Ahem ...

Cough cough, clearing my voice ... ready ... begin ...


Twas the night before Saturday
And all through the land
Everyone was stirring
History was at hand
The Woods will get wobbly
And we will be grinners
Cause when the final siren is sounded
The Cats will be winners!!!!


I just made that up. Excited???? You betcha.

Well I've seen everything now!

I was in Geelong Monday/Tuesday to be with my mum and stay with her overnight as she was having her cataracts done. Is "done" what you say? Anyway basically this week she was having one eye fixed and next week the other eye. More about that later.

While waiting for her procedure to be over, I had a wander around the streets and invariably ended up at the wool shop.

Well I've seen everything now. The window was decked out in all manner of blue/white knitting, included knitted bunting! But the piece de resistance was a knitted bicycle. I had to take a photo it was terrific. Crazy crazy Geelong people ... and I can say that because I'm originally one of them ;-)

Back to mum ... I sat with her in her little waiting room, veeeeery nice the new St. John of God day surgery building. The little room was nice and comfy, TV, magazines, comfy chairs. Every so often a nurse would come in and put drops in her eye, prepping her I guess for the procedure. Finally the surgeon came in and with a texta put a small mark at the top and bottom of her right eye.

I looked at him and suggested he have a bit of fun and draw eyelashes on her, and you've gotta love a surgeon with a sense of humour ... HE DID!!!! Here's Raggedy Ann here after the surgeon's artistic hand with the eyelashes. Thank goodness he had a steadier hand in the procedure.

She's feeling terrific now. She's worn glasses since she was about 5 years old, the glass on which are almost as thick as coke bottles, and already she can see out of her right eye clearer than ever, she says everything is so much brighter. The surgeon believes that once her left eye gets done next week, she'll end up not having to wear glasses at all. Incredible.

We did it !!!

And obviously because Molly was a great help in supporting, right?? Geelong and Colly-wobbles, err Collingwood, in the Grand Final next week. It has to be Geelong the victor, right? It's just got to be? What a fun week this will be in the build up.

My mum is a HUGE Collingwood fan. She thinks because she grew up part of her childhood in Collingwood that she has extra special rights as a Collingwood supporter, I'm sure. She's been black and white one-eyed since forever. She told me on the phone last night that she's started decorating the windows of the house and the front yard with black and white streamers. Hope it rains and they turn into a yucky grey mess! hahahahha Oh I am ruthless aren't I?

My dad used to be in the football umpires, umpired for many many years in the goals, over 500 matches throughout his umpiring life, then went on to the appointment board so after waving the flags for all those years, then started rating and appointing the umpires. It was his life. And he was known for it.

One of his friends had a sports store and remember those life sized football cardboard cutouts that they may have had advertising something or other to do with football in the sports stores, well they were having a clear out and he rang dad to see if mum wanted to take one, he was giving it away. It was a Collingwood player, I have no idea of who it was now.

She was over the moon and the footy player "lived" in the front window of their home for all the world to see. Whenever I went over there, by stealth, I would turn the player upside down so it looked like he was standing on his head in the front window and all you could see were shorts and legs flying up in the air. And she would have no idea until she left the house. It was a long standing joke between us.

So CARN THE CATS, I ***DO NOT*** want the Collywobbles to win next Saturday. I will never live it down.

Friends

I am really lucky to have friends, from lots of facets of my life, from the past and from the present, from clubs I have been in, from interests I have had, from the town I live in, to everything in between, I am really lucky.

And of course a wife counts her husband as her nearest and dearest. But there's nothing quite like a girlfriend. Am I right there?

Having said that I have only one best friend, who knows me inside and out, who I can tell ANYTHING to, who I can be myself with, who never judges, who laughs at my jokes, sympathises with my miseries, who listens to me and really hears me, who knows all my secrets, who will be by my side if I need her, and who I would do the very same for her. Most of all she forgives me if I do something really really dumb. Which you'll read about when you read the journalling on this page.

Credits Designer Digitals.


I love this photograph of the two of us and with Sonia living in Tassie (heaven on earth) and me here in Victoria, we don't see each other as much as we used to. Oh the weekends we would spend with each other, just hanging around up in her place in Melbourne when she lived there, such memories.

And I can't wait until the start of December when Sonia is coming over and we are having a girls weekend - just me and her - in Melbourne. YAY!!!!

Trying to plan a bit of an itinerary, we KNOW we will be doing the Chocolate Tour of Melbourne! ha. What's a girl's weekend without chocolate right? What else to do??? Anyone know any good restaurants or eateries to try? We're up for it for sure. Can't wait.

Mum

I'm spending the next couple of days in Geelong with my mum, and likewise the Monday/Tuesday of the week after too. She is having cataract surgery on her eyes, one eye at a time. A lot of people have said that it will be such a success that she will wish she did it years ago. But she is scared stiff.

She has worn glasses since she was a wee little thing and is just about blind as a bat without them now, she's so worried it won't be a success and she'll lose her sight and in turn lose one of her greatest joys of reading.

So think good thoughts for us will you, it's day surgery so she needs me to stay with her overnight and while I'm there I'm going to cook up some soups/casseroles or the like and freeze them for her.

I have no words

I am waaaaaay too excited, I will be sitting glued to the TV this afternoon willing our boys over the line. Win this and we're in the Grand Final, yahooooooooooooooo!!!!

Molly looks pretty excited too, don't you think??? Honestly, she'll do anything if there is cheese on the other end of it!

Disclaimer: No animals were harmed in the taking of this photograph!

Out of sorts Saturday

I have felt out of sorts all day today. Didn't help that the day started at 6.30am when the cat decided to jump on the bed and start head butting me as she wanted to be let out. I stagger to the back door to let her out almost tripping over her in the process.

Back to bed I go.

I reckon I had just closed my eyes, I swear they were closed 2 minutes tops, and then Lucky wakes Molly up and they want to go out. I looked at the clock. 8.30AM. How could that be? I swear I only just closed my eyes. Again stagger to the backdoor and let them out. The cat races back in. I feed her.

Back to bed I go.

Mike having slept through all this decides to then wake and get up. Aaaarrrgggghhhh!!! Why not wake up 5 minutes before and do all the staggering and the feeding.

I decided to go back to bed and lay for a little bit, I was so incredibly tired this morning. Next thing I know it's 10.30am.

TEN-THIRTY A.M. !!!!!

How did that happen? I was sleeping - waking - sleeping in two hour increments. But again it felt like I had just closed my eyes. I must be really depositing into my sadly depleted sleep bank at the moment, because I'm always the first one up - always on weekdays and 90% on weekends.

But then I've not been able to shake it, this really out of sorts feeling I've had all day today. Very uninspired. I even took myself over to Terang to the quilting shop to see if I could be excited by the rows and rows of eye candy of material, bought a metre of material for I know not what, ha! But even that didn't perk me up. Just a case of the sads I think.

Rainbow Bridge

Of late my brother and I have had a tenuous relationship at best, but we spoke last week, the first time in months. Mum had told me that his beloved cat had disappeared so I rang him. He has been beside himself. Bowie ... yes yes, I know, my cat is Bo, his cat is Bowie, I didn't copy, truly, Bo's real name is Bojangles ... Bowie has disappeared and at age 17 or 19 or something phenomenal like that, it's more than likely that he has gone away to die, as I've been told cats tend to do. He had been drinking a lot of water lately and at times would be sitting contentedly and then let out a huge meow very unlike him.

Bowie and Trevor have gotten through a lot of hard times together, dare I say Bowie has even survived two marriage breakups with him. Constant companions. Bowie wasn't always Trevor's cat though, when he bought the house he is currently in the previous owners had Bowie. Despite moving *with* Bowie, Bowie kept coming back to the old house, so in the end they gave him to Trevor being that Bowie obviously was more attached to the old house than to them.

So it has been devastating Trevor, the not knowing. He has searched everywhere, spoken to neighbours, been to the animal shelters, to no avail. And now he is at the stage of facing what he believes to be the truth that Bowie has passed away, hopefully peacefully. Gosh, I'm tearing up just writing this.

So I wanted to make a page for Trevor which I will print and send him, one of my favourite photos I had taken of Bowie a few years ago, he was laying in the sun in the loungeroom by the almost full length window basking in the warmth.

Credits Designer Digitals

I tell you, Rainbow Bridge gets to me every time I read it.

We are a crazy bunch

This is what was happening in the "G" house yesterday.

I got home, Mike had his pipes out playing "happy birthday" as I walked through the door, he was actually doing a bit of rehearsal but swung into the tune when he saw me pull in the driveway :-) Found the party hats and he took this photo! Ahhh, Molly and Lucky will do anything if there's a treat balancing on the end of the camera!

Another year older, not necessarily wiser though!

Well ... I'll be

A monkeys uncle that is. Hope everyone uses that saying, because I sure feel like a monkey tonight. We still have a baby gate up at the entrance to the little area in which the laundry, the bathroom and the toilet come off. So that Lucky or Molly for that matter can't get to the cat's food which is kept in the laundry. Bo our cat, she's a grazer, she eats all the live long day if she could, just comes in, checks out the smorgasbord has a bite and then leaves, to do it all again 10 minutes later.

So tonight everything was quiet so I went looking. Lucky nowhere to be found. Except I heard a tinkling thinking it was the cats collar clinking against her food bowl.

NOT SO!

Lucky has worked out how to open the baby gate. Un-freaking-believable. He was on the inside of the baby gate looking out with 2 empty cat bowls in clear view behind him in the laundry.

Now admittedly we didn't have it snibbed as such, just shut, but for him on the passage side of the gate, it opens in. How on earth has he somehow stuck his paw in the gate, opened it toward him and slipped himself inside, is anyone's guess. But he was looking mighty pleased with himself when he was licking his chops from the cats food.

There is a neverending story with that little rascal.

So Designer Digitals had their third-quarter Scrap and Chat on the weekend. Too bad in Australia you end up sleeping through half of it whilst the rest of the world is awake and having fun. However I did catch Lynn Grieveson's chat and was able to pull together this page using her beautiful soft freebie of 2 green papers, a ribbon and a foliage and added a few other assorted goodies.

Credits Designer Digitals.

Yep, you guessed it, another page for the book for my nephews.

Had my father-in-law here for dinner tonight and it was a treat to come home to see Mike already had dinner well underway. Can we say it was a big show for his dad? ha! Looked impressive. They were going to a meeting tonight and then FIL is heading back home, with strict rules that we need three rings on the phone whatever time he gets home just so we know he's made it back okay. That's the penance for not staying with us as we had begged him to.

So about an hour ago the call came out. There were more visitors at his meeting than initially thought and they weren't going to have enough supper to offer them. Mike knew we had a bag of 30 dim sims in the freezer, could I bring them down with my "dim sim cooker".

Now to be honest I don't think he knows how I steam my dim sims, I usually just put 3 or 4 in a microwave bowl, covered with a bit of water and zap them. Only 3 or 4 at a time. So I figure I would take my steamer and pop it on and they should be done by the time they'd finished the meeting. I got down to the kitchen and had completely forgotten they don't have an oven in the meeting room. DOH! So I've emptied them into the steamer (frozen as they are), covered them with hot water, put the lid on and cross fingers they'll be thawed by the time they came out. Boys only though, I wasn't allowed to stay.

I'm sure there'll be a story to tell about half frozen dim sims when he comes home.

Sunday blues

Do you get them? On the downward slide of Sunday thinking that the weekend is almost over and all the plans you had and things you wanted to get done are still not done? I get these types of blues every Sunday. The elation I feel of a Friday night starting the weekend has all but evaporated. Ahh well, roll on next weekend right? The way the weeks are flying by, it will be Friday night again before we know it.

I've done enough pages now to have a 20 page book for the boys, but 20 pages feels a bit flimsy, you no sooner open it and it's ended. So now I'm just going back through my photos of the boys and selecting my favourites and scrapping them to be inserted in the book. Mind you, I haven't made any plan except that it will be in roughly date order. I have probably got more left side pages than right, or vice versa. I will have to make do. There's something to be said for being a centric scrapper, you don't need to worry about such things, I need to work on that. Having said that, this page will fit nicely either side. :-)

Credits Designer Digitals.

Such a photogenic boy David is, the eyes get me in each and every time.

I took Lucky for a walk earlier on, oh my goodness the wind is positively bracing out there. As we were walking there was a car broken down in the service lane of the main road. Two big strapping young men, dressed all in black, long hair, tattoos, scary looking and three girls, also scary looking if I don't mind admitting, were standing around the motor trying to fix it.

I was just walking on the footpath, looking straight ahead, but of course Lucky stared them out, walking his tough little walk and not taking his eyes off them. The young men started laughing and the girls let out a simultaneous "awwwwww". It was funny. I wasn't exactly wary of them, but they looked pretty tough individuals for our little town, amazing how a little Jack Russell who thinks he is six feet tall can break the ice!

Mike has been suffering yet another bout of the flu and has been down for the count the last few days. At the moment he's watching a DVD laying out on the couch, but the antibiotics are working, thank goodness. Can I say I'm sick of us both being sick!

Happy Fathers Day

Well this is a first, attempting to blog from my iPad, we'll see how I go.

Fathers day here in Australia today. Bitter sweet for me. We had Mike's kids coming for lunch so I was busy making sure I had something yummy prepared, the perfect pavlova made, everything ready. I took a moment during the morning to just stop and think.

Think about my dad.
Think about the last time I was with him.
Think about how much I miss him.
Think about the fact he has been gone almost four years.
Think about how on earth could time go so fast.

So I said a little prayer and just knew that he would be loving the fact we had the kids, now all young adults, coming to see us and knowing he would be wanting me to enjoy the day with them and make sure Mike was King for the day. And he was. Sitting at the head of the table just beaming.

I should say that over the last few years the kids have made phone calls for fathers day, or one of them may have come out or stayed the weekend, but not all of them at once, not since they were little, and definitely not of their own idea, including a surprise visit from Mr W from Melbourne.

So, it has been a very good day. Oh and after the kids left, the King for the day had a royal snooze on the couch!

Here's some pics from today that I have scrapped already.