5/31/10

I'm trying something new today, I saw this format on a Blog called

 'The Simple Woman's Day Book'

http://thesimplewomansdaybook.blogspot.com/

and I thought I'd give it a go. I don't intend to write every day, but it seems an idea worth a try.

Outside my window...I  see a night sky with a high wind tossing the leaves. Southern New South Wales had gale force winds yesterday, with a lot of damage, and we're catching the tail-end of it today. It's rained off and on all day and the wind has been very cold (well, cold by Australian standards). On point of fact I can't really see a great deal out of my window at all, as my study has high windows.

I am thinking... that I feel sorry for the British politician who has lost his high-rankng job because of his homosexuality. Actually, his sexual preference isn't what ruined his career, it was his hiding of it. He was paid an allowance for living in London and he spent the money paying for his accommodation in his lover's house. He did this because he didn't want to 'come out'. All his constituents sing his praises and he was very highly thought of in his party. It all seems very tragic, particularly as I believe his parents have had to learn about his preferences for the first time, through the news reports.

I am thankful for...the fact that I no longer have back-ache! I believe it's 'not proven' that the weather affects creaking bones, but my experience tells me otherwise. The present poor weather has been building up for some days and my back-ache has increased with it. Now it's going out to sea (the weather, not my back) I feel much easier.

From the learning rooms..... Even at my advanced age I keep learning. I saw a film about Churchill yesterday evening and I learned about a public servant who leaked news to him about Hitler and who then died in mysteriois circumstances. Of course, I looked him up on Google! But most of my learning is concerned with the two little grandsons next-door who knock at the door to come in for 'Grandma School!

From the kitchen..... We took a step back into the past this-evening! Because of the winter weather I decided to cook some sago, often the staple diet of our school-days. It was really quite tasty!

I am wearing... an outfit I hate! I wore it to do the housework this-morning and then I couldn't be bothered to change for choir practice! It's an old-lady two-piece in tomato red which doesn't do a thing for me, and which makes me feel ten years older than I am!

I am creating... a new Melodrama for my Melodrama Group to perform on June 11th. We're putting on a show at Coffee Pot on June 11th. Our numbers will be down so I've asked three men to join us to boost the singing. This is the first time we've had men in a show and I've organised it without consulting the other members! So I hope they don't mind!

I am going...to my husband's Probus Club tomorrow.Wives and widows are honorary members so we don't have to pay any fees and the men do all the work. I only hope the Speaker doesn't give too masculine a talk! Sometimes I enjoy the topic and sometimes not!

I am reading...nothing, really. I'm not a great reader but I belong to a Book Group because I enjoy the discussions, and because it forces me to read! I should be reading 'Catch 22' today, but it was too wet for me to go to the Library to collect it, so I'll go tomorrow. The last book we read was 'The Perfect Hostage' which I enjoyed more than I expected to.

I am hoping...my son has completed painting a bedroom wall next door! He has just bought a new house and will be moving shortly, but he has a few jobs to do before he moves. He was in a very bad mood about it yesterday evening, so I hope he's calmed down and finished!

I am hearing...the sound of my husband's TV program downstairs. In a minute he'll contact me on the 'intercom' to let me know one of my favourite programs 'Talking Heads' has started.

Around the house.....We are on the throes of selling our two single beds in the spare-bedroom, and replacing them with my son's double bed which he will not need in the new house. We advertised the old beds today so I hope we get some takers.

One of my favorite things... is sweetcorn on the cob and we had that for lunch today.

A few plans for the rest of the week: Tomorrow we collect the boys from school. On Thursday I'm getting the train down the coast to entertain a club with my Poetry. These outings happen frequently and I always have a great time. On Friday we're rehearsing a play of mine called 'Jeweled Jeopardy'. The week will fly by as it always does.

                                       

My whole family.

Me, Malcolm, Brian,Michelle, Greg,Rebecca

with the three boys, Harry, Blake and Max.

Please try my other blog

http://rinklyrimes.blogspot.com/

5/29/10

This second blog of mine got off to a very uncertain start! I began it full of enthusiasm and then I had my camera stolen! This was bad enough, but Malcolm decided to help me out by installing one of his old cameras plus its disk etc. My computer rebelled! The actual computer was fine, actually, but I couldn't use the printer, a device I use constantly. So 'the man' came and said he must take it to hospital!

Here he is cogitating.

He brought it back on time, in perfect working order. And then he put my new camera 'in'. I was afraid I'd blow the whole thing up again! Everything is working now except that it's all small! I know you'll suggest I go to the 'control tower' and change the sizes, but I've tried that and it doesn't change! I suppose I'll ge used to it in the end. But all my blog 'stuff' is minute as well. I feel as though I'm typing this on a postage stamp!

I fiddled endlessly this-morning. Thankfully, we were asked out to lunch and that took my mind off my irritation. And what a delightful lunch it was! We visited friends, expecting to see mutual aquaintances there but everybody was new to us. The food was all vegetarian; maybe our hosts are vegetarian. In any case, the absence of meat wasn't noticed at all as the menu, which started with fresh green pea soup was superb. The company was excellent and Jane, our hostess, kept us all circulating. Alf, our host, is an artist, with his own brilliant almost cartoon style, and the house is decorated to complement his art works. Lots of brillant colours. He pots as  well, so we ate and drank out of his creations. We arrived there ar twelve-thirty and we left at five, and the time flashed by. Sadly, the superb view was dulled by storm clouds, but the vivid interior made up for that. So my new camera got a work-out. A truly delightful day!

A Colourful Corner

Someone cracked a joke!

Most of the party.

Why not visit my Poetry Blog if you have time

http://rinklyrimes.blogspot.com/

5/25/10

We didn't have to collect the children from school today so we were free to do our own thing. First of all I went to the Doctor's to get the results of my tests. I was very pleased with myself as I'd managed (with the help of drugs and the Bryant diet) to lower my cholesterol from 7.00 to 5.00. However, I've got to get it even lower so I've still got to turn my back on cheese! And how I love it! Also I discovered that the blockage in my carotid artery is only 50% and is not life threatening as long as I keep thinning my blood. Actually, the consultation only livened up when Dr Chandler asked me about my blog and brought it up on his screen! We discussed it a bit and he put it in his Favourites, so I felt quite honoured as I have a great regard for him. Meanwhile, other patients were waiting in the waiting room 'patiently' (sorry!).

Then we went out on a spending spree. I bought a new Canon camera but I may have bought rather hastily as it was Sale Price and I don't think it has all the features of my late lamented (stolen) Canon. I can't check it out properly yet as I've got to 'get a man in' to repair my computer/printer link first!! Technical things bedevil me!

Anyway, we went on to shop some more. Malcolm spent a birthday voucher on a lovely soft grey cardigan, and I bought two pairs of shoes. Then I saw a bed cover I rather liked and I bought that as well. We staggered home under rainy skies to inspect our purchases.

5/24/10

I took this photo on my mobile phone yesterday evening, when Rebecca and Blake came round for a meal. Brian is a fireman in Sydney and sometimes he's on the shift that covers the weekend, so Rebecca usually watches a film with us while Blake watches his own choice lying on our bed. When they arrived Blake was lugging a big bag full of trophies! While the family had been in New Zealand he had missed his swimming club presentation night and a friend had just delivered all his trophies to his house. He won five! It doesn't seem long ago that he was a little toddler scared of the water! Here he is showing off all his awards. I had to photograph him, camera or no camera!

5/23/10

I write in a state of peeve! When we moved into our little townhouse the tiny 'garden', more like a courtyard, at the rear was surrounded by a neat jasmine hedge, full of blossom in spring and a rich green for the rest of the year. I loved the shut-in feeling. I'm a reasonably friendly person but I hate other peoples' clothes lines and I always said I got a 'three bears in the wood' feeling when I was sitting outside with a coffee. Well, we've been here about fourteen years now, and I've continued to love our hedge. However, the jasmine has grown enormous and has started to break the wooden fence so it has to go. We share the fence with four other houses so we've just had a meeting about what we should do. We had a man around to give us a quote for Colourbond, a very popular and not unattractive type of modern fence. The jasmine will all go and we'll just have this stark modern fence in its place! That wouldn't be so bad but all the other interested parties want a shortish fence, over which one can see easily. I was the only one asking for a higher one and so I was a voice crying in the wilderness! Democracy being what it is I was out-voted. I really feel heart-sore about the whole thing but there's little I can do about it and Malcolm seems to think I'm making a fuss about nothing too! Do I feel less peeved now I've peeved in cyberspace? NO!

A fairly recent photo of my cousin's son, Tim and his little daughter showing our lovely jasmine AND the offending fence! 

(Tim has recently been made a trade attache to China for NZ so we wont be seeing him often!)

P.S.
Surfing the web I've just come across a series of blogs looking for diets. I've never really been overweight although I definitely look round because I'm short. I hover just under 60 kilos. However, I AM trying to lower my cholesterol so I'm on a sort of diet. Monday to Friday I eat sparsely; lots of fruit, muesli, etc etc and completely reject fats. Then, on Saturday I have a cheese day (my weakness) and on Sunday I have a chocolate day (another weakness). I find this lowers my 'naughty' eating by 5/7ths a week. It seems to be working anyway. I think 'rewards' are essential in life. Do you think I'll win a Nobel Prize!

5/20/10

The lack of a camera is certainly stunting my creativity! We tried to put Malcolm's system into my computer but it just bunged-up the works and I had to spend ages getting my programs back! The printer is still not working! I wonder how many works of creativity would have taken place at all if we hadn't got digital photography. I know photographs, both mine and those from Google, give me ideas all the time. I just love being 'given' a meme and then looking for an illustration to set me off on the right track. Maybe I would have written a journal with sketches in a different era. But the sketches wouldn't have been very inspiring I'm afraid. I was certainly born for this age. I often say the same of Malcolm as I can't imagine what could ever have taken the place of cars in his life! Maybe he would have been obsessed with horses, but I don't think so, somehow. Maybe we're all 'children of our own age'.

So fiddling with the camera workings has taken-up a fair amount of my recent time. I've been busy apart from that, though. I went into Harry's school on Thursday morning to help with reading. I ended-up doing more than that because the young teacher. a sweet person, was run off her feet. I honestly think every Kindergarten class needs two teachers! After a craft lesson I read the children a story while she cleaned up the mess. Without me there they'd have run amok. I know I always aimed to have three parents helping me when I taught Kinder. There was one to attend to individuals (shoe-tying, helping 'slowies' individually, or just chatting), one to supervise the Craft Table (all preparations done by me), and one to supervise activities such as threading, chalking, cutting etc etc. This left me with a relatively small group to concentrate on for the 3Rs. I always feel the urge to take-over when I'm in a classroom, but that's just my ego. I did love the job, though, in the end. At the start I had no vocation.

Malcolm picked me up outside the school and we sped off to Jesmond, where I was entertaining with my poems. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I always do, and I sold quite a few books too. I found myself at the same table for lunch as an old U3A friend, too, so that made the visit pleasant. I nodded off when I got home; performing delights me but I always feel tired afterwards. I was supposed to join Max and Becca a her house, but I woke up  two hours later so I had to ring to apologise!

Today was busy as well, as we had another 'Tiddly-Pom' rehearsal at the Cricketers Arms. We now have the offer of a guitarist for the show (which is many months away) and Pam has many good ideas. Our next show is at The Coffee Pot, so we have to rehearse for that soon. The adrenalin starts flowing at the thought.

Our dollar has nose-dived recently. I can't understand finance. We're always being told that our economy is one of the strongest, yet this 'Greek' problem has caused money to leave  Australia for investment in the U.S. which I thought was doing badly!!!! It's too much for me. Anyway, it means Rebecca and Greg wont have to cope with any more mortgage rate rises in the near future.

This looks all wrong without pictures!

5/18/10

Having had my camera stolen, I feel quite bereft. Malcolm lent me his for the Book Group evening, but, at the crucial moment, I discovered I didn't know how to turn it on! We were the hosts this month. We take it in turns to meet once a month at each others' houses to discuss books chosen by the group. This suits me very well as I'm not a great reader. That may sound an odd reason for joining a book group, but the fact is that I like the discipline of it and I enjoy the discussions, not to mention the company. Most of the members have become really good friends. They're all much more well-read than I am, but I rise to the occasion with my verbosity at times. I can talk on anything, even if I don't always make much sense! But I'm afraid you wont be able to enjoy my friends' company by proxy because of the blasted camera (stolen, I suspect, from my trolley when I was shopping in the '$2 shop'!) This week we watched a video. We only have a small sitting-room but, by strategically placing the chairs, we can fashion quite a passable 'entertainment centre'.A couple of months ago we read the old thriller, 'The Big Sleep' and so we showed the old Humphrey Bogart film as a follow-up. We though it was a good adaptation, and very well produced for its  day, seventy years ago! We all remarked on Humphrey Bogart's short stature! In my youth I thought he was a towering hero! Anyway, I couldn't follow the plot very well in either the book or the film, but that was probably through lack of concentration! Malcolm had timed the film for me and assured me that it took an hour and a half,  and it took two hours, so, for the last half hour, my mind was on the refreshments in the oven! Anyway, all went well and the usual convivial time was enjoyed over the 'eats'.

 Earlier in the day we'd collected Max and Harry from school. This is quite a major performance as Harry has to be collected at 2.45 p.m. and Max isn't allowed to stay after 3.00. The two schools, Max's pre-school and Harry's normal school, aren't too far apart, but they're both mid-city so the parking is horrendous; Malcolm has to circle while I rush in and collect! It was raining today too, so that added to the confusion. I nearly left behind Max's painted model of a dinosaur, and I did leave behind Harry's reading list! Once home the two boys attended 'Grandma School'. I kid myself that my little sessions are for the boys' benefit but I'm really indulging myself. Once a teacher, always a teacher! But at least it gets Harry's homework out of the way before his Daddy comes to pick them up. I only have a short time left enjoying close proximity. They've been living next door in a rented house, waiting to move into their new house at the beginning of June. I'll still see a lot of them, but it wont be the same.