I’ve been a bit lazy about this! Jaxon starts school in two days and it’s all about closing doors and opening windows in this house. Even Dexter will be starting a half day of child care on Friday…this Mamma is not liking letting go of all her babies all at once!

Jaxon: Mum, are we going out for dinner tomorrow night?
Mum: Nope.
Jaxon: Are we going out for dinner the day after tomorrow night?
Mum: Nope.
Jaxon: Are we going out for dinner the day after the day after tomorrow night??

In the car, passing a new McDonalds that two days previously hadn’t even been half built.
Mum: Wow.
Dad: See, I told you. Shocked me when I saw it too.
Jaxon: Yeah…it shocked my head off too when I saw it. It shocked my whole body off!

And then, randomness from the boy at dinner tonight. I have no idea where this came from, or why it came to be either!
Jaxon: Mum, we have to make a great big meatball…and paint it blue.
Mum: Um, o-k…

Our landlords promised to frost over the open window at the front of our house so that people wouldn’t be able to see through at night time. It’s one of many lies they’ve told us to get us in to this house.

To rectify this problem…I paint!

It looks awesome at night time from the outside!

29th November 2011 – 10th December 2011

Grandma took Jaxon to see the Werribee Open Planes Zoo. This is about the only photo she took with the camera. Apparently…it was too hard to push the button so she took her photo’s with her phone. I don’t have those pictures

Dexter loves his Grandma!And finally, Tim and I learned that Grandma’s are excellent for flogging off the things you can’t be shagged doing to. Christmas tree’s are so annoying to put up!

Thank you Grandma for your visit. We look forward to seeing you again soon!

I’ve got some catching up to do…so forgive me if these posts are a little out dated

If I add these birds to the two mobiles I made with them, I think I may have made over 250 paper cranes!

I never want to see another bird again!

Have I told you how much Dexter can eat?

The boy can eat! And he’s so messy! We had no idea how lucky we got it with Jaxon not wanting to get his finger’s dirty in his food! Dexter on the other hand, if it’s within arms reach…it’s going in the mouth!

The other day I caught him wondering about the house with a soapy bit of steel wool in his mouth! When I took that off him, I also found the Rinse Aid for the dish washer hidden away behind him. That’s when we decided to baby proof the kitchen properly I’ve taken flies out of his mouth, three day old biscuit thats been hiding under the table. ANYTHING!

Well, this is what he did to his cake for his Birthday BBQ. He was totally unstoppable. If we hadn’t taken the cake off him I’m pretty sure he would have eaten until his belly exploded.

He actually tried to eat the NUMBER ONE candle!

Like all little boys, Jaxon and Tim ( ) LOVE fire engines. So when the local CFS held an open day over the weekend we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take him along.

Chick Magnet!!Jaxon took this last photo. I think it’s framed very well for a four year old who has had to figure out how to press the button with a hand/arm that barely reaches it!

I understand that it must be lot’s of fun for you to be hacking my site to impress your zit faced friends. But please stop. I do not have the time NOR the ability to be chasing my tail around trying to figure out what the fuck you have done to my documents!

As I said earlier, I’ve been working on a few projects lately. This is the crane mobile I made for Jaxon’s kinder teacher. There is still one more bird to add but it will need to be made in the morning because Jaxon is going to colour it in and it will go right in the middle at the bottom.

There is about 4 hours of bird folding there. Three hours to make the hoops and three hours to hook up and thread the birds to fishing line.

Now to figure out how to package it so she doesn’t have to spend three hours untangling the birds!!

At the moment I feel like I have TOO MANY projects going all at once. Most of them, I can’t do while the kids are awake.

I started this project a few weeks ago. I’m going to make hundreds (well, at least 50!) origami paper cranes to hang from the ceiling that joins all of our bedrooms together.

I started these but then scrapped them, because I was trying to make perfect squares out of A4 paper. Which, is actually very difficult. When the squares are off even just a tiny bit…the birds come out messy and I’m anal retentive so that’s just not good enough.

I’ve got some new squares, cut for the purpose and have started again. Only this time I’m making a mobile out of them for Jaxon’s kinder teacher who is sadly leaving for a new job next Friday. So the ceiling birds will have to wait.

Before I decided to scrap these birds I wouldn’t let Jaxon touch them. All he does is break them and then I have to make more. I don’t know if you’ve ever made an origami crane but they’re time consuming. And though I’ve been making them since I was 9, I don’t want to have to keep replacing the one’s I let him play with.

When I decided to get the right paper to do the job the one’s I had already made became Jaxon’s to play with.

I didn’t tell him to colour code them. He did that all by himself. When he’s naughty Nanny and Poppy joke that it’s MY side of the family in him (“That’s the (insert Surname here) in him”)

I’d have to say that a more accurate statement is that when he does things like this…that is MY side in him coming out. Tim will tell you it’s anal. I will tell you it’s just well organized!!

The window in the back ground is my handy work too. When we first moved in the land lord/real estate agent told us they would have the window glazed over “in a few weeks” so no one could see through. As per many other broken promises from them, it’s been months now and still it hasn’t been done. So I painted my design on there with acrylic paints which can be scrapped off and redone as I please. I actually like it that way. I’m thinking about changing it again soon. I get bored easily

A few weeks ago Tim and I had an appointment to attend at the hospital together. On the way, Tim ran out of petrol and had to push his bike a good kilometer to the nearest petrol station. While I waited for a parking spot, in the off street car park we frequent, I got this news via text. I pulled in to the empty space and got out of the car to call Tim. Then I was running late so I rushed to get both boys out of the car and off to the appointment we went.

On return to the car park, it turned out that I’d actally parked in a NO PARKING space without even noticing. We got a $122 fine for doning that. Even though we technically PAID for the car to park in that particular parking lot. The last three spots in it are reserved as NO PARKING with a tiny little sign that no one takes notices of, because after all, you’re in a parking lot…which you pay to park in. Needless to say, we were pissed. It’s purely revenue raising bullshit that traps people in to parking in three spots that are not car parking spaces.

But I just found this interesting article and thought to share it with you because it made me giggle. I hope it makes you giggle too and wish I’d had just as many good excuses to get myself out of a parking fine!

This is the infringement notice this man recieved in 2004.

You can click on the image to get a clearer view.

This was his response to said notice.

New Zealand Police
Infringement Bureau
PO Box 9147
Wellington

Good morning,

INFRINGMENT NOTICE NS3735700

Yesterday, I was presented with the above infringement notice (copy attached for your records) while returning home from the Parachute music festival at Mystery Creek near Hamilton over the long Auckland Anniversary weekend. I had a most excellent weekend, but that is not why I’m writing to you at this time. Unfortunately, there are a couple of irregularities with the infringement notice that are causing me some consternation and hopefully you can clear them up or, preferably, forget about the whole thing entirely.

Firstly, the ‘date of offense’ is listed as the 23rd of June 1974 with the time being at or around half past six in the evening. This is of grave concern to me because I was not issued a drivers license until sometime in 1990 and I have no desire to be charged with driving while not legally licensed. I do not have a clear recollection of very much at all before I was three and a half years old, so I rang Mum to see if she remembered what I was doing that day. She said that – coincidentally – I was born that day!!

Mum mentioned that I was born at around five o’clock in the evening on that day in Porirua, which is not far from Wellington. She also said Porirua was a bustling suburb of young, low-income people who were trying to get ahead. Back in the 70′s, people were coming to terms with oil shocks, high-inflation and wage freezes, but that’s not important right now.

For me to have traveled from Porirua to the foot of the Bombay Hills just out of Auckland by six thirty, I would had to have crawled into the first car in the hospital parking lot and headed for Auckland at around 1,000 km/h. For this reason, it is entirely possible that the constable who clocked me back in 1974 was holding his laser equipment upside down and instead of doing 116 km/h as per the infringement notice, it is more likely that I was doing 911 km/h.

This is where it starts to get really strange. The car that I must have crawled into had the same license plate number as the one I have now – AEH924 (according to the infringement notice). However, my car is a dark gray Nissan Bluebird SSS, with dual cup holders, 1800cc’s of grunt, air-conditioning and electric windows.

You will notice that a time-travel option is not included on this model, so that rules out any ‘Back to the Future’ issues and the car I was driving back then could not have been the the one I drive today.

This is clarified by the infringement notice which states that the vehicle was a Honda saloon. How this relates to my Nissan Bluebird, I cannot fathom. I can only hypothesize that, back in 1974, the first range of proto-type Hondas had an automated number plate changing mechanism (like on the A-Team) which were used to avoid parking tickets and facilitate safer getaways from burglaries, armed hold-ups and the like.

So to recap, it appears that on my birthday on June 23rd 1974, I crawled out of the maternity ward, hijacked a seriously high powered Honda saloon with an automated number plate changing mechanism, drove to Auckland at close to Mach 1, was pulled over approaching the Bombay Hills and unwittingly changed the automated number plate changing mechanism to show the same number as a car I would own almost thirty years later!! (The chance of selecting the same number plate is a mere 1 in 308,915,776 – so quite conceivable)

I am currently residing at the address listed at the top of this letter. I expect you will want to apprehend me fairly shortly now that we’ve established that I may have committed the following offenses:

- Grand theft auto (I probably stole the Honda as my parents drove a white Ford Cortina at that stage)
- Driving without a license
- Driving at a ludicrous speed using a motor vehicle
- Evading the law using an automated number plate changing mechanism.

If you could provide a clearer indication as to why the ‘date of offence’ is the same as my birthday, and why the vehicle make and type bears no resemblance to the number plate listed on the infringement notice, it would be appreciated. Mind you, I wouldn’t be too disappointed if we agreed to let this one go. I could really use the $120 dollars as I’m lowering my Nissan, installing excessively noisy waste-gate and boring it out for better performance in the street drags down Te Irirangi drive and around Weymouth.

Thank you for considering my submission, I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

(Signed)

Justin Lee

This was the response he recieved.

Lucky Git!

Dexter is taking after his big brother and forming the cutest ever mohawk. The only thing is it only sticks up when it’s wet!!

Jaxon’s Mow disappeared as soon as he had his first hair cut…so Dexter is never getting a hair cut!

(I have to dig out pictures of Jaxon’s one, his was super cute and stuck up without being wet or needing gel!)

This was floating about on facebook a few weeks ago.

One of my girls is a teacher and wanted something a little more exciting to put up on her classroom wall so I turned it in to this…

While Mum is sitting on the toilet…

Jaxon: It’s easier to wee if you stand up Mum!

Last night when we all returned home from dinner at Nanny and Poppy’s we knew something was wrong right away. Rory was not on his perch saying hello to us. So we called out a couple times from the kitchen and I whispered that I thought he might be dead. Sure enough, there was Rory, dead as a door nail on the bottom of the cage.

We’re not entirely sure why he died. He was only 4 months old. But it was my birthday and then the following day Tim was admitted to hospital for a possible repeat MS attack and we had two very late nights.

Normally, I take Rory out during the day for some sun and bring him in before it gets cold. But on those two nights, he got left out in the cold all night because I forgot he was out there. So maybe he got a cold. At least, I hope he got a cold because otherwise I wonder if I did something wrong in terms of his care. I hope not!

Jaxon handled it like a champ. He doesn’t quite comprehend that Rory wont be coming back. Or that Rory isn’t getting cold in the ground. But I think he’s starting to get it. We spoke about my brother Terry who died and how he died. And how he wont get to meet Terry because Terry is dead. We spoke to him about how Mum and Dad would die one day and that all of the grandparents and possibly some of his friends would die one day. We told him that’s how life is. People are born as babies and grow and live their lives but one day everything dies.

When he told me “Mum, I’m going to miss Rory” I patted him on his chest and told him that we all missed him, but that he would always be alive in our hearts” So he replied that Rory was going to make him die. This worried me, since I thought maybe he was taking the death thing too literally. But what he said after that was “If Rory’s in my heart it wont be able to beat” Bless him.

Jaxon and I went and bought three plants and we dug a hole and buried Rory and planted the tree next to him. We made up a little rock with Rory’s name on it so Jaxon would always know where he was.

We all miss Rory. It’s possible that I’m missing him more than anyone else because he would sit on my desk right here and chat to me while I did things. We’ll get another bird in a few weeks.

Jaxon is holding two texter’s connected to each other waving it around like a wand.

Jaxon: Mum look, I’m an ata-ka-dab-ka!

Mum: You’re a what?

Jaxon: An ata-ka-dab-ka!!!

Mum: Oh, you’re a Wizard!!

Jaxon: Yeah, I’m a lizard…ata-ka-dab-ka!

Way back in another life time, I worked with research animals at Monash University Animal House. A place where we looked after and bred all kinds of lab animals for research. Don’t hate me. You’ve been using products or getting medicine that was tested on animals all of your life. AND, even when they say they’re not tested on animals (ie: make ups) it doesn’t mean that every single other combination of the product wasn’t tested on animals before WATER was added to complete it.

I was only 19 at the time. It was my first job and the first person that I got to meet in the tea room was a girl named Kelly.

It all started off as a simple note left in her pigeon hole. Then one left in mine. Then, it became a competition to find the most creative way to leave letters for each other. I did one in a bottle. She wrapped one in aluminum foil. I used pegs to secure the edges and so on. When she drove herself (with Tonka) around Australia on her long service leave she took my pegs with her and sent me photo’s of them all over the place.

But after a while, our letters started getting longer…and longer. She would sit outside in the mornings with her dog Tonka having a few smokes and writing to me while I would sit at the lunch room table writing one to her. We’d spend all week writing about our separate lives and then we’d each end up with a 30 page letter by the end of the week.

In 2000, I hit a rough patch and Kelly took me in. I lived with her until I was just about to have a huge break down (my biggest by far) and moved back in with my Dad. I pushed her away. Stopped writing my letters and never started again. We lost contact and I’ve missed her ever since.

Once again, thanks to the beauty of Facebook, we’re back in touch. And writing letter’s again.

She’s just about to leave for Thailand. Every year she goes and volunteer’s to help with her most favorite animal in the world, Elephants. You can read about what she does and where she does it here. It’s AMAZING what she does to help these Elephants out of chains.

Well, when I found out I had 20 days to write a letter I decided to make it VERY LONG. I mean, mega long. It turned in to 147 pages of writing and sharing blog posts from here and my other blogs. I made up my own front cover, added a pretend table of contents, added quotes and had two fake “The Ends”

Here is the cover I made (I am so proud of my little bound book…I am going to bind every letter from now on)

And here is our page of quotes…

Dedicated to Kelly

*So enthralling that I shit my pants
Dexter  (2011)

*Best thing I’ve read since “Green Eggs and Ham”.
Jaxon  (2011)

*Now the questions of the universe have been answered.
Albert Einstein (1941)

*After reading this, I no longer need to paint.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1500)

*Winning.
Charlie Sheen (2011)

*Maybe she’s hiding “Weapons of Mass Destruction”
George Bush (2001)

*We Have a new Scripture”
Dalai Lama (2011)

*Best bang since the big one
Stephen Hawking (2000)

Over the years I’ve lost most of the letter’s that she sent so long ago. I know I have a few of them stored here and there in boxes that I never look in. But this time, I know just how special our letter writing was and I’m never going to throw out another one of her letters. I am going to buy a special box just to store them in, so I can always have them handy.

She’s gone for two months this time. I can NOT wait until she gets back so we can catch up in person. I have missed her and thought of her always and never forgotten the special friendship that we shared through letter writing alone.

Thirty Four today! Every year, for the next few months…Tim call’s me a cradle snatcher because he’s three months younger than me now.

I had a wonderful day. The boys all sat at the table and made me cards and then in the morning I got given little gifts from the boys to open and then Tim gave me a big pack full of professional painting brushes from my oil painting “teacher/idol” Bob Ross.

We went to Nanny and Poppy’s for dinner and they got me a choc orange mud cake from the Cheese Cake factory…basically just for me!! No one else really ate it. I can’t take a photo of that for you because it’s ALL gone…and I’m not weighing myself for another three months!

I had such a lovely day and I’d like to say thank you to my wonderful boys, and in laws and everyone that sent cards and emails and made phone calls to say Happy Birthday! It was a wonderful day!!

My Melbourne best friend Tasha was in a bit of a bind one day when she had to work and had no one else to look after her kids. I volunteered even though under normal circumstances I would have asked her to find someone else. I was terrified. I’ve never looked after anyone else’s kids and the thought of having THREE more was just….intimidating!

They did fine though. I guess I did too. Once they’d settled in they did everything I asked of them. They were perfect for me.

The best thing was they kept Jaxon out of my hair for the day!

This was when Tasha picked them up at about 11pm after her shift. About ten minutes after that…I looked pretty much the same!!

Thanks to the world of facebook, I very often come across sayings that other friends have found that hit a chord. I thought I’d start sharing. These are the thoughts that make me want to raise my kids RIGHT. Like old school gentleman.

The four hardest tasks on earth are neither physical nor intellectual feats, but spiritual ones: To return love for hate; to include the excluded; to forgive without apology, and to be able to say “I was wrong”.

How true, right??

I mentioned in an earlier post that while I was still suffering from sciatic and back pain I had to go to hospital for an overnight stay. I was treated very badly and this is just the start of my official complaint letter. I can’t sit at the computer for huge amount of time so the letter will take a while. There are four or five more incidents similar to this one and I’ll share it all here as I get through my letter.

This day, was by far the worst day of my life. I could not move. If I did any number of muscles would seize up. Sometimes for more than ten minutes at a time. If you could imagine a charlie horse cramp in your leg and then imagine them happening…in every muscle of your back all at once. Or in every muscle of your back all at once as well as all of one side of your body. Imagine having a cramp in your cheek muscle, right under your eye. In your neck, so you couldn’t ever turn left or right. In your big toes, in the arch of your foot. Having your achilles heel feel as if someone has grabbed it and is wringing it out just like a wet towel. I even had one of my eye lids seize up. It was much like my body was in labor, going through full body contractions that I could do absolutely nothing about. I physically could not move myself out of them and spent time frozen on the floor, the couch, in bed and in the bath.

This went on for more than ten hours before I decided it wasn’t going to stop and had to call an ambulance because I would not have been able to sit in the car without screaming all the way to hospital. My only relief was having Tim and Jaxon there to help me through it. To help me move out of a position just to try and stop the cramps. So going to hospital, was meant to be BETTER than the care my husband and four year old son could offer me at home.

It turned out to be the exact opposite in every way, and I will not sit here and let those heartless Dr’s and nurses get away scott free in regards to how I was treated over a 24 hour period.

As discussed on the phone I wish to make an official complaint about the treatment that I received in my recent visit to the Emergency Department of “said hospital”. I believe that the way I was treated for my 24 hour stay was unprofessional, unethical and at times, inhumane. I left the care of the facility feeling belittled traumatised and humiliated. I wish to bring this to your attention. I expect that serious attention will be given to this matter as I am extremely unhappy with how I was treated.

I wont go in to the details of my medical condition, as I know my medical files will tell you of my visits and history. For your information, you can contact Doctor Zaid whom I have been seeing for this issue for quite a few months now at the Health Care Centre in Hoppers Crossing for further records of my pain and management of said pain.

I will tell you that my leg pain started in the 32nd week of my pregnancy (November 2010) At that point it was mild sciatic pain in my upper leg. I expected it would go when I had my baby on December the 1^st 2010 but it continued to get worse after he was born. By the time I started seeing Dr Zaid eight weeks later, I was experiencing all sorts of sciatic and back pain and unable to walk, stand or hold my baby for more than a few minutes at a time. I have been house bound for months.

On the 27^th of July, at 1.30am I started to have full body cramps and spasms that could not be stopped. Perhaps you already know what sciatic pain can do to someone but I’d like to put it here, just so that the issue of the severity of my pain when I called the Ambulance cannot be questioned.

A sciatica muscle spasm is the most painful of all back and leg pain symptoms. Spasms occur when a muscle contracts violently and uncontrollably, ever tightening in a vice-like grip of shear agony.

For nearly 10 hours I stayed at home with my husband and two sons having cramps that would last up to ten minutes and occur up to three or four times an hour. I was desperate for relief when I finally called the ambulance.

They arrived and picked me up and I was brought to the Emergency Department. I was wheeled in to the entrance where I assumed we were waiting for a room to be seen by a Doctor. I was laying on the Ambulance gurney going through one of these attacks when I was told they were going to put me in the ED waiting room to wait for a room. Hearing this news, I had a panic attack, and could not move anything but my neck. I was hysterical and begging them not to take me in to a public place in that condition.

At this point I would like to mention that the male Ambulance officer who attended my pick up told me “Don’t you think you’re laying it on a bit thick?”

I was placed in a wheel chair, frozen in pain, crying and begging not to be left alone, and wheeled in to the emergency waiting room in this condition. The ambulance officers simply walked off without looking back. This, I must say, was the most humiliating experience I have ever had to endure in my entire life. And I’ve been through child birth twice. I had people staring at me. I had no way of contacting my husband to come and help me. I could not move to get my phone. And my cries for help from your staff were completely ignored.

I could not go through this again. It was just awful. I was crying. Jaxon was crying. And Tim had to watch as the love of his life lay writhing in pain on the floor.

If anyone would like to comment and help me get through this letter without it sounding too over the top or too rude (because I am furious now, I was just traumatized when this happened. Now I’m flaming mad!) please feel free to edit this or any other part I put up and put it in to the comments section so I can get it just right.

Imagine if you will, walking in to the garage to go to your car, which is parked just outside. And then imagine…that as the doors begin to lift, your four year old son starts to whimper and walk backwards for no reason that you can see.

Then, imagine, that…this….was standing nose to nose with your four year old. And how THAT went.

That, is what happened to US today!

Now, I’m a dog person. I’ve taken all sorts of lost dogs in and helped them find their owners rather than send them off to the pound. But THIS dog, was not a very nice dog. It let loose on us for a second and then ran down the street.

I took Jaxon to school. Dropped him off. And when I returned the dog was STILL in the street. Sitting under the veranda of a house across the street. I tried very hard to woo her. But she was un-woo-able. VERY un-woo-able.

I had no choice but to call the local ranger, who came within half an hour. But what a funny hour I had watching THEM trying to woo her!

Firstly, they pulled straight in to the drive way and nearly hit the dog, which promptly jumped up and attacked the car. They tried talking to her. They tried yelling at her to go in. All the while, not daring to get out of their car.

Then, they tried FOOD. But this un-woo-able dog was just getting a free feed. The ranger figured out she was well trained, would throw out some food, ask her to sit (which she would) and slowly bring her closer to the car where the driver lay in wait with that big long dog catching stick.

But each and every time they got her close enough to the car to grab her she simply ran back to the safety of her little alcove. This went on for 45 minutes. Being the nosy neighbour that I am I video taped all of this!) until they actually had to call in back up.

Well, the back up drove right up in to the drive way, got out of his van and yelled at the dog to get back inside like a mad man. So the dog, scared now…ran down the side way. Where this big burly man followed her, yelled some more and then caught her with his big long stick thingee.

I’ve barely mentioned here at all about my last 8 months of absolute misery and pain. Way back in 2003 I hurt my lower back. I couldn’t walk for about two weeks and then it went good. So nothing came of it. I had two flare ups. One at the end of 2008 and the other when we just got back from Queensland.

Then, when I got pregnant…I didn’t even get little niggles in my back. Not once. But I did however get a touch of sciatica in my left leg towards the very end. I got told it goes away once the baby is born.

But that wasn’t true for me. Because the sciatic pain was not being caused by the growing baby putting pressure on that nerve. It was in fact, a slipped disc getting worse. A slipped disc that was protruding and squeezing my sciatic nerve leading in to my left leg.

For a few weeks after Dexter was born it was mild pain that turned in to pins and needles towards the end of the day. Then it started getting sore almost as soon as I got up in the morning. It turned from a mild ache to a leg that was so sore I couldn’t walk on it for more than a few minutes at a time.

It was a pain like no other I have ever experienced. And Dexter’s 27 hour labor wasn’t a walk in the park, let me tell you! Sciatica pain moves and changes every few minutes. They call it chameleon pain. It doesn’t stay the same and it varies in intensity. For half an hour it would feel like someone was pushing in to my left ass cheek with a hot poker. Then, it would feel like my entire leg had been frozen solid. Or I’d have a dead foot with pins and needles that would radiate UP the leg in to my back if I stayed on it too long. Sometimes it felt like someone had put my achilles tendon in to a vice. Muscles would seize up and not release for hours. It didn’t matter what kind of pain it was, at every second of every day…there was some kind of unbearable pain making it impossible to walk on for more than a few minutes at a time.

I was house bound for about 5 months. Only leaving to visit Nanny and Poppy with Tim and the boys. I stopped being able to walk to do the weekly shop. I couldn’t pick Dexter up for more than a minute. Tim had to get me dressed or undressed some mornings and nights because I couldn’t bend my leg or my back. I had to sit on the floor in the shower. I couldn’t sit at the dinner table and I certainly could not stand in the kitchen long enough to cook a meal (even 2 minute noodles!) for the family. Tim had to take over almost every aspect of my life, from shopping to being a bit of my slave by getting called here and there through the house to help me with the boys. I had two visits to the ER, one home Dr visit and an ambulance ride in to hospital (where I was treated very badly, I should write about that!!)

Well, my girls! I’ve talked about them often and everyone I know knows who I am talking about by now. But all of a sudden we started getting cards and letters in the mail.

Three of them contained gift cards. Nearly $200 worth of money from people whom I’ve never met but have been incredibly close with since 2006.

They suggested that I pamper myself with it but I figured that would be a short term pick me up. I wanted to buy something with that money that reminded me that there are people all over the world who love and care for me!

This is what I did. Now, they will be with me…as long as I can keep those things alive!

From the bottom of my heart, I thank each and every one of my girls who helped to contribute to those gift cards. And to those who didn’t but would have if they’d known about it…I thank you too. Because its the thought that counts. Just knowing that you would have been willing to contribute means the world to me. Your friendship and support is priceless!

Now I have to clean!!!!

I’m always telling Poppy that he is my one loyal reader. Probably the only person who checks to see if we’ve posted every day. Work gets slow sometimes you see

Anyway I thought I’d test the theory. And invite him over for roast dinner TONIGHT. The 25th of August.

You can let Tim know via text and he will let me know. I promise…it will be roast like you had when you were little. None of that funny stuff….just roast.

I will need to know by 4pm so I can cook for two extra.

I doubt I need to explain this one!

Last week he was barely crawling.

Now he keeps up with us about the house!!

I think I’ve mentioned here a few times now that when I got pregnant with Jaxon I joined an online forum of woman who were expecting their babies in the same month as me. That was back in April of 2006. Now, five years on, we are still the best of friends. I have not met a single one of them, until now.

Jeannette is from South Africa. Her first born son James, was born 7 days after Jaxon. She and I have spoken on the phone, sent texts and emails. But finally, she came out to visit us!!

I was so nervous! What if she doesn’t like me?? Because a computer personality compared to an “in person” personality are two very different things. I had planned out my day perfectly. I was going to do some cleaning in the morning then shower and blow dry my hair in the afternoon. I was going to put on some make up and smell all pretty. I was going to go across to Coburg to buy Turkish food for them because it’s my favourite food in all of Melbourne. It was going to be special!

When the day finally arrived I had a shit of a night the day before. Tim, Jaxon and I were all sick with the flu. Jaxon was up coughing and spluttering all night and Dexter of course needed a bottle or two over night. They tag teamed me ALL night. So I decided I was too tired to sit in the car to get the Turkish (given that the entire trip would be spent in agony at not being able to move my leg to stop it hurting) and got Tim to pick up a hot chicken and some nibblies on his way home. I had a nap. I set an alarm for three, since she was arriving at 4pm. I was going to get up, have a shower and do my hair. But when I woke up at three and Dexter was still asleep and Tim and Jaxon were having fun together…I slept. Until I got woken by the door bell!

There was Jeannette, at MY front door! I didn’t have Turkish food to feed her. I didn’t clean the things I wanted to clean. I probably smelt really bad and my hair was a mess. But it was still special.

We sat and talked for hours like we were old friends just catching up. Not once did we run out of things to say. Tim and George hit it off with conspiracy theory’s and James and Jaxon didn’t bother us all night! They were so good to each other and played nicely all night with very little yelling from the adults. It was a fantastic night and we were all very sad that we couldn’t have spent more time together. Tim and I wanted to go along with them for a day or night but couldn’t because of my stupid leg and back.

It’s funny. Because a year ago Jeannette did a tour of the US where she went and met almost everyone off our forum. I kept imagining that it would be intimidating to meet all of those new people when you’ve known each other for so long via the internet. Would they have certain expectations of me given what they know of me already. I would NEVER have wanted to do it because in my mind it was going to be a bunch of awkward moments. But now, having met Jeannette…I want to go and meet all of the woman from our forums!!

It’s going to take quite a few years to get there. We have 2 and a half years left to see Tim through his degree in Engineering. Then we’d probably need to sort out our finances once he got a job.  But THEN, we can start saving for the trip of a life time! The kids will be older and it will be a great experience for them. I am 100% confident that the woman I am friends with now will be very close friends for years to come. We chat every day about random bullshit. We lean on each other through rough days with the kids. We comfort each other during hard times. And we laugh, so hard. It’s a very intimate group of woman and I can’t imagine my day not including some word from someone about how they’re doing, whats happening in their lives.

I can’t wait to have photo’s like this of ALL of my girls! Perhaps, all in one spot! They’ve already had to meet ups and I’m always missing out. One day I’ll be there at Myrtle Beach!

You thought I was joking, didn’t you Poppy??

My mother in law made us a new quilt for our bed. She put a LOT of time and effort in to it and it certainly deserves a mention here on the blog.

I’ve never had a quilt and didn’t know how I’d feel about sleeping with it on. But it’s surprisingly, ok. It’s also made it so I HAVE to make the bed every day. A doona can pull off the unmade look but this quilt does not!

It also looks awesome under our ultraviolet light in the bed room…

Well, it’s very hard to believe that 6 months have gone by. Needless to say though, they have been very long months!

Dexter is almost 9 kilo’s in weight now and in Double zero clothes but growing out of them and just started eating solids like he’s always been having it. He’s now a pretty happy go lucky kind of baby and he’s always smiling and giggling at us now.

The only complaint I have right now is he’s a SCREAMER! Man, the boy has LUNGS on him!! Even Jaxon cringes when he gets right up there. It just goes on for ever some days. Its not just one scream. Its scream after scream after scream.

Jaxon LOVES his little brother and is slowly learning how to “play” with something that lays on the ground rolling from side to side all day. But it shouldn’t be too long before he’s crawling! We’ve discussed this thing called crawling with Jaxon a few times but we still don’t think he understands just how much trouble we’re in for once Dexter can FOLLOW us!

I spend all this time not posting and then I start inundating you with posts. From MONTHS ago!! There is a perfectly logical and sane reason (other than pure laziness) for this and I WILL get around to writing about some of these things…but for now I’m just looking through the photo’s I’ve taken over the past couple of months that I SHOULD be sharing here!

To make sense of this story I first have to tell you about two different stories from my childhood.

In the first, on a walk I once took with Mum and Dad when I was very little. Perhaps I was 5 years old. We were just up by my primary school at the end of our street. Walking past some pigeons. I don’t know exactly why he said it but it was probably because I begged them to get me one for my birthday. Or just because.

My Dad told me that if I wanted a pigeon all I had to do was catch one. I could keep it if I did. And to catch it he said, all I had to do was throw salt on it’s bum. This, apparently, makes it so the pigeons can’t fly or walk. Because the salt on it’s bum stings and its bum muscles squeeze in real tight and they can’t walk properly. Then all you have to do is catch it.

For YEARS I believed him. I actually thought it was true. And in grade five, I had other kids convinced of this too.

In the second story I am seven years old. I was yabbying under the bridge at the Euroa caravan park. I had thought it a good idea to leave my line with it’s steak on it over night. To see if I could catch something in the morning. That was all good and well except that when I went to check my line in the morning there was no yabby. Instead, when I pulled on the line it seemed to be stuck. So I pulled harder. And when I finally got the line to move closer to the surface, there at the end of it, holding on to that bit of steak for dear life…was a turtle.

From that point on, for the rest of our 5 week holiday, I begged Mum and Dad to get me a turtle. They DID!

I, being the original character that I am, named it Myrtle. Dad and I built it a pond with a fence around it and I would wonder on down each day to feed it.

I don’t know how long we’d had this turtle when we went to my cousin’s 7th birthday party. I don’t think it was long. But when we came home, Myrtle was gone. It ran away. It climbed it’s little fence (I vaguely remember that it COULD climb the fence) and disappeared. Never to be seen again.

And now to present day. Where I start wondering about my turtle. Thinking about the salt and the pigeons and the turtle. Wondering, if maybe my turtle died. But Mum and Dad didn’t want me to get upset so maybe they lied and said it ran away instead. Just like you hear people telling kids about their dogs who “ran away” when really Mum or Dad backed over it in the drive way. All the while, the kids are so young and trusting that they believe everything their parents tell them. Like, how you can catch a pigeon by throwing salt on it’s ass.

Yesterday I had to know. Because if I could believe Dad for years that I could catch a pigeon by throwing salt on it’s behind, then how easy would it be to believe my turtle “ran away”?

I sent both Mum and Dad a text asking if Myrtle had died and not run away. Now that they’re divorced they’d either both say the same thing, or they’d each tell a different story.

Dad replied first. He tells me the turtle really did run away. And when I said I didn’t want to be one of those gullible kids that believed their turtle had run away when it was actually dead and that I was having trouble believing him because of the pigeon story, he STILL tried to tell me you could catch a pigeon with salt…as long as you got close enough. But the turtle really did run away.

Then Mum replied. Like Dad, she swears the turtle ran away and that we never did find it.

I’m still unsure. They each have told the same story. But Tim and I discussed this and perhaps, when I was very little and lying in bed, Mum and Dad stood over me with dead turtle in hand and one said to the other “She can never know about this”

Or maybe, when they got divorced it was a part of their settlement. You can have the couch, but the girl never finds out about the turtle. Take it to the grave.

I just have this image in my head of my head stone when I die. It will probably read something like this.

Here lies Boo.

Wife. Mother. Daughter.

Gullible turtle owner to the end.

We decided to take a quick trip to Grandpa’s before Tim returns back to school. On the way we thought we were in for trouble. Jaxon kept insisting that Dookie had to come home with him. We actually thought we might have to fight Jaxon to leave him there with Grandpa. But within the first minute of our visit we knew we were safe. That was the minute of Jaxon’s blood curdling screams as he CLIMBED UP Tim’s body as Dookie very innocently came rushing out to greet them.

We had a lovely day. We had lunch. Two walks to the beach. Two walks to the park. And one of  us got to see a burning car on the drive home (that would be Tim, who, being the driver of the car…had to keep his eyes open)