After wasting YET ANOTHER HOUR of tute time going over the assignment AGAIN!  *headdesk*

Fair dinkum, there had better be close to full damn marks for EVERYONE for this bloody thing.

Then – lessee.  Saturday I made a cake (Rose Levy Beranbaums’ fabulous Chocolate Domingo cake, with masses of chocolate ganache icing) to take to the girls I usually see during the week, but we had to hold our get together on a Sunday because everyone had other commitments and we had to celebrate Tammy’s birthday.  That was ok – fun with the cake and pressies.

Monday, Tammy and I went shopping – not something I normally do and it was EXHAUSTING!  Just trying on clothes at one shop. For three hours!  I bought a dress and a long sleeved top to wear under it, and a scarf.  Lay-by-ed another top (and it was on a better price than shown on the web!)  Just wanted a couple of pieces that weren’t so – daggy, you know?

Then uni on Tuesday – the lecture actually made sense this week, and it was such a relief to get back into the course CONTENT instead of the !@^(%# library assignment!  We have two weeks uni break now, so I’ll be using my couple of hours of uni work per day to try a get a little bit ahead and start writing the essay, which is worth 40% of the mark for the course.

Wednesday was group therapy, which is always very tiring.  Ugh. Especially so this week – stuff came up that I didn’t cope well with, and I got left til last, so I was wrung out when Mr Beloved came to collect me – Ia cup of tea and then had lie down, put my CPAP mask on and just sleep for three hours.

Thursday was Toowoomba Show Day, a public holiday, so no uni.  And I slept. A lot.

I was supposed to meet with the girls to celebrate my birthday (which isn’t until next week but one of them was going out of town) but I just COULDN’T.  I was done.  I just can’t do things that many days in a row. Just can’t.  Physically or mentally.

Which brings us to today.  I slept in again, then ran a few errands (post, library, supermarket for a couple of essentials) and now I’m worn out again.

Both of us are in the grips of allergy season – I don’t know what’s flowering but I wish it would stop already, it’s costing us a fortune in antihistamines!  And I’m back on the asthma preventative.  Blaah!

So that’s me – tired, grumpy, sniffly, menopausal, and several other of the dwarves Disney didn’t want to mention.

Next week: More trauma therapy.  Oh goody.

(“Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister “are both even funnier once you’re no longer working in the Public Service.  While you are entrenched in the PS, they are practically training videos.)

(Again, I digress.)

So what’s been happening? Not much.  The new stove continues to be wonderful – and yes, we have had zucchini slice.  Yum.

I made a birthday cake for a friend:

(it was Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “Chocolate Domingo” cake (from her classic “The Cake Bible”) , lovely and rich, but because the birthday girl had requested “Death by Chocolate” I added chocolate ganache (equal parts of dark chocolate and cream) icing.  And the rose on top is from our poor old unkillable rose bush by the front gate – no idea what variety it is, but despite years of neglect (and the occasional drift of Roundup) it thrives and gives us these lovely loose highly scented roses every year.

Wendy and me

OMFG I AM HUGE!!  Well, we knew that.  Anyway, I’m doing what I can to address that – and in the new year I get to start on a new medication that might help.  Let’s hope so.  The past 2 years have not been good for my health – I’m really hoping to get off the medication that makes me constantly feel HUNGRY  (hence the weight gain – duh!) and on to one that makes me feel FULL.  Fingers crossed.  I already have the script filled but I’m not starting a new med when the psych ward is closed for Christmas and the psychiatrist is unavailable!

There has been much screeching from our birds – especially young Yarrow, our flood baby bird (He’s the best talker but the least tame of any bird we’ve ever had, because he was born right around our flood disaster time: here he is in a lovely baby pic in February:

Yarrow's baby pic, Feb 2011

and here’s a more recent pic:

Yarrow in his bachelor pad

Yarrow LOVES screeching at things – especially at Mr Beloved.  Yarrow also has a funny cockatiel quirk we haven’t come across before – he argues with himself in two different voices.  Hilarious.  ANYWAY, it’s the time of year when we get visits from other birds, both in our bottle-brush tree out the front and in the neighbour’s conifer (I have no idea what sort it is):

Can you see them?

[as always, clicky for biggy]

How about now?!

Yep, the Rainbow Lorikeets are back.  They’re not tame but they’re not scared of humans – I was standing right at our fence taking these photos, and the birds were curious but unafraid.  They’re very noisy, which is why our cockatiels screech back at them, especially when the lories are right outside our front yard where our birds can see them.  Cockatiels have amazing eyesight, they will screech when they see me right at the other end of the block.

And now I must get showered and go face the teeming hordes… Medicare have screwed up a refund payment, leaving us rather shorter of $$ than I had anticipated, and unless I go see them I know it won’t get fixed.  I’m also hoping to find a set of star shaped cookie cutters (I know, I know, I’ve left it waaaaaay too late…) or even a SINGLE star shaped cookie cutter – I have some Christmas cookies to make (since that’s going to be the cheapest (and nicest) way out of some obligatory gift giving.  At the stage I’d settle for a heart shaped cutter even…

Group therapy again tomorrow, my second last session for the year.  It’s exhausting but helpful… 9 til 2 with half an hour for morning tea and the same for lunch.  You just get so much more LEARNING done in a long session, rather than the one hour you get with a regular psychologist appointment.  But I am really wrung out by the end of it.

byeeee for now…

[as always, clicky for biggy]

in 2002, I lived in a PO Box in Canberra..., (not really!)

It was from a secret Valentine Swap in 2002!  COOOL!

Postcards and yarn and things, oh my!

(Including a postcard of the New York skyline back when the twin towers were still there…)

The included card

I have NO IDEA who sent it to me – that info has been lost.  It was someone in the NY/ New Jersey area, though, going by the postcards and little goodies…

Yesterday as I was going through the envelope, I noticed a bookplate:

which I have stuck in the front of one of my current art journals.  And I thought to myself “Hmmm, I recognise that illustration!”  and this made me Very Happy.

Yep, in teeeeeeny little writing on the bookplate is  “Tuesday ©1991 David Wiesner Clarion Books”.  AHA!  It’s from another kid’s book I own – another Caldecott Medal winner , no less.

(In 1992.  He also won the Caldecott in 2007 for Flotsam, which I want to get. He’s the only person to win the Caldecott THREE times!)

And then I looked up David Wiesner’s web site and  YAY he has a new book out!!  It’s called Art and Max and I really really want it *sigh*… maybe when it comes out in paperback.  How could you not love a story about a lizard learning to paint?! Be sure to watch the video (click on the book picture to get the link) where David Wiesner explains the ideas he had in exploring various media to get to the characters – brilliant!

Art and Max

Anyway, if by some remote chance the person who sent me the Secret Valentines Swap in 2002 happens to be reading this – thank you for the goodies and for prompting me to look at David Wiesner’s work again!

I just can’t do such long days any more.  Tuesday was a write off.  Wednesday wasn’t much better… although a visit to our lovely GP to check on my new asthma medication (it’s WONDERFUL, I haven’t had to use my reliever puffer at all – such a huge change!) ended up including a referral to get Mr Beloved’s shoulder injury fixed (we hope). He needs an ultrasound guided injection to fix the bursitis that developed after he fell up the stairs and shoulder charged the house…

Wednesday also brought a surprise care package from a lovely Canberra friend – and if I could only work out how to get photos off my new phone and onto this old computer, I could show you!  She got EVERYTHING right, it was all such beautiful stuff and very me - I especially loved the badge that said “Craft is the new black” and another that said “Make tea not war.”  Good, yes?!  So generous, and you know who you are, *mwah*!

Thursday is our usual scrapping day – well, the others scrapbook and I admire their work.  I’m taking a wonderful online class that has got me interested in actually playing with my art materials and drawing again.  YAY!  The funny thing is, I’d signed up for the classes and hadn’t realised that one of the teachers, the wonderful Jane Davenport, was going to be speaking at the Scrapbooking show – it was such a delightful surprise and hearing her talk about art journals made the long day worthwhile. She is SO INSPIRING!

Here’s a page of very wonky drawings (mostly done with my left hand) – an exercise from Carla Sonheim’s Drawing Lab book

Wonky cats - an exercise from Carla Sonheim's "Drawing Lab"

And a boring page (but interesting to me!) of playing with pencils – I never would have known how much I like drawing in pencil over gesso if I hadn’t done this exercise from Jane’s class:

Pencil on paint... hmmm!

The rest of the week and the weekend is a bit of a blur – taken up with usual stuff, I guess.  I’m still recovering from a couple of super-anxious days that saw me chasing my own tail… thank goodness I see my lovely psychologist tomorrow!

Meanwhile, even with his wounded wing, the lovely Mr Beloved has been plodding on with  the ever-present task of reorganising the studio.  He’s a brave, brave man to wade into piles like this:

Another pile of books to be sorted...

We need to weed out books we don’t want, but there are still an awful lot that need to be re-shelved in our new bookcases.  Some of the bookcases are “zombie” bookcases that Mr Beloved has managed to patch together from odd shelves and pieces of timber – but they work!

And now I’m off to the post office (waiting on a book my psychologist recommended, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion) and then a bit of housework and some DRAWING!

So expect a post later in the week about the shows – it’s such a loooooooong day that I fully expect to have to spend Tuesday and maybe Wednesday in bed recovering.

In health news: the new (preventer) asthma medication (symbicort) has meant that I have only had to use the (reliever puffer) Ventolin TWICE all week.  Huge difference from before the preventer when I was having to use Ventolin 4 times a day most days!

And those two times were on the very coldest nights – we had the coldest day on record here on Thursday, with the temperature struggling to reach 7.4 degrees C at the airport – and it our little valley I can tell you it didn’t even get *that* warm, and with windchill was around -5 in the early morning.

And here’s the blast from the past – this photo fell out of a book as Mr Beloved was putting books away on our new shelves this week:

Anne-Maree Campbell, me, Simone Parker, Gail Patterson - and a very cheeky little brother Godon Miller in the window!

Simone and I worked out this was probably taken in 1981… such a long time ago!  I have no idea what Anne-Maree and Gail are up to these days…

On Wednesday, I decided I needed a new cardigan and found one I thought was ok, although a little more than I usually spend (ok, it was all of $45 , but hey – that’s still a lot of money!) Bought it, then tried to change my mind before I left the store – only to be met with the most hostile, bitchy response EVER.  Left in tears (not having a good day anyway..) with the cardigan, sans tags (I’d asked the shop assistant to remove them, since I thought I might wear it in the same shopping trip) thinking I was stuck – I couldn’t face the horrible woman again, she had made me feel so awful.

I got home, had a cuppa, some comfort food (arrgh!) and told Mr Beloved about it – he offered to go back with me the next day and sort it out.

Yesterday at our regular scrapping playdate, I told my scrapbooking pals about it (they scrapbook, I admire their pages and do my art journal stuff) and not only was reassured and told that I didn’t deserve to be treated badly – one of them actually drove me into town and helped me return the item to another branch of the same store – (where she knew the manager). I did have the receipt and the spare button the cardigan came with.  The staff at the town branch of the store couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful, and I ended up with a different cardigan that I was happy with.  (I had been offered a refund or a store credit, but I chose to buy something else.)  Even ended up buying a new scarf as well.

(Turns out the shop assistant where I bought the cardie in the first place?  KNOWN as a BITCH.  Not just to customers….)

Things learned:

1. I LOVE MY FRIENDS!  They stuck up for me when I couldn’t do it for myself.
2. I will never ever ever shop at the Grand Central mall branch of that particular fashion store again but
3. I definitely WILL go out of my way and brave the main street parking to go to the downtown branch of the same store.
4. Customer service – still important!!

It was BRILLIANT!  Kate brought me three ginormous bags of books – lots of stuff that I’ve been wanting to read, some stuff that I’ve already read but no longer owned – such happiness!!  We sat and had coffees and talked for several hours.

And eventually the conversation got around to sewing machines.  And our mutual love of vintage machines.  Now, I have (ahem!) 14 sewing machines… which is too many.  (There are certain machines that are absolutely core, that must be kept – seriously, get rid of my great grandmother’s beautiful treadle? I don’t think so! Not yet, anyway…)

I’ve already divested myself of quite a few in the last year, after realising that I just haven’t had the interest in them I once did.  But happily – Kate fell in LOVE with two of my machines – a “Standard” branded hand crank (a Singer clone, but very pretty) and the weirdly wonderful Singer 319K.  (The “K” at the end tells you it’s made in the Kilbowie plant, Clydebank, Glasgow, Scotland.)

Kate, Connie, Caity, and the Singer 319

(Gawd, I’m ENORMOUS!  I’m also very proud of myself, because I went out for coffee and not only didn’t have any cakes or other sweets – I didn’t even use sweetener in my coffee.  The further I go on this sugar free thing the better it gets.)

A win all round – these machines have been waiting for just the right person to come along.   And I’m so looking forward to the new books – I think I’ll start with a nice big thick one, Vikram Seth’s “A Suitable Boy”.

My Birthday in 1972

This is a picture of my birthday party in 1972 – I was 4.  There are so many things I love about this picture – do you see that cake?  That came from an Australian Women’s Weekly Birthday Cakes booklet – long before they started doing the glossy paper books.  The cake was The Old Woman Who Lived in A Shoe.  Wafers for the roof, and I think the front had licorice laces… that went through peppermint lifesavers for the eyelets.

And look at the other birthday goodies – sausage rolls! Fairy bread! (For my non- Aussie readers, Fairy Bread was a birthday MUST – buttered white bread with hundreds and thousands.  It was divine.)  Chips!  (not hot chips, potato crisps – a very special treat.) And look – not only the birthday cake, there were little patty cakes too with candles – we didn’t call them “cupcakes”, they were patty cakes.  When Mr Beloved saw the picture he commented on the Tupperware jug – his family had a yellow one.  And those wonderful foil party hats and paper plates!

1972 birthday - look at the cake!

(I know this image is flipped – these are scanned from slides and I have no memory of the actual layout of the room in this house.)

Mum tells me I would have invited the whole preschool if I was allowed – as it is,  there were 8 guests plus my little sister (whose arm and leg are in the high chair at the left of the picture!)  I have absolutely no idea who any of these kids are now – so if by some weird chance you were at Ruth Miller’s 4th Birthday Party in Griffith, NSW, in 1972 – let me know!!

(For those of you who don’t know, I changed my name – it’s a long story.)

And here was this year’s party at a scrapbooking day at a friend’s house:

Kyla, Nelsa, Tammy, Caity, Wendy

Blowing out the candles is still fun:

Tammy and Caity prove blowing out birthday candles is still fun!

Tammy is a scrapbooking friend who’s a couple of weeks older than I am – we had a joint birthday celebration this year!

This was the cake – from Nigella’s recipe (yes, after my Nigella RANT, I still use her recipes, because they work first time, every time.)

Cake! It was good. Very good.

That’s 300 grams of Lindt dessert chocolate and some butter for the icing/filling alone!

Today is my 6th day of being sugar free (good thing we got the birthday cake out of the way first, eh?) but it’s not easy… I’m hoping to be significantly thinner by next birthday.

{clicky for biggy}

Scanned journal page; digitally layered with a text page (by Amanda Sexton, in Art Journal Caravan Parcel 46 from Scrapbookgraphics.com) glitter stars (from the 2010 Art Journal Caravan Steamer trunk – no longer available) and alpha (from Amanda Sok‘s package that was the Scrapgirls.com Jan 2010 offering.)

I printed this out onto textured cardstock and it came up quite well.  Just like a bought one.  Wouldn’t want to do that often since printer ink costs more than Dom Perignon or caviar… but my hands were too sore to cut out and paste In Real Life, so GIMP to the rescue! (GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program, and it’s FREE.)

I use GIMP because it’s freeand fully linux compatible,  but I admit there are times I wish I had Photoshop Elements* or (dream on!) the full Photoshop works to play with- just because there are some groovy things (actions, styles) that you can’t translate into GIMP.

*DO NOT tell me there is a free trial version  -I know there is; the other part of the story is that we are primarily a Penguin (linux) household, because Bill Gates wants too much money for his Windows OS. :-pppp

ANYWAY, the birthday girl liked the card. I also gave her a Pitt Artist’s Pen in GOLD – love those pens, and had to get a gold and silver for myself – yum!

and a wee journal for her to Zentangle in.  (Something comes to mind here about buying pressies that you’d really like for yourself… hmm!)

My hands are slightly improved after a week back on the Celebrex.  Problem is, that’s not a long term solution (anti-inflammatories greatly increase the risk of stroke, as this ABC Health article points out).  I have an appointment to see a rheumatologist down in Brisbane but that’s not until the end of February.  (The wait would be several YEARS if I was trying to see one in the public system…)  Still no oboe of flute practice and I missed the concert band’s end of year concert and two rehearsals so far… hoping (I would cross my fingers if they didn’t HURT so damn much!) that I might be able to play in the carols gig on Monday night… we shall see.

Apart from that – I’m really enjoying reading a series of novels set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Woods Cop mysteries – but they’re far more interesting in letting the wilderness and the people who interact with it star in the stories.  The main character is a Conservation Officer named Grady Service, and they’re written by Joseph Heywood.  Deer huntin’ , shootin’, and fishin’ is DEFINITELY not my usual cup of tea but I’m loving these books.

And now it’s past my bedtime.  It’s raining here again (wettest Spring on record, anyone?!) and we have to get almost all our sheets through the wash because they’ve developed a musty pong. Ick.  There are times I wish we had a clothes-dryer…

The Story Bridge, Brisbane, 15 September 2010.

So yesterday Mr Beloved and I ventured Down The Range to the big smoke – Brisbane.   The aim: visiting Big Girls Don’t Cry Anymore, a bra and swimwear shop in Fortitude Valley.  (I could not buy a sports bra in my size ANYWHERE in Toowoomba, and believe me, we tried!  None of the EIGHT stores we visited had anything above a size 18.)

Anyway, the service at Big Girls was exceptional.  Start with a Husband Parking Area with comfortable lounges, free tea and coffee, and motoring magazines at the front of the shop.  The bra fitter (there must be a better word for that!)  was kind and professional, and I ended up with 4 well fitted bras.  Only one of those is a sports bra, but I’ll be mail ordering/online ordering another now I know which size to get.  The Elomi brand turned out to fit me perfectly, so 3 of the 4 I bought were from them. And meantime I’ll be exercising in some of the non-sport bras, because even though they don’t have the special wicking fabric, they FIT, so I can wear them and not worry about looking and feeling ridiculous.  Well, not in the boobs department, anyway.

Even turns out that I do in fact need a size 18 across the back – but I need a much bigger cup size than the Toowoomba stores are willing to stock.  This just reinforces my belief that there are a whole lot of women out there wearing the wrong size bra!

That took a lot less time than we had budgeted, so we decided to have a quick look at the music stores in the vicinity.  We popped in to the Orchestral store, to ask about the price of bassoons.

YIKES!  Turns out that even student quality bassoons are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of my league.  They start at around 5 – THOUSAND, that is!  Since it’s been well over twenty years since I’ve even blown a squark on a double reed, that’s a huge investment in something I’m not even sure I could play.  NOT THAT WE HAVE THE MONEY, you understand, it was just playing with the idea.  To buy the reeds for bassoons, you’re looking at a starting point of around $35 each.

Hmm, what about an oboe, then? I’ve always quite liked oboe, too.  $25 per reed to start on a medium soft one – and about $800 for a student quality, composite (not wood) instrument.  Closer to doable but still out of reach…

Guess I’ll just have to stick with boring old flute then.  $800 would just about buy an overhaul of my flute… Maybe I’ll switch to TUBA, then, how’s that for a bolt out of the blue?  I love tubas!

ANYWAY, we then moved on to the portion of the day which was more about Mr Beloved: a meetup over lunch with some online (and becoming In Real Life) friends from the Atheist group.  This turned out to be at a pub local to one of the members and a jolly good time was had by all 5 of us.  I even had a coupla beers, not something I get to do terribly often (since we don’t tend to go out, and we don’t have the budget or inclination to buy alcohol for home) which meant that I fell asleep as Mr Beloved drove us back up the hill.

Today was a wipeout – I was exhausted sore and achey all over, but I know to expect that after a Brissy trip. Tomorrow is resistance training at the gym (yay!) and then housework.  The house will NOT be as clean as I would have liked for my parent’s visit, but I just have to accept that I can’t do EVERYTHING.  (This is something I struggle with, STILL, after all these years of CFS/Fibromyalgia and mental illness…)