Well That's One Person Who Reads My Blog

On Christmas Eve a friend I don't see often - he lives and works in Canberra now although he's originally from here and we used to work at the same place - called in during his visit home for Christmas. It was lovely to see him and Pisces and I had a very enjoyable catch up and chat. In the course of conversation he mentioned that he reads my blog. I was delighted to hear this because, although my stats (helpfully supplied by Blogger) show that people read my blog, they rarely comment on it so who they are is a mystery for the most part. I do link to the blog on Facebook and get responses and comments there but it would be nice to know who outside my circle of Facebook friends reads it.

To that end I'm going to finish setting up the writer's page I've been fiddling with on Facebook and never quite getting around to finishing. Then I'll try sending my little blog out into the wider world via links on that - and among my New Years resolutions (AKA the100 Day Goal challenge) is the plan to write/post a blog post at least once a week.

If you've never heard of the 100 Day Goal (which I think I wrote about earlier in the year) and you are a born procrastinator like me I highly recommend it. The idea is that you achieve big things by micro-actions and it really does work. It's free, too. I also belong to a small, closed Facebook group of fellow participants and that I find is very helpful in keeping me accountable. The next challenge begins on January 1 and if you want to learn more about it this is the link to the website. 

So I've Been Thinking About Social Media

You know the thing keeps getting all the bad press because well, you name the problem. It's all down to social media. Among other things it's responsible for mothers not paying attention to their children because they no longer interact with them apparently. An Australian cartoonist recently caused a furore by drawing a cartoon of a woman glued to her phone who hadn't noticed her baby had fallen out of the pram she was pushing because, of course, mothers who engage even momentarily with anyone else or anything in any way are neglectful. Makes you wonder what he thinks mothers with more than one child, doesn't it. Then there's the pile on that can happen when people express dissenting views and the way everyone is supposedly being led along by fake news and the social media companies which kindly offer us 'free' services in exchange for our data so their algorithms can target us with advertisements. and put us in a 'bubble' with like-minded folk.

The thing is this is all true to some degree. There are mothers who for whatever reason get distracted - by another child, their phones or books or television or - well you name it. They probably have an eye or ear open at the same time though and if little Johnny was to slip off his seat and start to wander they are likely to notice it and take action. Then there's the fake news - yes, it's everywhere and people do fall into believing it for all sorts of reasons but mostly because they don't fact check which is the first thing you should do when something controversial comes up.

I'm not forgetting the way the social media companies use the data they collect on either. It does happen and we need to be vigilant about what we give them to work with but that's down to us, isn't it. We need to be aware of what information we're making available and that we are at risk of manipulation if we're not careful. That's easy to say, though, and sadly not everyone is savvy enough to protect themselves. There are areas where we should hold these companies accountable and it's a failure on the part of our governments that rules have not been put in place to protect the users from this.

Then there's the pile on. It does happens and it can be truly awful. Anyone who's been on line for even a short time will have heard 'Don't read the comments' and 'Don't feed the trolls'. There are some horrible people out there and hidden in the anonymity of Facebook or Twitter they can and do say things they would never say to you face to face. Women are threatened with violence of all kinds from rape right through to murder for daring to say something that someone disagrees with. And it's not only women - threats of violence including threats to the family are a regular feature when anyone dares to lift their head into the public arena. It's not pretty.

These are all the reasons why I have a very carefully restricted number of 'friends' on Facebook and they are only people I care about. That doesn't mean we all always agree - life would be pretty boring if that was the case - but I expect them to show me the same courtesy I show them.

And that's why I came to write this post. I sometimes post things on my Facebook page that I know some of my 'friends' will either not like or will disagree with and I don't mind that. They can post comments and disagree as long as it is civil and they show the same civility they would if they were guests in my actual home. So I got somewhat miffed at what happened when a while back a disagreement between some of my Facebook friends started to get fiery and I asked people to stop commenting on that particular thread. This is my virtual 'home' and I don't want people getting into fights there anymore than I would want it happen in my real home. The majority backed off as I asked but some continued on bringing up the things that had been causing the heating up of the topic and it ended up with my getting terse with them and feeling disrespected.

So is it the fault of social media? I don't think so. Social media is only a platform and is not responsible for how we behave. It seems to me that it comes down to good manners which are basically just consideration of others. That means the same rules of behaviour should apply to virtual spaces as they do to real life spaces. Sadly though in many ways people don't see these spaces this way. Why? Well that's a difficult question but at least in part it comes down to the way social media provides anonymity on public platforms like Twitter and that leads to confusion in more private spaces. Let's just be aware of this and understand and differentiate between a civil disagreement and a 'flame' war. If you wouldn't say it to my face maybe you shouldn't say it on social media either.

A Bit of Music

I needed cheering up and I went to find some to find something to lift my mood. So here are some links to a few favourite music videos by Celtic Woman from their official website.

First here is Amazing Grace

This time it's Tír na nÓg (this is in the Celtic Otherworld which translates as Land of the Young). Tír na nÓg is not the safest place to visit because time passes there very differently from the human world and you might suffer the fate of Oisín who finds what he thought was only three years was in fact three hundred. That aside the song is lovely.

And finally here is Níl Sé'n Lá 

Enjoy.

Ethical Fashion

Until my hands got bad I used to make many of my clothes.  I still have a fabric stash that I'll eventually work my way through although these days it's harder work. That said when I went to YouTube following a link on the Donald Trump impeachment hearings I did not expect to find something about sewing or for that matter fashion related.

What happened was the link I had followed was interesting so I had a look at the list of other supposedly related videos that YouTube kindly provides on the side and a couple of videos down I found this video Buying a Knockoff of My Own Dress. In it Bernadette Banner, in the most educated, civilised and lady-like way possible, talks about the mass manufacturers who rip off clothing designers and artists by detailing her own experience.

Describing herself as an historian with an interest in historical clothing, she found a knockoff copy of a very lovely medieaval gown she had made with the seller even using the Instagram image of her wearing the dress on their website. Having bought the knockoff for comparison she then proceeded to point out the poor quality of the copy before going on to rant - her word - about the way so-called fast fashion has led us down a path that is ethically problematic and environmentally irresponsible.

It was interesting that I found this now because recently Facebook - whose algorithms obviously don't have a clue about most of my interests (and I intend to keep it that way by not providing them with any more data than is absolutely essential) - has been sending me ads for a clothing company which makes just this sort of rubbish. Goodness knows why but then they also often send me fashion ads. It’s pretty pointless really because, given my view on clothing shopping - that it is pretty much the last thing I ever want to do - I never even click on them.

But I digress. What this video reminded me of (apart from the blatant theft of intellectual property of a creative person which seems to be a business model for some companies these days) was how pervasive the idea is that clothing should be cheap and pretty much disposable. I was buying a few essentials at a local department store recently and I had to go past the women's clothing section on my way to what I needed. Pisces swerved into it hoping that I might be tempted to buy some much needed clothing. I'm afraid he was disappointed because although there was much 'stuff' at ludicrously low prices - $3 T-shirts for example - the trade off for cheap was poor quality and the knowledge that they were all almost certainly made in sweat shops and I’d prefer not go that route. I’d rather buy fewer clothes that are better quality and will last. I’ll let you into a secret here - I even mend things and that’s something I’m told is rare these days.

The thing is as a society we’ve fallen into a trap of wastefulness with a feeling that everything is cheaply replaceable and Banner goes on to talk about how in the past clothing was meant to last. It was mended and cut up to be repurposed or made over into other garments or for other textile uses like curtains or quilts. Patchwork quilts are a perfect example of careful use of what you had because originally they were not made of new purpose bought, carefully matched fabrics as a hobby for those who like me enjoy creative sewing but were a thrifty way to use up any scraps that could be salvaged from worn clothing or leftover cut offs from making garments. The same applied to children's clothes which were almost always made from older adult garments. It wasn't only the poor who remade clothes either as this link shows.

Coincidentally I came across this link on making do as I was working on this post and it made me think about how being thrifty has become an almost forgotten part of living. I know we're busy but truth be told people - apart from those lucky relatively few who could afford servants to do the work - have always been busy and time poor. I suspect that it's as much to do with availability of so much and the distractions with which we live as much as lack of time. Maybe it's time we tried a new/old way - a way where we carry over the KonMarie idea of only keeping that which sparks joy into what we buy and at the same time learn the pleasure of a less waste filled life.

Well, That's a Fail

I'm talking about NaNoWriMo because let's face it if I've only managed about 6,000 words by now the hope of reaching 50,000 is long gone. I have reasons - of course, I have - and they are quite genuine but I knew much of this was going to come up before I started so I should have known better.  There were things I couldn't factor in as well - a funeral, weather which is scorching and drains the energy, medical 'stuff' for both of us (not serious but time consuming) and that's only part of it.


So I've faced reality which is that NaNoWriMo is a step too far this year. Instead I'm turning my mind to Christmas and trying to get myself organised earlier rather than later. These days I don't go crazy with Christmas decorations but I do like to do a little and this means it's time to pull the tree out of the shed and give it a hose down -  the amount of dust it accumulates even though it's sheathed in plastic always amazes me. Then I'll sort through the decorations and decide what has passed its useful time - and there's always something that has apparently spontaneously decided to crack or fall apart - and from there decide whether or not I need to invest in anything new.


We have a family tradition of putting up the tree and other decorations on the first weekend of December and then taking the whole lot down on the traditional date of January 6 and I think that's quite long enough for it to be up. There seems to be a tendency these days - largely due to commercial drivers - to extend the seasons for festivals of all kinds and I think that's a pity. One of our local supermarkets has taken to selling traditional Easter hot cross buns year round for example. This irritates me not so much because it's a break from tradition but because it takes away something that's unique to a particular time and something that could be looked forward to and savoured. If you have Easter buns all year there's nothing special about them, is there, so why bother?

It seems to me that this is all part of the way we live now where we seem to seek instant gratification and waiting for something is just too hard. Well, I refuse to give in to this because often anticipation is as much part of the delight as the actual event itself. This means I try to live by the principle of 'to everything there is a season' although others might find it odd and in line with that I'll keep to my traditional rituals and let each spark some pleasure because small joys are the things that make our lives worth living, don't you think.

We Will Remember Them

This handsome young man is my great uncle, Captain Horace Chamberlain King MC, and this photo was taken just before he joined up.

Horrie was born on 25 September, 1895, so he was 19 ½ when he joined up on 4 March, 1915. He was promoted rapidly becoming a sergeant on 27 July 2, 1915, second lieutenant on 14 March, 1916, lieutenant 21 August 1916 and finally captain on 23 March, 1917. He fought at Gallipolli and later in France where he was awarded the Military Cross on 2 September 1916 'for services rendered during recent fighting at Pozieres'. He was wounded on 2 November, 1917, and mentioned in despatches at the same time. He was wounded again in action on 7 April, 1918 and died as a result on 1 May, 1918.

A much loved youngest son and brother, his sisters, my grandmother and great aunt, mourned him all their lives.

Lest we forget.

Cultural Appropriation

After my successful return to yoghurt making I wanted to do more. With my Dairy-o kit came an instruction booklet - and since I had the foresight to cover it with plastic back in the day it's still pretty well intact. I had read it, of course, back when I got it but never gone beyond basic yoghurt making for some reason. There are other interesting recipes in it starting with how to make 'thickened yoghurt'. This is what we now know as Greek style yoghurt so it turns out I could have been making this for myself for years instead of waiting until it became a popular food item in the supermarket refrigerator shelves. Doh. Then there's how to make other cultures - buttermilk, sour cream, creme fraiche and cottage cheese - and buried among these is drained yoghurt cheese.

This last really caught my eye because I was recently watching an excerpt from The Feed (from public broadcaster SBS) in which the presenter, who is of Lebanese descent, was saying how she had come across this somewhere and how she felt there was some cultural appropriation taking place where someone had taken an item of Lebanese culture - labneh (a cheese made by draining yoghurt) - and misrepresented it by calling it something else (that is drained yoghurt cheese). I can understand how this might feel. Labneh is one of those traditional foods in Lebanese cooking that appears in many guises and I'm more than happy to acknowledge its place in that cuisine. I read a lot of cooking blogs and the further I looked into it the more often I found Lebanese folk claiming drained yoghurt cheese in the form of labneh as their culture's own.  They turned up writing critical comments about how their culture was being mistreated in some way which sometimes became quite heated - and I do understand.

But, the thing is drained yoghurt cheese is made all around the Mediterranean - it's found in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus and Egypt and many other places. It's known by different names - it's labne in Egypt for example - and used in different ways in many places. There are even some slightly different versions of drained yoghurt in Asian and southern Europe cultures. Some might even view Icelandic skyr as in the same tradition although it does use rennet as part of its ingredients so maybe not.

This is where my dilemma arises because cultural appropriation is very tricky and as a writer it's something I have to be aware of. The trouble is when is it appropriation? In the case of drained yoghurt cheese I think I come down on the side of no, it's not cultural appropriation because it's a staple in many places and doesn't belong specifically to the Lebanon. I'd be interested to know what you think, too.

While I investigated a lot of things came up that I'm very unsure about. One thing about cultural appropriation seems to be that someone from a dominant culture lays claim to something which is unique to another culture and uses that for profit. So I can see why a fashion designer putting catwalk models in Native American war bonnets is definitely not on. Apart from anything else such headdresses are not merely meant as ornamentation and have other cultural significance. But another example given was of an incident where a manufacturer had used without permission paintings and designs by indigenous Australian artists on items like T-shirts and tea towels. To me this isn't simply appropriation - although it is in part - but more accurately it's outright theft of the artists' work. If someone makes something - a piece of art or written words or whatever - this belongs to them and they should be the one who profits from it. Just like movie and book piracy if you take and use what someone produces for your profit or to avoid paying for it without either the creator's consent or permission in my view you're a thief. Again I'd like to know what you think.

Look!

Guess what this is.

No? Well, here's the story. A while back I was reading a post on The Simple Country Creative. This is the blog of Polla Posavec, a local West Australian artist (she's also part of my extended family just so you know). She writes about aspects of her life on a bush block outside Perth and that includes food. When I had kids at home I used make yoghurt but somehow since it's just down to Pisces and me I never seem to get around to doing. I've no idea why I stopped - it's simple enough to make - and as I've recently started getting interested in making fermented foods I had been toying with the idea of starting again. So when Polla wrote about making yoghurt using UHT milk it piqued my interest and I wondered if you could use powdered milk.

I made a few enquiries of my Facebook friends and it seemed possible so I got out my trusty Dairy-o yoghurt kit. This is basically an insulated container - that's what the slightly wonky photo is of - into which you put your jar of yoghurt mixture and then leave it alone until it ferments to your taste. It also comes with a handy heat resistant thermometer that clips on to the side of your saucepan. I have no idea how old this is but I seem to remember having it before Virgo was born so it's probably very old but being low tech it'll last as long as I can get replacement jars in case of breakages.

So yesterday was the day. I mixed up a litre of instant powdered milk according to the directions plus an extra tablespoon of milk powder (not essential but it makes for a thicker, creamier end product), heated it to between 85-90°C, left it to cool to 44°C, mixed in the starter - I used one heaped tablespoon of commercial natural yoghurt, poured it into the jar, loosely screwed on the lid and put the jar into the flask where it fermented for around six and a half hours before it reached the degree of tartness I like. Into the fridge it went overnight and this is the result.

And this is it as I ate it with a handful each of blueberries and flaked almonds. Yum.

Spoon Theory

A reminder about this came up in my Facebook newsfeed yesterday.

For those who have diseases of the invisible kind - and there is a wide range of these nasties - chronic pain is only part of the problem. An equally devastating part is what happens when you overdo things. This is where the cost of doing some activity - which for the able-bodied may seem quite insignificant - wipes you out for days. This is why those with chronic pain from any of a multitude of causes have to pull out of social activities or can't do something that seems perfectly simple - and which they managed a few days ago - today. Because it's so hard for the healthy to understand this the sufferer is seen as unreliable and lazy and this impacts on everything from friendship to employment.

You may have heard folk with these kinds of conditions refer to 'spoons'. This refers to what Christine Miserandino calls 'spoon theory', where you are dealt a set number of 'spoons' every day. Each 'spoon' represents a specific amount of energy and how you 'spend' them correlates to what you can do on that day and often for days following. Have a look at her website But You Don't Look Sick where she talks about living with lupus (one of the invisible auto-immune diseases) and if you want to find out more about Spoon Theory in particular it's at this link https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/  It's worth a read.

Well, Keeping On Top of Things Didn't Last Long

I'd barely clicked on Publish for my last post when the real life decided I needed a few short sharp lessons. I got sick - this happens when I try to do too much and keep going and ignore the warning signs and you'd think I'd have got this by now but, no, of course I haven't. So that meant hitting survival mode - which in my world is managing to do the washing so we don't run out of clothes and meals from the freezer then falling into bed again by mid morning and sleeping for hours for several days. This in turn meant I didn't get anything else done and there's a lot that needs to be done.

I'd recovered enough that I was thinking as I got up on Saturday that things were going to be tight but manageable. Then Real Life struck again when Pisces came into my office just after nine and said, 'Can you look at this?'

This turned out to be a very swollen and discoloured leg. He'd been having some pain for a couple of days but nothing dramatic and no swelling but now it was obviously serious. So we headed off to the Emergency Department where there were tests and examinations and then more tests and more examinations by different doctors when they decided that it was probably a DVT and started him on precautionary blood thinners.  But to be sure he had to go back the next day and have an ultrasound scan then it was back to the ED doctors. It was a DVT so he's been medicated and referred on the haematology department of the hospital.

He could have timed it better since we had quite a few hours to wait on the results of various blood tests as well as the scan results and he kept being bumped back as emergency after emergency came in but that was inevitable because the ED on the weekend is a very busy place. There were overdoses, sporting injuries - oh, so many sporting injuries, as well as all sorts of other health problems, some minor but many coming in by ambulance. ED cubicles are not the most private of places so whether we wanted to or not we now know all about the constipation problems of the lady opposite, the chest pain the quadruple bypass man was having, the back pain of another woman, that the hysterical crying of the young woman next door was because she was terrified of needles and that another man had gut pains to list but a few. You learn quite a lot sitting around in an ED I have to say.

That said, and while no one wants to spend the best part of two days hanging around in the ED - they're not the most comfortable places in the world - what I came away with, apart from a husband who has been very well taken care of and some random virus acquired from a coughing and spluttering patient in the waiting room, was how fortunate we are to be able to go to a public hospital ED, hand over our Medicare details and receive excellent treatment at no cost. We are so lucky to have this health care available.

Eeeep!

So a few weeks ago I booked a window cleaner. I've mostly done these myself but not anymore. Too many aches and pains to make it possible and that's been the case for the past couple of years truth be told. Basically in that time it's just been hosing them down outside and doing the inside when it got irritating. Obviously this couldn't go on indefinitely and when I looked at the state of the sliding doors and their attendant windows looking out onto the verandah the other day I realised I had to do something. Doesn't sound so hard, does it.

And it wouldn't be except for the fact that someone - not me I hasten to add - regards window sills as storage spaces and below them an ideal place to put items of furniture (in his study he's lined up several filing cabinets for example). This means before the window cleaner comes we have to clear the way for him. The inside 'stuff' needs to be sorted and hopefully rehoused in more appropriate places but then there's the mess that's accumulated on part of the verandah - the bit under the window, of course. Himself thinks this space should double as a storage area and no sooner do I clear it than it refills.

It's not all down the other resident, I confess. Added to his accumulations I've been decluttering and so there's quite a bit that needs to be gone from the house. This is sitting in boxes to go to recycling, the charity shop or dare I say it, the tip and is waiting on someone who can drive to pick it up and get rid of it for me.

This all seemed quite feasible when I booked the window cleaner. It's not as if we live in a hoarder's hovel. In fact so we should've been able to achieve it 'in a canter' to quote our Prime Minister when he's talking about our government's inadequate climate change plans. But I've just looked at the calendar and in the build up to the date a fortnight off we have two lengthy medical appointments - both will take up around half a day by the time we factor in travel and waiting times, Pisces has an overnight hospital stay, I'm booked to go to a writer's meeting which will again take up most of half a day and which involves some time intensive preparation beforehand, we're meeting up with family for lunch before one of my nieces heads back overseas so that's likely to stretch out beyond lunch, there's a whole day extended family reunion and somewhere in there Virgo is due to give birth so there's likely to be child care with Miss Three and a Half for who knows how long.

As I said, 'Eeeep!'

It Begins So Young

We tend to think of very young children as safe from peer group pressure and the worries of the world at large but it turns out we're wrong. Here are just a couple of examples to show what I mean.

First, one that's been bothering me for a few months. We went around to visit Miss Now Three and a Half on her birthday and she was pulling out and displaying the goodies she had received. Out came the books, the toys and some clothes - and then her mother said, 'What about your new shoes?' A little reluctantly she took a pair of blue climbing shoes out of the box - this family is into indoor climbing and Miss Three and a Half, who is totally fearless, has been climbing under supervision since she was first able to work out how to use hand and footholds. When I admired her shoes she hung her head a little and said, 'But they're boys' shoes.' Apparently blue is for boys even at three and this from a child who lives in shorts and t-shirts and whose parents try to avoid gender specific items as far as possible. We had a bit of a discussion about how shoes can be any colour and besides there was a bit of pink around the eyelets and the moment passed but it made me realise how cultural ideas seep through even to the youngest children from their peers, adults from outside the family and books or magazines to mention only a few sources and these pressures and beliefs will only grow even more once social media gets involved.

The second one came up when I was watching a documentary which cited a recent study showing that girls as young as eight or nine are putting themselves on weight loss diets due to perceptions they are overweight whether or not they are. The study suggested that the pervasive coverage of weight and weight loss diets along with the doctored photos of women in women's magazines to make them appear unnaturally skinny create a false body image where young girls of healthy body weight perceive themselves as overweight. These magazines don't even have to be purchased and come into the home to affect perceptions. Because they are prominently displayed at supermarket checkouts their influence is ubiquitous and they are seen every time someone - young or old - queues to pay for their shopping. Young girls aren't the only ones falling into this trap, either. Apparently there is an increasing number of young boys deciding they need to diet. I'm not suggesting that childhood obesity doesn't exist or need to be addressed but these children don't have the health issues they think they have. They are being manipulated by what they see around them.

I find this disturbing. How about you?

Froggies!

About a week ago I went out to clear the over-growth of algae out of one of our backyard ponds. It had been neglected this winter and guilt was tugging at me. The plan was to clear out the mess, replace the waterlilies that had sadly died and maybe invest in some fish. I knew several frogs frequented this pond but I hadn't seen or heard a peep from them for some months. You usually know when they're about because of their distinctive call -they're not known as motorbike frogs for no reason. I'd come across a few hiding in the base of self watering flower pots and several had set up home in a pile of empty pots near one of the garden taps - they ranged in size from not much bigger than my thumb to full grown adults - so I knew we still had some residents but I hadn't seen any others even in their favourite sunbathing spots near the pond.

So I pulled up the first clump of algae and started checking for frog spawn since we're heading into the frog breeding season - and the whole base was speckled with tiny tadpoles, some still in the egg. I checked another couple of clumps and they were the same. There must have been several hundred altogether. Of course I abandoned the pond clean up and left them to their own devices. They've now all emerged and are feeding on the algae, because unlike the adults the tadpoles are technically herbivores. I say technically because while they're still very tiny there are so many that I wouldn't be surprised if some at least turn cannibal, something that happens when a pool is over crowded but that's up to nature to sort out and, although the pond has a netting cover to make it child safe and keep out predators, I know from experience that the majority won't reach adulthood. Sad but probably just as well or we'd be overrun with frogs.

Motorbike frogs are also known as Western bell frogs, Western green and golden bell frogs and Western Green Tree frogs (the last is something of misnomer because, although they are adept climbers, they are really terrestrial).

Oh Yes, It's More Than Time

I've just been reading the latest blog post on Yarn Harlot. This is where Canadian knitting teacher and writer, Stephanie Pearl-Mcphee, blogs. I've been following her blog for a long time as she takes us through her life with knitting, her family and, more recently, her part in the annual Toronto to Montréal Bike Rally - that last is a 600 kms bike ride. Makes my eyes water just thinking about it.

I love knitting so that's where I first got interested in her blog where she posts patterns and a commentary on what she's currently knitting. She also doesn't shy away from the joys and sorrows of her life so we got to share the sadness of her mother's sudden death and the grandmotherly pleasures of a small grandchild along with her struggles and successes in other areas.

Today though her blog post really resonated with me. She's had a hectic year and this time she's talking about chaos in her home. I've heard of the CHAOS acronym, otherwise known as Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome, before. It was invented by The FlyLady, Marla Cilley. Truth be told I've been living it for sometime. Before health issues - both mine and Pisces' - disrupted our lives we had started on much needed renovations. When you've lived in a house as long as we have  - and I'm not going to tell you just how long that is - things wear out. So far over a few years we've renovated the bathrooms, laundry and kitchen - and very nice they are, too. The final major job is to put in engineered flooring and, before everything went pear-shaped, I had pulled out the existing carpets and packed up a lot of the house contents ready to move on to the next big step.

That's when Pisces got sick and with the worry over that and the time it devoured - it was serious involving a number of hospitalisations but now several years on he's recovered well - neither of us had the energy to focus on things other than survival. Then I came down with a debilitating and still undiagnosed illness that had me bed-bound on and off for well over a year and I suppose I should also factor in a slow healing broken bone in my foot, not to mention that we've both had multiple surgeries that took much longer than anticipated to recover from and things ground to a halt as far as the renovations as well as everything else.

When all these sorts of things happen something has to give and housework is definitely one of the things that suffers. Did I mention clutter build up? No? Well that's the other thing that gets too hard. Stuff I had packed had to be unpacked and didn't get properly packed up again. It just sat there because I was going to need it again soon and other things accumulated as well. Sometimes I swear things breed around here and it's not helped by some folk having the habit of picking things up that might be useful - no, we don't need a beanie with an advertising logo on it just because it's free and the same applies to the plastic poncho and so much more. It all just got harder and harder.

Now, though, we're both as good as we're ever going to be I suspect so it's time to deal with the mess and with that in mind I've signed up again for the 100 Day Goal. The major goal: to declutter with a view to getting the new flooring done early in the New Year. As well I'm going to find time to write, garden and keep up with my studies every day. Gulp. With daily micro-actions I might even succeed. Wish me luck!

I've Been Doing a Bit of Shopping

Well, trying to at least.

You might remember that a while back I was in search of a tool to make fastening bracelets and necklaces something I could do by myself. I like to wear jewellery - how surprising  - but painful hands, the result of an auto immune disease I've had for most of my adult life, make it impossible to fasten them by myself - I can usually manage to undo them, though. Pisces never objects when I ask for his help but he makes such a production of doing it that honestly I'd rather not bother. (He does have finger tips that are somewhat larger than the average but it's not the fumbling but more the irritated muttering that wears me down.)

Then when we were out to lunch the other day I was looking around at the other women who both had necklaces and bracelets on while I had only my wedding and engagement rings - and my mother's wedding ring that I have worn since she passed away - and the long chain necklace I can get over my head.  It didn't seem fair.  So I got inspired to try - again - to find some sort of help so I can do these tasks by myself.

On-line I went. I tried pages on disability aids first but the only bracelet fastener on them was one with very, very bad reviews so maybe not the ideal. Then I googled bracelet fasteners and there were a whole bunch - none of them with very enthusiastic reviews either but they were relatively cheap at between $15.00 and $20.00. Most according to their reviews seemed to be either cheaply made or to have grippers that could potentially damage the jewellery they were holding. Hmm. Then I discovered Fairy Fasteners - and they sounded great. Well designed, ergonomically suited to the task and they looked attractive - but the price was $119.00 US plus postage and handling. Nope, not going there.

So what about necklace fasteners? Again there are a variety. Most seem to be based on adding a magnetic catch to the necklace and they range from the cheap and tawdry to the only one I could find which incorporates a sort of locking system by using pins that click into holes which are supposed to hold the magnets in place. I'm not sure how secure that would be and I don't much liking the idea of trusting a precious necklace to just a magnet either.

What to do? I decided to look up bracelet and necklace fastening hacks and that's when things got interesting. You can see where I found some of these suggestions here but they came up in a number of other places, too. As well there are a whole bunch of videos on using the opened out paperclip and the tape method if you prefer to see things in action. Just google bracelet fastening hacks.

Well I decided to try out these methods and to say I was sceptical is somewhat of an understatement. I went through my jewellery box and chose this bracelet.

This is because a) it has a clip over catch and b) it's somewhat bulky and likely to slip around and c) it's old and damaged enough that it wouldn't break my heart should it be damaged.

I was not sure if I had the dexterity to use the paperclip hack but it seemed a good place to start so I found a large paperclip - that turned out to be important, because a small one wouldn't give you enough to hold onto - and opened it up like so.




All you have to do then is to lie your wrist over the bracelet, which you've laid out on a flat surface (I found having my hand palm up worked best), hook the smaller hook of the paperclip through a link near the receiving end of the bracelet (the bit with the ring), bring it up over your wrist then hook the catch through while holding the other end of the paperclip. It took a couple of tries to find the best position for the various bits but then it was very effective.

The tape method appealed to me most because of the least risk of damage to me and my bracelets and it's probably the most simple. You need a piece of tape long enough to securely hold the bracelet in place - I used around 6-7 centimetres. You tape the ring end of the bracelet to your wrist leaving just enough overhang for you to slip the catch through the ring and clip it closed. Voila, your bracelet is fastened. You pull off the tape and you're done. According to what I read some kind of invisible sticky or Scotch tape is least likely to transfer unwanted stickiness to your bracelet and it certainly seemed to work for me.

So there you go  - my bracelet problem is solved. I'm still looking for a necklace hack, though, so if you have any ideas I'd love to hear from you.

A few books

Reading time is the one benefit of being ill. I'm being a tad Pollynana-ish in saying that. To be honest I'm fed up with being sick. I've been struggling with one 'bug' after another this winter. The first - way back in June - zapped my immune system letting others to attack one after another. This has meant I've spent far too much time either stuck in bed or thinking I'm on the mend for a few days only to be hit by yet another incoming bug. With fingers firmly crossed I think/hope I'm now on the mend.

The only good thing about being sick is that when I haven't been sleeping I've been reading and as a result there is no longer a to be read pile.  Hmm, I may have to - shock, horror - buy some more books. 

I'm going to list some of the books I've read over the last month or so - those I particularly liked, found most interesting or thought worth another read during - here. There were others, of course, but those I wouldn't be recommending to anyone.

The books are listed in no particular order and as you can see I'm a very fast and very eclectic reader.

Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe - about pre-colonial Aboriginal culture and agriculture in Australia using information written by the colonists. Should be required reading for all Australians.

The whole (all nine books) of The Emperor's Edge series by Lindsay Buroker. A melding of magic and steam punk with a falsely accused woman  who likes to tidy joined by an assassin with a hidden agenda. What's not to like?  

Silo by Douglas McMaster. A chef who set out to out to change the way food is wasted. Some interesting ideas although I don't always agree with him.

Women's Work - The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber An investigation into the part women have played in humanity's development using archaeological evidence to follow the development of traditional women's work and skills like spinning and weaving.

The Serpent's Shadow by Daniel Braum. Dan and I went to Clarion South together. He writes a good horror story.

Bligh - Master Mariner by Rob Mundle. A biography of William Bligh (he of the Bounty mutiny and later the deposed Governor of New South Wales). I already knew quite a lot about Bligh - enough to be aware that most of the Bounty mutineers' complaints were largely unjustified as were those claimed to be justification for his being deposed by the Rum Corps during the Rum Rebellion in New South Wales largely due to a smear campaign conducted by the family of Fletcher Christian, the leader of the mutineers, and officers of the Rum Corps. The details of the extraordinary feat of sailing Bligh achieved when he and his loyal followers were put overboard in a small boat during the mutiny was inspiring. As well the book fills in his earlier life and showed how highly regarded he was in naval and maritime circles.

Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti. A collection of short stories about people with 'powers'. I liked it a lot.

The Biggest Estate on Earth: how Aborigines made Australia by Bill Gammage and the winner of the  Victorian Premier's Prize for Non-fiction 2012. Gammage goes into great detail about pre-colonial Aboriginal land management and agriculture. A real eye opener.

2040: a Handbook for Regeneration by Damon Gameau. Based on the documentary 2040 with lots of suggestions on how we can work towards surviving in a changing planet. Not prescriptive but with ideas we can all build on.

Some of the Best from Tor 2014 A collection of novels (30 if I remember correctly - my Kindle keeps skipping pages when I try to count them up) by various well-known writers. Some I loved, some not so much.

Powers and Spice and Not So Nice A collection of ten novels by various authors. Again some I loved, others not so much.

Earth Fire Water by Maeve O'Meara and based on the three part SBS cooking series. I got this because I'm interested in traditional cooking skills and food preservation techniques and watched the all three of the series which showcased ways of preserving food.

Beginnings - five heroic fantasy adventure novels By various speculative fiction authors these are all first novels in a series. A good introduction to different authors' work.

Masque (The Two Monarchies Sequence) by W R Gingell. I thoroughly enjoyed this witty regency meets magic novel. I'll be looking for more by this author.

The Locomotive of War: Money, Empire, Power by Peter Clarke This is very dense and not an easy read but was certainly illuminating. It looks at the origins and effects of the First World War and the way the peace settlement played out and had an impact on the Second World War by looking at the main protagonists on the Allied side. I'll be rereading this.

Trucksong by Andrew Macrae In an alternative/post apocalyptic world strange things happen. Beautifully written and highly inventive. I liked it a lot.

Asymmetry by Thoraiya Dyer. This was a reread so obviously I liked it. A collection of short stories by a writer who really transports you into the worlds she creates.

1946: the Making of the Modern World by Victor Sebestyen. This is an overview of the aftermath of the Second World War. In turn horrifying and confronting.

The Despot's Apprentice: Donald Trump's Attack on Democracy by Brian Klaas. Educational.

The Destruction of Hillary Clinton by Susan Bordo A lot to digest here and it certainly is worth a read no matter what you believe you know about US politics.

So I've Been Thinking...

These are words that bring a chill to my husband because they usually mean I want to change something and if there's one thing Pisces does not like it's change.

This time, though, it's something entirely different. I've been thinking about how people have expectations of how others should behave when it's really nothing to do with them. And what set this off you might ask? Well one of the Australia wide Lotto games reached a jackpot this week of $110,000,000 which is a heck of a lot by any standard. Now I'm not a regular player - I probably take out a twelve game randomly generated entry six or seven times a year. I never expect to win anything - which is just as well because I've only won a few dollars ever - but because the profit from Lotto in this state goes to charity I don't feel I'm wasting my money either.

But this very big jackpot set off those who seem to begrudge anyone who had the good fortune to win the whole lot their luck. (No one person did by the way. It ended up being shared out among a number of folk who all had the winning numbers). There were letters to the editor in the newspaper saying so much money was too much for any one person because other big winners have made bad investments or wasted it. Part of this was no doubt because a big winner a while ago made a bad decision in handing over his winnings to someone who purported to be a financial adviser but wasn't and he lost the lot. This is now before the courts because there was obviously misleading behaviour and if he's lucky he may get some of it back. Does that mean he shouldn't have been given the money in the first place? Should it have been divided among a number of people - and if it was would that be any guarantee that they wouldn't all be defrauded?

Why shouldn't any big winner be allowed to do whatever they like with their winnings? After all what one person considers waste another might consider well spent. If someone has a big win and decides to have a year long party and ends up broke at the end surely that's their choice. Equally if they do nothing except put it in the bank, or play the stock market and lose everything it's their decision. It might not be wise in my view - I'd probably try to secure myself and my family's future and give what was left to charity - but it would be their choice and unless they were incapable of managing their financial affairs for some reason I can see no reason why it shouldn't be left to them to do what they want. One thing is sure - I would not judge them whatever choice they made. Who's to say that they might not benefit from the whole experience even if it didn't leave them secure for the rest of their lives and if they ended back where they started financially well, why is that necessarily a bad thing?

Been Cooking Up a Storm

It's a pity I'm not one of those who take photos of everything I make or this whole post would be photos.

The  question probably is why do I suddenly have an urge to cook. It's not as if I don't usually make our meals from scratch - with my dietary problems that's a given - but I had accumulated a pile of different veggies when the surgeon finally allowed me to go out and do some work in the garden. As a result I had the last harvest of the eggplant and capsicums sitting in the fridge and I knew they wouldn't keep much longer. Added to that were a couple of nice parsnips I bought last time I was at the shops and some bags of onions I'd asked Pisces to get me a fortnight ago intending to cook them up but hadn't gotten around to it. (In something quite unconnected this reminded me of one of the birthday presents Pisces got many moons ago. He's pretty good at procrastination so a friend gave him A Round To It which was a nicely finished wooden plaque lettered in gold with - you've guessed it - 'A round to it'. It disappeared quite quickly so I suspect he didn't appreciate the joke as much as I did).

All of these goodies were going to go to waste if I didn't act soon so the cooking flurry began and we now have:

Slow cooked onions - they were sliced and then went into the well greased slow cooker with a slosh of olive oil and a couple of dabs of butter where they cooked away for 6-8 hours. I packaged what we didn't eat immediately into serving size amounts and popped them in the freezer to make a useful starter for all sorts of goodies. One of my current favourites is cheese and onion toasted sandwiches.

Baba ganoush - I roasted the eggplant until very soft with a bulb of garlic wrapped in cooking parchment alongside it, scooped out the flesh of both and mashed it with Moroccan style spices and lemon juice. I made some pita crisps (sprinkled with Moroccan spices) to go with it and both are seriously good.

Pear and parsnip soup - simple but very tasty. I just chop up the parsnips and microwave them in vegetable stock until tender, add a can of pears, drained, and it's back into the microwave until all are piping hot then blend the lot with a hand held blender. Top with some finely chopped parsley. Yum. (You can do the same using canned apple instead of pears - also yum).

Chickpea and pumpkin vegetable stew - this has a Middle Eastern twist, too, with added chopped dried apricots. Yesterday we had it with fresh pita bread and a dollop of Greek yoghurt.  This time I'm planning on fruity couscous - a handful each of toasted pine nuts and currants soaked boiling water for a few minutes added to the cooked couscous.

Does this all sound good? It is.

How I Spent Yesterday

- it wasn't all that interesting, I'm afraid.

I started out with the laundry that had to end up cluttering up the family room on the clothes airer 'cos it kept on raining. I'm not complaining about the rain, of course. Heaven knows we need every single drop of that but it certainly doesn't help with getting the washing dry. It was chilly enough for us to have the heater on for most of the day, something we rarely do, so the washing was dry enough to fold and put away this morning.

Then I decided to do a bit of on-line shopping. Got on amazon.com, found what I liked and they wouldn't let me buy it. There have been some taxation changes here - long overdue and quite reasonable - and Amazon can't or won't work with their third party sellers to incorporate them so you can't buy anything that is not directly from Amazon like say Kindle e-books. Dang.

Okay, I thought, I'll go directly to the manufacturer's website and buy from there. Nah uh, they just flicked me back to amazon.com. This was seriously frustrating. The item I wanted is a gadget for fastening bracelets and necklaces. My arthritis makes this pretty much impossible these days and Pisces makes such a production of it when I ask him to help that honestly it's not worth the hassle to try to wear anything I can't fit over my head. To be fair he does have bigger fingers than most and this makes gripping small jewellery catches difficult. Why do they put such tiny catches on jewellery you and millions of women ask? I'm guessing it's largely to save on costs but the reality is the cost increase would be infinitesimal and it would make life much easier for everyone who wants to wear a piece of jewellery.

Having reached peak levels of frustration I wandered out into the garden between showers - and this was much more satisfactory. The seedings I planted earlier in the week - kale, broccoli, pak choy, bok choy, lettuce, coriander and dill plus some Sweet Alice and kangaroo paws - are all looking great and obviously enjoying the rain. As well the seeds I put in a week or so ago are almost all up so soon there'll be sugar snap peas, snow peas, carrots and beetroot plus more lettuce and pak choy - these will replace those already in the garden as they're harvested. The only ones not yet showing are the red onions and spring onions. I'm particularly pleased the seeds are coming up because most of them were on trays out in the open when the drenching storm we had at the beginning of the week hit and when I finally managed to get out to check on them they'd been standing in pools of water for at least a day. I figured that if the over watering hadn't finished them off the pelting rain would have washed them out of their seedling containers but most - for now at least - seem to be doing well.

Add in a couple of hours of French and German study and a bit of writing where I fixed up some very obvious plot holes - well not so obvious now - and my day was pretty much done with equal parts of frustration and pleasure.

I was tired by then and ended up watching It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World - a very silly but thoroughly entertaining movie. Pisces, who almost never watches a movie, enjoyed it, too.

So that was yesterday. I wonder what today will bring.

Updating

As I sent off yet another message yesterday apologising because I couldn't attend a social event due to health problems I thought I should fill you in on my life for the past eight months - and it hasn't been a bowl of cherries. I've posted about some of this before but in case you haven't seen much of me - my husband said the other day that the number of social events I've left the house to go to in that time wouldn't even fill up a count on one hand and he's right - here's a brief run down.

I've had three separate surgeries and one of these left me with severely compromised vision for close to five months. That has now resolved but was very scary. My vision is still deteriorating but with the help of a wonderful optometrist I can now see well enough to read and watch television and with luck this will stay at a level where I can function fairly independently for quite a while.

Then there was some major surgery from which I'm still recovering slowly. My surgeon has had me on very restricted activity for the past two and a half months and since I don't want to have to go through this again I'm being a very compliant patient.

Added to all this I've had a major flare up of an auto-immune disease I've had most of my life which has made physically doing even simple things very difficult. Walking any distance has been impossible and I've struggled to do something as simple as hold a sewing needle - my husband bought some new work pants three weeks ago and yesterday was the first time I could cope with pinning and sewing up the hems.

So, if anyone has been wondering where I've been and why I keep having to pull out of social activities now you know. With luck things will continue to improve. I certainly hope so because I'm more than a little fed up.

Strawberries!

My neighbour borrowed three eggs yesterday. She's just returned them and this came with them along with a head of broccoli.

Yum - and the perfume is simply glorious. If I could I'd leave them out on the kitchen bench but I'll succumb to commonsense which dictates putting them in the fridge.

Gardening - At Last

Not that I got much done before the rain came. Still something is better than nothing, I suppose, and although my surgeon has said I can start to do some gardening he did stress that it should be 'gentle'. I am trying very hard to be a compliant patient because the last thing I want is to have to go through all this again.

Bearing his instructions in mind I pulled on my red wellies, grabbed my spade, trowel and loppers and headed out to the veggie patch. I have been pulling a few weeds every day and went over some of the ground with a dutch hoe but this is superficial stuff and I knew I had to take on the biggie if I want to get any winter veg at all.

The problem is that because my veggie patch is heavily composted, fertilised and mulched it has become a magnet for invasive roots from my neighbour's garden. They have a curry leaf tree, which is very lovely with its delicate, fern-like leaves. It's a great flavouring in curries, too, but in the garden it's highly invasive which is why the one I have in is a pot and will be staying there. My neighbour's one is not so confined. Its roots come under the fence (which is sunk over a metre deep), then come up beside it and spread across my garden. The roots consist of quite substantial ones up to 3 cms in circumference as well as masses of fibrous roots - some bunches of these that I pulled out today were 45 cms long and 10 cms around. Both of these suck the nutrients and moisture out of the ground and block the roots of anything I want to grow. They sucker like crazy, too - the furtherest sucker I've found was 30 metres into my yard - so at the change of every season I have to go along the fence line with a spade, uncover the roots and cut them off, knowing they'll be back in a few months.

So that's what I've been doing - very carefully - this morning. I was hoping to do more but the rain has arrived  - and truth be told, it's probably just as well because once I start working in the garden I tend to find it hard to stop, doctor's orders not withstanding. I did do one other thing though. See. Here are the seeds I sorted ready to plant. All I have to do now is to put them in their punnets or into the ground. I might wait until the storms we're expecting later today and tomorrow pass before I do that, though.

Here's Something Pretty

Not much of anything is happening in my garden at the moment due to my run of surgeries. I've finally been given permission to do some work there but it's going to take quite a while to catch up on the weeding and other tasks which have been pretty much on hold since last October. I did manage to grow some summer veggies but that was only because I planted them out before everything went pear-shaped. The garden still gives me lovely surprises now and then, though, and here is today's.

I have several large pots of these beauties - yellow bearded irises are among my favourite flowers -and I'm making the most of this bloom now because they are quite fragile and I doubt it will last long if the storms we're being warned about hit tomorrow.

Awww. The Cuteness

I'm sick today but I found this and thought you might like it as much as I do.

Puppy sleeps as though it is turned off

Seasons of South Western Australia

When European settlers came here they tried to force the seasonal weather of this part of the state into the four European seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. It made no sense really and nearly two hundred years on we're still trying to work to that pattern and it still makes little sense.

In recent years, though, instead of simply ignoring the history of our indigenous people at last Australia is beginning to see that there was a rich culture here before colonisation and that we should not ignore the traditions our First Nation people. After all, they lived here successfully for many thousands and thousands of years. It would be surprising if they hadn't learned quite a lot about what works and what doesn't in the Australian landscape.

Nowadays, a 'welcome to country' forms a part of many gatherings and we're belatedly looking into bush tucker - indigenous foods - which it turns out is very tasty. I'd like to see us go further and look at the seasons.

South western Australia is Noongar country - the Noongar people are the traditional owners of this area - and if there's one thing that should be obvious to anyone who lives here it's that we don't have the four three month seasons of Europe. For gardeners like me trying to follow those artificial seasons just doesn't make sense so when I discovered the Noongar divided the year into six seasons I was delighted. It works so much better.

The Noongar seasons are governed by weather patterns and so aren't rigidly tied to the months although they occur approximately at the same times. They are:

 Birak - December and January on the calendar and it's very hot and dry (it used to be the season when controlled fires were set to promote new growth).

Bururu - February and March and the hottest months of the year.

Djeran - April and May and the season we're just coming to the end of. This is when the nights cool down and the mornings are dewy.

Makuru - June and July is the coldest and wettest time of the year.

Djilba - August and September is when the weather is a mix from cold and clear to warmer, wet and windy.

Kambarang - October and November and the days are lengthening and warming with less rain.

I now work my plantings around these seasons and my garden is the better for it.

If you want to find out more about the Noongar seasons you can find it here.

Age Isn't For the Faint-hearted

or so my mother used to say and the older I get the more I'm aware of just how true this is. I've had the misfortune to inherit an arthritic condition which I've had to deal with for much of my life so when my friends tell me how their joints are starting to ache I sympathise because this has been my life story. Age has added extra 'goodies' in the way of my health that make life even more difficult  and that's not been fun either.

I'm lucky in having an understanding husband who goes out of his way to make life easier for me physically. He does the grocery shopping, which had become a slow and painful chore, for instance and is willing to take me anywhere I want to go now that driving, too, has become difficult. Trouble is he's begun developing aches and pains of his own - years of working in an industry which required lifting heavy items are  taking their toll - as well as few other interesting ailments.

All this mean that we spend a lot of time at various doctors' rooms. We decided many years ago that we'd always go to appointments together because it can be hard to remember everything you want to ask during a consultation and, for that matter, to remember all the doctor has to tell you when things get complex or serious. We see so many specialists and receptionists that it's got to the point that we're on first name terms with many of them (and several of the receptionists know us well enough to have a friendly chat about our respective families).

While this is lovely - we get good healthcare as well as a chance for a friendly chat - we seem to spend more time in doctors' waiting rooms than on any social activity. Making appointments is complicated because there are so many and they have to fit in around both of us and while a short consultation - 10-15 minutes or so is the average - doesn't take much time in itself there's the time it takes getting there and getting back as well. Then you have to add in extra time because they're rarely on time. Before you know it half a day disappears with each appointment.  Just as well we're retired. We wouldn't have time to go to work!

It's Nearly Winter

Not the greatest of photos I know but I found these paper white jonquils in flower in my garden today and that's a sure sign that winter is just around the corner. Mind you with last night's minimum of 3° C I don't think there's much doubt about that. My initial thought was that they were earlier than usual but when I looked back I found that they are in fact a little later than last year.

I'm Electioned Out

While the campaign for the 2019 Federal election here in Australia has technically been running for only five and a half weeks in fact we've all known there had to be an election no later than around mid May because of the way our election cycle works. This means that the assorted political parties have effectively been electioneering for months with their advertising getting more and more strident since the election date was announced. It's getting more and more nasty as well and I for one am sick to death of that nastiness, the half truths and down right lies being told.  These are people who are asking us to appoint them as our representatives. The least they could do is treat us with respect.

I've already voted - because we have compulsory voting we make sure that those who can't get to a polling place on election day have the opportunity to vote before the day or by postal vote (there are rules as to who is eligible for this, of course) - but the endless advertising is still taking its toll. It's everywhere and honestly it's verging on the ridiculous. Quite apart from the advertising on television and radio and in the newspaper there's the huge volume of mail being sent - in the last three days alone we've received seven separate pieces of electioneering material - and don't get me started on the phone calls at inconvenient times. We've actually given up answering the phone for now. It may make a change from the scammers but in reality the disruption from the political calls is just as annoying.

All advertising on commercial television and radio is by law supposed to stop at 12:00 AM tomorrow so there's that respite to look forward to. The only trouble is that the law was made back before on-line streaming and digital platforms existed so if I want a break I'll have to avoid all social media and digital media sites until polling closes. Then it'll all be about the vote count and that could go on for days. Sigh.

Family

These ladies are my grandmother, great grandmother, and great aunt in a photo taken in 1915 for their son and brother to take with him to war in one of the few surviving family photos I have of them.

They're here because last night I was watching a promo for the SBS program of 'Who Do You Think You Are'. The next person to be featured is actor Marta Dusseldorp and she was saying how important family is to her. It is to me as well and with all the memorabilia I've been finding in the decluttering process and a reunion for one side of my family coming up later in the year it's something I've been thinking about a lot.

It has always seemed sad to me that once a person passes away their life experiences also fade. I know I'm not the only one who regrets the fact that there was so much more to know about people who have been important in my life or my family's history and wishes they'd asked more questions when they had the chance. It's one of the reasons why I am making the effort to sort and scan what photos I have because these folk deserve to be remembered. I'm not sure who it will all pass on to when I'm gone but perhaps someone in the current generations will take up the task.

Not everyone feels this way, though. We have a dearth of family photos from my maternal grandmother's side of the family largely due to the fact that my grandmother and her sister were ladies who always preferred what was new and modern and on one memorable day they made a bonfire on my parents' back lawn and proceeded to burn any photos where they thought the clothes were old fashioned. My mother came home in time to save a few precious relics but the bulk of the family photos had gone up in smoke by then.

This loss was compounded when my other great aunt died and a distant family member took it upon herself without any consultation to throw out all her photos and other memorabilia. There was a lot since Aunty had kept a detailed record of everything she could find relating to family, all filed in at least a dozen albums of photos and newspaper cuttings. Since the family was well known in the town where they lived and had often figured in the local press it would have been a treasure trove of information.

All this means there's a huge gap in that part of our visual family history although we do have a number of photographic portraits from the paternal side of the family - photos on the walls were a big part of home decoration back in Victorian and Edwardian times. Some of the oldest of these are now deteriorating badly and I'm trying to find ways to preserve them for future generations, hoping that someone else will take up the torch after me. It would be a shame for all this history to be forgotten.

Australia Votes and Democracy Sausages

For this Federal election polling day is May 18. and we've been under siege with political canvassing for what seems much longer than the three weeks or so since the election date was announced. What with the robo calls - automated political spiels on the phone, the endless advertising not to mention the photo ops you couldn't miss it if you tried.

So far so simple but voting in Australia for those who don't live here works differently than in some other democracies. For a start, while the incumbent government sets the day for the election which can be any date within the four year cycle, that's as far as their influence goes. Our elections are held under the supervision of an independent statutory body, the Australian Electoral Commission. The AEC handles voter registration, electorate redistributions to ensure fairness as population changes, runs polling places, prints ballot papers and counts the votes.

Voting is compulsory for every citizen over the age of eighteen with a few exceptions like diminished mental capacity or imprisonment and this taken very seriously. You are fined if you don't vote. To ensure that everyone can vote teams are sent out to remote areas and portable polling booths are taken to hospitals and nursing homes. If you aren't covered by all this and still can't get to a polling booth on the day you can either vote early at a pre polling centre or apply for a postal vote. Pre polling opens three weeks before polling day. I've already voted that way because I find standing in line at the polling booth too hard on my back and so have many others but sometimes I apply for a postal vote. There really is no excuse for not voting.

Unlike many other countries we have a preferential system of voting which is a little complicated but ensures that our votes do all count. It can also mean that with assigning preferences and postal votes trickling in for several weeks after polling closes close fought seats can take a while to be decided. The vast majority of results, though, are clear on the night so we usually know who has won by the end of the first evening's counting.

Are you wondering about democracy sausages? These are a real if unofficial part of Australian elections. Many polling places are located in schools so they take to opportunity to raise money. Some have cake stalls, a few might include handcrafts but the most popular is the democracy sausage stall. These sell barbecued sausages served up in a bread roll or rolled in a slice of buttered bread topped with sauce and/or fried onion. It's such a thing that you'll hear people say they're going to get a democracy sausage instead of going to vote. There is even a website telling you which centres have democracy sausages plus a Facebook page which tells you where you can find other kinds of stalls. We take voting seriously but we do like a bit of fun as well.

100 Day Goal

You might remember that I signed up for this in January and I was surprised to find at the end of March just how much I'd achieved even with breaks for surgery and dealing with the vision scare. I achieved so much - daily microactions really do add up - that I've decided to do it again. Gulp.

The latest round began on 1 May and I hope I've been more realistic this time in my goal setting. The house declutter is still ongoing as is my commitment to continuing with the family history and photo sorting. The last is something I've been intending to do since my father passed away. When that happened I just bundled any papers that weren't needed immediately along with loose photos and photo albums into boxes meaning to go back to them at some indeterminate future time. Well, that time is now. In the decluttering process I've discovered a lot more photos and memorabilia scattered around the house because Pisces is a great one for randomly shoving things out of sight and then complaining because he can't find them when he wants them later. I'm amazed at some of the places these items have ended up. For now all this is safely in some large plastic containers and I've skimmed through them so I know what is in which box. As well I've scanned some of the very old family photos. Many of these are starting to deteriorate and saving them on the computer will ensure their survival at least. The next step is to sort thoroughly and cull the dross and I suspect there's a lot of dross. I don't expect to get all this done in this 100 Day Goal period but I can make a start.

The reason the 100 Day Goal worked for me was that it kept me accountable. No more making large scale plans that fall apart because they're simply overwhelming. Instead you keep track of each individual microaction - those on the list you made at the beginning - and cross them off. Some days you finish a lot, and other times you're lucky to achieve one but even one microaction a day off the list builds up.

The other area where goal setting really worked for me was in writing. Because I was struggling with my vision I had pretty much stopped writing except for the daily journal I've kept for years and even that was difficult since I couldn't see what I was writing without a magnifying glass. But I could enlarge things on the computer so I set myself a target of writing 500 words a day or editing for 30 minutes, increased the size of the print until I could read it without a magnifying glass and set to work. My aim was to not break the chain - this in the context of the 100 Day Goal means that you don't miss a day - and this worked very well for the most part. I did break the chain when I was ill for a few days and when I was in hospital but other than that I did what I set out to do every day. I'm doing this again this time and, surprise, the more you write the more you get into the rhythm of writing and the more your creativity flows. For some unknown reason somewhere along the line I'd forgotten this.

So there you have it. I have my list of microactions plus determination. May this 100 Days be as productive as the last. Here's the link if you want to find out more about it. I admit I did modify some of things suggested on the website to suit myself but, hey, that's fine. Whatever makes it work for you.

I'm Sorry

I did not mean to neglect this blog for so long but I'll try to do better from now on - and this is a start at least. There have been reasons - so many reasons - that blogging has seemed just too hard or more accurately too time consuming. First there were the health issues which are slowly being resolved. Then I committed to the 100 Day Goal which led in turn to a massive declutter. That's still underway and it's amazing just how much junk we've accumulated over the years. Pisces is supposedly helping with the declutter but it's not something that comes easily to him so I have to keep reminding him it's okay to throw things away when they're worn out and the charity shops will actually welcome things in good condition that we no longer need or want.

Some things, though, have no future use and while they may still be in perfectly good condition no-one will want them. In going through the cupboard where we store stationery I've discovered among the useful - things like greeting cards, writing paper, envelopes etc., and the useless - silverfish nibbled or stained paper, and notepads with one page in them, quite a lot of 'why do we even have this' items. For example buried at the back of one shelf were five unused pen carbon receipt books. Why? We've never run a business and I can't think of any business these days that would use them. We all have computers after all. Then there were the four (unused again) foolscap sized index books. Again why? They're too big to be of any use for a household and again I can't see any business using them either. There were four unused booklets of check tickets - I have no idea why we would have those - and these are only a few of the mysterious and in some cases the down right weird things that turned up.

It's not just paper either. There's so much 'stuff' that really needs to go. For example we have multiple fountain pens and propelling pencils - neither of us have used either for probably thirty years and many of them are obviously broken anyway - and a whole bunch of knick-knacks the use or purpose of which eludes us. My view is that we should just accept that these will remain unusable or unsolved mysteries and unless they look like they're important - none of them do so far - they should get tossed.  For Pisces, though, this is positively painful. What if we should need them at some future time or if we can get the broken items repaired? It has made for some interesting discussions lately I can tell you. Still he's biting the proverbial bullet and is making progress. So we'll have a cleaned up house maybe not in no time but soon and I can't wait.

Anzac Day

Lest we forget.

This is Horace Chamberlain King. The youngest child of Thomas Oglesby and Charlotte King he enlisted aged 19 years and 5 months on 8 March 1915. By 27 July he had been promoted to sergeant becoming Company Sergeant Major by 15 December 1915 and then was promoted to second lieutenant on 13 March 1916. By 29 August 1916 he was a lieutenant and had been awarded the Military Cross for services rendered at Pozieres. On 23 March 1917 he was promoted to Captain. He was wounded in action on 4 October 1917 at Paschendale receiving a severely fractured humerus which was treated in England. He was mentioned in despatches for bravery in the field around this time. He returned to France on 18 February 1918. On 7 April 1918 he was wounded in the neck and shoulder and died of his wounds. He was 22 years and six months old.

So

the last five months have been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. What started out as simply having my cataracts removed set a whole other lot of 'stuff' in movement. It turned out my vision was deteriorating faster than expected after having been relatively stable for many years, This was a horrible shock as you can imagine and since then Pisces and I have been having to navigate through what this means and will mean for our lives.

The initial diagnosis was very scary and since my surgery I have had limited vision which meant I haven't been able to read without the aid of a magnifying glass and even then it was hard work. But now things are looking brighter after a visit to the optometrist. This visit has been postponed beyond the usual six weeks following surgery because I developed problems with inflammation in the second eye that was operated on and I had to wait until that settled before I could be assessed. The optometrist has been able to help by prescribing glasses that should make life much easier. The relief is huge because the prospect of having to continue as I have been was very worrying and this was on top of other health problems which also need to be addressed.

So there you have it. With the glasses I should be able to see well enough to live a full life again and once I've had some other surgery - scheduled for next week - I should be much more comfortable. I'm hoping my energy levels will also increase because with all the medical appointments and not being able to see a lot has gotten pretty out of hand around here. But now things are looking up and I have a list of what needs to be tackled. Wish me luck.

Distractions

because lately real life has been rather too overwhelming.

1. Ducklings on a water slide

2. Kittens and puppies

3. Baby birds from eggs to fledging

Enjoy.

What I've Been Doing Lately

I signed up for Julia Bickerstaff's 100 Day Goal starting on 1 January. The idea is that you set out goals and work towards them one microaction at a time and this, coinciding as it did with some life changing events around here which I might go into at some future time, encouraged me to rethink a lot in my life. My goals can be basically summarised as getting my life in order, doing more things I love and reconnecting with my wider family - sadly, as so often happens, I've lost contact with some over the years.

As part of getting my life in order I decided to go back and reread Marie Kondo's The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up which I bought not long after it first came out. Just as I made that decision she burst onto the public stage again in a TV series on Netflix. We don't have Netflix but obviously a lot of people do because the internet and news media are full of people talking about Marie Kondo and not always nicely. There are memes mocking her premise of only keeping those items that bring you joy. her personal choice to have only a limited number of books has sparked outrage as has her belief that you should thank inanimate items for their service. The last of these comes from the Japanese Shinto belief system and while it's not something Westerners are in habit of - or for that matter always comfortable with - doing it's hardly going to do harm, is it. All this rage, vitriol and mockery have reached quite extreme levels and I don't understand why. It's not as if she's standing over people with a whip forcing them to throw away things they treasure after all. This is a woman who wants to help you live a better life by keeping only that which makes you happy. How outrageous.

The thing is, as I've realised during this 100 Day Goal process and while making a major decluttering effort, we all hang on to things that we no longer need. Why not move them on? Sell, recycle or give them away so someone else can enjoy or use them. Honestly I'm shocked that I've found so many things that actually spark misery and I'm wondering why I still have a lot of them. Often they are gifts that I've been unwilling to part with them in case I offend the giver. A certain wedding present that has been in my china cabinet for mumble mumble years and which I've hated from the moment I saw it comes to mind. Then there's the necklace that sits in my jewellery box - also hated since the moment I saw it and, in my excavations yesterday, I discovered a truly hideous handbag that I had buried out of sight. Why? Truth be told the people who gave me those things are no longer even with us and haven't been for some time but I've been hanging on to items which in all probability they had long ago forgotten they gave me anyway. As well as other things where my taste has changed over the years there they all have sat, a weight on me and taking up precious space in my house and life.

The thing is if you apply the idea that something has to bring joy it is remarkably easy to get rid of things but it also makes you realise what is important to you and what you need to make you happy. That's why my books are staying. Books for Marie Kondo personally are not important but for me they are a constant joy. There may be a lot of them but because I've always culled those I know I'll never look at again quite ruthlessly, they, each and everyone that remains, bring me joy - and that's fine because everyone has to make their own decisions as to what brings them joy and what they need to keep as much as what they should throw away.

So, there you go. If you want me I'll be sorting through more of a lifetime's accumulation of 'stuff' and seeking out what gives me joy.

Bolero Flashmobs

I love a flashmob and Ravel's Bolero. Here are both of them combined in two different places. What more could you ask?


This one comes from Spain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsF53JpBMlk


And this one was in Leeds in the UK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILNDWCLVnpw

Yoohoo!

That's me waving just to let you knowI'm still here. I'll have to be brief because - well, let's start at the beginning, shall we.

Back in October I had cataract surgery. It went smoothly and although I was having trouble seeing due to the discrepancy in vision between the operated eye and the unoperated one that was a small price to pay for the few weeks before I could have the second done. So far so good. Then I had the second eye done - and could see even less. That was not what I was expecting. When Pisces had his cataracts done after the second operation it was like 'Wow, I can see.' He had to get new reading glasses but he could actually still read albeit with some difficulty without them. I, on the other hand, am still seeing the world as pretty much a blur. I'm only able to write this post thanks to the computer enabling me to enlarge everything to silly levels and I can only work for a short time. Then I developed some inflammation within the eye itself which has added pain to my miseries and means I can't even get new glasses which may help a little. That's my hope anyway.

So I haven't forgotten you and I'll be back as soon as I can. Wish me luck. I need all I can get.