it is dreary, dreadful and end-of-world-ish.

I wish I could add a song/music to my posts. Wonder if you can....

I would like to learn how to ballroom dance. Did I already write this before? Oh well. Pete & I went to a dance class once when we lived in Sydney, but you had to dance with every other man and his dog, not just your own partner, so we didn't go back there.

Off any topic, wherever this came from, I want to one day spend Thanksgiving and Christmas in the US. They're only a month apart really. I want to eat odd american Thanksgiving foods like pumpkin pie. I want to go ice skating at the place they always show in the movies (Rockefeller Plaza) and wear fluffy earmuffs and have christmas dinner that is actually climate-appropriate (not that i don't love a climate-inappropriate christmas dinner). It could be worse. It could be traditional to eat pickled christmas tree or something.

Working so very hard

I will confess straight away that I am writing this blog at work. To my boss, if he ever read this (doubtful), I am too tired to do that other stuff you normally let me do when I have no other legitimate work to do. It's friday afternoon 10 days before christmas and i need a holiday :). I jump when the phone rings and have to think about where I am. There's nobody else here. The boss has away on a job for days and the other tech is out on another job.
The 'other stuff' i do quite happily for everyone concerned, when I have nothing else to do, is my counselling diploma that i have been trying to complete for i don't know almost 4 years?! Well, I'm almost there. Nice bosses and slow afternoons and all. Although when you're doing some heavy topic it gets a bit distracting when you get a customer at the same time wanting an aerial for his radio.

Ooh I just had a bunch of customers all come in at once, all wanting different things.

They just played a Cuban version of Joy to the World on ABC fm talkback radio. It was cool.
Have you ever heard someone say 'apropros' in everyday conversation?

To continue on with the weather, which is not just the reigning topic of farmers and old men, I was in a popular large discount store the other day (where I saw you tor, but another other day), and I was way out the back when I heard this really loud noise. I thought 'my goodness what is that it's so loud, it almost sounds like really heavy pouring rain. But it wouldn't be that' (haha ha). I thought ' I'm standing near this fan thing in the roof, it must be the aircon kicking in, and it's got something wrong with it, it's so loud'. And I went about my shopping business. But when I left, lo and behold, it had been raining after all. Like what an unusual occurrence. In my defence, it was hot and sunny when I went in the shop, and I don't think the rain lasted very long.

They're talking about carols by candlelight on the radio. We went to the good old local carols on wednesday night. Not that they were real candles. (Was that in the 'good old days'?!) They probably would have set something on fire anyway its so dry and it was probably a total fire ban too haha. Complete with aeroguard and mosquitoes, stuff-ups and children running around crazy, SES volunteers and a truck bed for a stage, a generally fire-smoky atmosphere, bbq sausages and a woman dancing away by herself to the side (with a few primary school girls in her wake at one stage). I love the local carols. I wish I'd bought my camera (of course I do). We did our own few songs as well, it sounded not so good from where I was but who knows. It was enjoyable.

I was reading some google thing and the remember to get milk or whatever it is reminded me of that book Kumquat May I'll Always Love You (what a name hey). Where the mother goes out to get butter or something and doesn't come back for years. And the teenage daughter (left by herself) pretends to everyone that her mother is still there and pays the bills and answers the phone in her voice now and then. For years.

That book was one of those that used to fascinate me. (I've got a lot of those!!). There's a (kids? young teens?) book called 'behind the attic walls' with a bizarre story about people dying and becoming dolls or something. It's not twisted when you read it, just weird.

There's a book called 'The Long Walk' about an escaped political prisoner in the soviet union that claims to be a true story but who knows if it is or not. I'll ask God when I get to heaven if that book was true. Why not. It would bug me forever otherwise.

I do love true stories, be they biographies, just plain history, 'adventure' tales, whatever! Interesting non-fiction. If I had five cliches I had to eternally choose from, that one 'truth is stranger than fiction' would be one I'd pick. Because it often is. And more interesting too. Although being stranger than fiction isn't always a good thing. Not the 'disbelief at horrific true things that are worse than any fiction' kind of 'strange'. Well the world is often really not a nice place. Although sometimes it can be.

Speaking of books, I think I will start reading Tomorrow When The War Began again, when I finish my current book (The Hobbit).

There is a desk calendar sitting here with a photo of 'Cook's Bay, Moorea'. It looks so good. Peaceful. I want to visit there.

Instead of Mr Whippy, I wish a Mr Chocolate or some such happy musical vehicle would drive itself on over here so I could run out the front (disregarding any customers who happened to be present), and get myself a nice freddo frog or rolo packet or something.

Urrrgh I hope they're not putting the cricket back on the radio again this afternoon.
They were discussing 'nucleation' before, whatever that may be, and fire-induced weather patterns. It would have been rather interesting but I didn't catch the start of the conversation so didn't get half of what they said.

Ooh, I think the other tech is back at work.

More delayed blogs...

This is another delayed blog, but this one actually written on PAPER, can you believe it, and transcribed to here and now....

Sitting at work, very half asleep. I feel like a cat in the sun except I'm not really allowed to just go to sleep.

It's very hazy/ smoky outside & it's making my throat all scratchy. When I got up this morning, I thought it was about to rain because it was cold & so overcast outside & thought 'how odd, rain', but then realized it was smoke. And that orange blob in the sky was the sun trying to shine. Well, it could have been worse and pitch dark like it gets closer to the fires, and I could have gone back to bed thinking that the clocks were wrong and I still had 4 hours sleep left.

So this week everyone talks about the fires. Last week (and forever), everyone talks about no rain, and where do the fish go, and the river's been dry before. And a couple of months ago, everyone talks about hail. We love the weather.

Pete's just had his birthday, and I made him a nice steak & vegies (his choice) & he even picked the steak out for me (for which I am especially grateful b/c I think the meat aisle is grose). I bought him a cake/pie thing & stuck candles in it (no time to make one). I wonder if people ever tried sticking candles in the steak or another preferred birthday food item. Although Pete loves his dessert.

I wish we had a digital camera. I always see something I want to take a photo of. Too expensive and space consuming with an ordinary camera.

Other day, I went outside to see what Polly the dog was barking about & she's 10cm away from a half-grown magpie, barking her head off. It's just sitting there looking at her. The parent magpie is sitting on the fence just watching & maybe squawking now and then. I think everyone was a bit confused. It must have been learning to fly and landed in Polly's yard and not figured out how to get out again. I went & got Neville to help me & we threw it over the fence.

Speaking of the weather (as you do), it's been so dry that things like the gatepost to the dog yard shift in the ground. Our back flyscreen door was stuck & wouldn't close/open properly. Neville said he'd take a look at it, and so when I went to close it one day and it closed perfectly beautifully, I thought oh he must have fixed it the other day when he was over doing whatever that was (hanging blinds I think), and I thanked him the next time I saw him. He told me later he didn't fix any door and that it must have been the ground drying out and shifting it back in place. And that the ground shifting was probably the reason for it getting stuck in the first place. So we have a magically cyclically shifting door that doesn't like the weather. Long and probably not that interesting to anyone else, but I was fascinated.