ACTUAL SIZE! They breed BIG mozzies up here.... (well, they felt this big...)

The cheap and nasty banana lounges went back to the big chain hardware store – they STANK!  They were unbearable.  Glad we got our money back on those.

Yesterday arvo I spent lying on the floor of the lounge wrapped in a wet towel with the fans blowing on me… I am really finding this heat difficult, and I think I have to attribute it to the change in med1cat10ns – I don’t remember struggling with it this much in previous heatwaves.

Today we did some more tie dyeing – a friend’s daughter is having a “hippy” birthday party so I offered to make her a t-shirt – and Mr Beloved needed a few too.  The shirts are baking in plastic bags in the sun and are too hot to touch – a good sign, because it helps the colours batch and become really intense. Photos to follow.

I have picked up ANOTHER damn head cold – this time it’s gone straight to my ears.  Every time I blow my nose my ears block up even more.  MISERY!!!

Right – time to get showered, do an inventory of what’s left in the fridge, and head to the greengrocer – another baking session when it cools down tonight (zucchini slice again) should see us through the next few hot days.  Just as well we don’t mind eating the same thing for a week at a time!

The bottom of our street, January 10, 2011

North Street bridge over Gowrie Creek, January 10, 2010

February: Clean-up from floods, plus:

Yarrow, 3 Feb, 2011 - a cheeky baby

And we found termite damage. Which meant that: (with HUGE thanks to Mum and Dad for their generous help)

March:

The house, midway through stump replacement

And April:

New roof

Also new gutters, new water tank, repairs to the solar hot water, new ceilings in two rooms…

May:

Before and after(ish - it's ongoing...)

Painted.

June:

New CPAP machine (with very cool glyph to RTFM)

July:

We were all sick and sooky

August:

We sacked the Bad Psychiatrist

September:

The bandicoot loves cat food

October:

And we had the red bellied black snake near the house *shudder*

November:

We have a new stove - and a working oven!

Mr Beloved tangled with some of the local wildlife.

December:

More local wildlife

I also did some online art classes; caught some variety of cold or flu every time we went to the doctors, went to the psychologist and psychiatrist and group therapy, had facet joint injections in my spine but then found out I have neuropathic pain (which needs different treatment), and read 174 books (not counting most of the cookbooks and picture books I read and a few that weren’t already in the Shelfari system that I couldn’t be bothered adding.)

Our region turned off the analogue TV signal at the start of December.  We bought a new DVD player somewhere around May but haven’t plugged it in yet (!) so I haven’t watched any DVDs for most of the year.  I didn’t go to the movies at all.  I didn’t sew anything.

Plans for 2012: get the sewing room and front room cleared out and operational; more therapy; walking as much as I can; eating less processed food (and cutting out bought sweets altogether – far better to bake things and know exactly what’s gone into them); and possibly – maybe – enrolling in a uni course (major in creative writing with a minor in history, or possible the other way around.)

Whew!

(Note: though we see these around often, this is the first time one has come inside the shed… I don’t think we want to add one to the menagerie!)

My simple pizza

So the new stove got its first run last night – not with anything super-special, but with lazy pizzas.  We don’t even make the dough – just use a round of Lebanese  (pita) bread, slap something appropriately tomatoey on (last night, as we often do, we used tomato paste) then the toppings – I had some ham, pepperoni and black olives and cheese.

Mr Beloved likes his pizzas slightly taller and more elaborate:

Mr Beloved's pizza

He added pineapple, bocconcini, a lot more tomato paste and sundried tomatoes in oil.

Mr B's pizza, cooking

The oven performed well above expectations – we set it at 170 C (well below the approx 220 C the old stove needed for pizza.) It heats up quickly and the “intensive cook” setting (fan forced with both top and bottom element on) worked brilliantly for pizzas – they crisped up quickly on the bottom and everything melted on top.

Don't forget the puppy, Dad!

It will be interesting to try the smaller, top oven – but that’s not happening today because I’m STILL fighting the Dreaded Lurgey  – today with added gastro symptoms!  YAY!  *headdesk*.

Mr B made his usual post-prandial coffee in his sputtery old Bialetti-style espresso maker

We have a *copy* of this beastie

and when it leaked onto the new stove top, it wasn’t a problem!  The hob has a little red light that warns that the hob might still be hot (useful!) and when it was a cool, a quick swipe with some damp paper towel got rid of the drips.  SUCH a difference from having to dismantle the whole top of the stove to clean a spill!

The electricians were very good, made the stove connection LONG enough that we can move the stove out by a over a metre so we can clean the wall behind it (and eventually install a splashback.  Yep, our kitchen is somewhat primitive – when Mr B bought the place 15 years ago there was an old wood stove and that was ALL.)  So no rangehood or exhaust fan (yet) and because the last stove was connected to gas (until it developed the death leak) it couldn’t be moved out from the wall – so the gunk built up.  Ugh.  I’ve attacked some of it with bicarb, vinegar and lots of elbow grease – but getting that sort of baked on grease off paintwork pretty much takes the paint with it.

AAAAAND the electrician let us know there was no point trying to get a circuit breaker to fit our old fuse box – “You can’t get the parts, love!”  -  So we have more fuse wire but will eventually have to upgrade.  Oh, and fix the !@&!^(*^ earth stake thingummy that the builders did wrong (they put it in concrete – not earth – *headdesk*) and replace the last bit of cotton covered wiring to one light switch (WHICH I THOUGHT HAD BEEN ALREADY DONE!!!) Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!  In short, with labour, about another $1000 worth of work.  Which will just bloody well have to wait, because we don’t have the money. Apaprently none of it is super urgent, just ANNOYING.

And so far as I know – the electricians DID NOT BREAK ANYTHING!  This may well be a first for the tradesmen we have dealt with this year. Yay? They also turned up when they said they would and cost what they quoted.  Gotta be happy with that.

This is it – a Belling (from Britain) multifunction, double oven stove with ceramic cooktop.  SO EXCITING!!  The electrician will be here first thing in the morning to connect it and then LOOK OUT!

I’m NOT going to go berserk cooking cakes and desserts, because I’m trying very hard to eat better.  But on payday I’m hoping we can get a nice leg of lamb (oooh, roast meat, how I’ve missed you!) and before then I think we have enough veges on hand to make the notorious zucchini slice.

I am going to gradually replace my cake tins/cookie slides/ baking tins that have gone rusty and can’t be rejuvenated.   And we need a frying pan or wok for the top of the stove, that’s for sure – our benchspace is so limited that we need to put away the electric frypan we’ve been relying on as soon as we can.  Somehow I need to get all my art stuff out of the kitchen so we can use the kitchen table as benchspace…. yikes, we have some reorganising to do!

(I’ve still been sick with the Dreaded Lurgey this week – today was the first morning I haven’t woken up coughing.  YAY! )

Not much else to report – I’m happily reading cookbooks and looking forward to making a birthday cake in the next fortnight.

Awwww!

(Look at the pretty flower and the intensely interested dog!)

Group therapy… was better last week, but still scary.  I go again tomorrow.  It’s completely exhausting.  Last week was much better than the first week, but it’s still very intense  – partly because of just HOW LONG you’re sitting there, and partly because you just don’t know what’s going to come up – and I wasn’t ready to deal with some of the issues that were raised last week. Then on Friday I had another two hours of therapy on top of groups – arrrrrgh!  My brain hurts!

Nigella damascena seedpod

I’m also doing homework  – working through some of the “Infopax” that are available FREE online from the Centre for Clinical Intervention in Western Australia.  I’m currently working through the “What me, Worry?” modules.  Their approach is based in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which is ok – I’ll take what works for me and let what doesn’t work go.   (The group therapy and one-on-one therapy I do is based on Acceptance Commitment Therapy which is a different way of looking at things and one I find works better for me generally.)

The new door curtain

We had a disappointment with the tie dyed shirts – the sizes were WRONG!  (See this post on Mr Beloved’s blog for details - essentially, the store short-changed us in the size by saying the size was the same as last year but making the shirt SMALLER!)

Our new stove!  It’s a British brand, Belling, which I hadn’t come across before (but Dad tells me that Nana had a “Baby Belling Stovette” in her kitchen in Leeton from 1940 something and it was still there and working when they sold the house 60 years later…)

I’m super excited.  We ordered it yesterday and it will take about a week to arrive.  The delivery charge of $54 includes removal and disposal of the old stove, so that’s one more thing taken care of. (I haven’t phoned the electrician yet to ask how much for his part of the installation – must do that.)

We haven’t had a completely working stove since May 2010 when the hotplates on our current stove stuffed up… and we were told “You can’t get the parts, love.”  Then at the start of August this year the oven stopped working.  Which means only the grill works. FRUSTRATING!

And I was really getting tired of not being able to cook simple meals – especially things like my beloved zucchini slice and the family recipe for tuna pie that is so good that once my sister phoned home from her holidays just to get the recipe.  Strangely, I need my oven more in Summer than in Winter – being able to have something already made in the fridge to just have a salad with is important.

And even though we don’t do a big fuss for Christmas, I do like to have some fruit cake. And be able to make birthday cakes for friends.  I enjoy that and I’ve missed being able to do it.  And PIZZA!  We don’t buy commercial pizzas because we prefer our own versions (lebanese pita bread as the base, good quality ingredients for the topping, and not too much cheese.)  The new oven even has a special setting for pizza!

The controls look complicated but after I read the instruction manual online they made sense – you can have fan or not, heat just the top element, just the bottom, or both, and you don’t need to heat up the larger (69 Litre) of the two ovens for a batch of scones or a simple cake – the smaller (39 Litre) oven (which also doubles as the grill with different control settings) is just as good, apparently.  We shall see.

So thanks, Mum and Dad – this is a super brilliant Christmas pressie!!

“SNAAAAAAKE!!!”

yelled Mr Beloved.

No questions, I just grabbed Connie and rushed back upstairs.

Sure, it was only a little snake – but even one this size could easily have killed our beloved Connie.  (Or could have made either of us quite sick, given our blood pressure issues. They are NOT TO BE MESSED WITH!)  We phoned the snake man*and Mr Beloved kept a wary distance and watched the hole where the snake had hidden.

Turns out it was a Red Bellied Black Snake – not very common in our area (mainly because they eat frogs and unfortunately they get poisoned by !@^&%&* cane toads – but a biologist friend informs me that those that do survive are increasingly immune to toad poison).

The snake man was THRILLED because it was the first one he’s caught this season. And he really loved his work – while I am not enamoured of snakes it’s always nice to meet someone who is passionate about something, whatever it is.

You can just see the red stripe along the side if you clicky for biggy on this pic.  The more the snake man explained about it, the more I could appreciate that it was a beautiful animal – I am still appropriately scared of the buggers, but I now understand more about this species.  We got to watch the snake urinate and regurgitate (a small skink) – there, who needs to pay for the Discovery Channel, eh?!

It’s not the first snake in our yard and I doubt it will be the last, given our proximity to the local creek.  It was the first we had to pay to get removed – mostly because it was so close to the house and Mr Beloved was 90% sure it was a red bellied black.

Quite enough excitement for one day, thankyouverymuch!

Although the snake man DID get bitten – NOT by a snake, LOL! He had some live food just bought from the pet shop in his vehicle, and the little rotters escaped and he got BIT rounding them up!  Betadine spray applied and live food dealt with…

*For Toowoomba Locals: the link given has the snake man’s phone number; otherwise do a search on the Toowoomba Chronicle for “snake man” and you’ll get the same story.

Remember that rain we had before the cold spell?   It made everything grow WHOOOOSH!   With the result that this is what the backyard looks like today:

GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!

[as always, clicky for biggy]

Poor Mr Beloved had two marathon sessions yesterday going around the yard spraying weedkiller.  Because we don’t have lawn, we have a range of native plants and invaders that we don’t want.

And we’re still recovering from the January flood.  Things tend to move slowly in a household where both people have had broken backs… we’re hoping to be able to afford another rubbish skip in the next month or so.

Here’s to the rain staying away so the weedkiller can do its work – then we get to hire a mower – oh yippee.  Needless to say, our yard is NOT on the tour for the Carnivore of Fowls (more properly known as the Carnival of Flowers, the big festival of pretty gardens run every year in September.)

Teeny Tiny fluffy bum

There’s a new addition to the household – hatched just last night (Friday).  So far it’s just a wriggling ball of bare skin and yellow fluff, fiercely guarded by parents Bolly and Doz.  Tentatively called “Peeps”.

OI! YOU! OUTTA MY CAGE!

(Dorian Grey is Very Fierce.)

Full Winter Fluffball

Miss Constance J. Woodle the Toy poodle (who is very fluffy in her luxuriant winter coat!) alerted us last night – her hearing is of course much better than ours.  She also has a sore eyelid – we’ll be off to the vet on Monday to see what that’s about.  Poodles are quite prone to ingrown hairs in their eyelids; I’m hoping this is something cheap and quick to fix rather than something which requires $$$surgical intervention.

We have had some rain in the last 24 hours, and Mr Beloved also heard a different, not so happy sound from the front room – yep, a BLOODY LEAK in our brand new roof! NOT HAPPY.  Will be calling the roofers on Monday to see if we can get them out here to sort it out.  At goodness only knows what expense… and I expect somehow we’ll have to move things from the front room (to WHERE?!?!) so it can be fixed.

*sigh*