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!

BUT – and I really should have thought about this – now we are SICK.  With charming head colds.  I am Snuffley, Phlegmy and Achey (Attorneys at Law. Or three of the Dwarves Disney dropped.)

It’s not just confirmation bias * (or hindsight bias)- we can go plenty of other places where there are people and NOT get sick – but one lousy trip to the !@&*^!@% waiting room at the doctors and BAM!  We get the Latest Lurgey.  Oh, thank you ever so much, you diseased and wretched people.   Especially you, unobserving parent, who continues to browse “CELEBRITIES DOING STUFF!” Weekly while your small child wipes its nasal secretions along every hard surface.  And you, Mr Coughs Into The Room, oh, thank YOU for our LOVERLY Christmas gifts.  That’s sharing the Ferkin’ Spirit of The Season, isn’t it?

*headdesk*

So we have spent most of the last few days looking like this:

(Even unto the small pointy nosed dog on the bed, oh yes.  I have no idea where I stole this image from but isn’t it great?)

On the other hand, I have LOOK! Pretty nails! (although my nails seems to grow so quickly that there’s always a gap…)

This is the Sally Hansen stick on polish in “Girl Flower” that I mentioned the other day, with (freehand therefore wonky!) french tips in Hello Kitty blue – awwww! I wear out the tips of nail polish very quickly – too much typing and forgetting to wear the dishwashing gloves that are pegged above the sink, quietly perishing in the sun…)

I am drinking lots of water. And lots of hot tea.  And eating the occasional slice of Boiled Fruit Cake (mine is always a tweaked version of the recipe in Geoff Slattery’s wonderful 1991 book “Simple Flavours: Australian Home Cooking”.  This is the same book which taught me that making puff pastry isn’t hard, and in fact times perfectly with the quarters in an Aussie Rules football match.  He was a sports writer for the Melbourne Age before he was a cook…)

And shortly I shall head to the house to make zucchini slice (yes, again) and while the oven is on, the Strawberry Lime and Coconut Cheesecake from last month’s Good Taste magazine (but without the strawberries because they all looked a bit nasty when I hit the shops yesterday.  I might use some frozen raspberries instead or just go with the lime syrup as enough flavour.)

Happy Season to those who celebrate. And a hearty BAH HUMBUG to the infectious masses.

* If you haven’t yet grabbed/asked Santa/cajoled your library to order this book, you should.  Bloody brilliant.  The blog of the same name has some of what’s in the book, so read that first to get an idea, but it’s really worth the $Au 19 (or however much you want to pay – booko.com.au is showing this as the lowest price including postage.)

Well, I didn’t go to group therapy yesterday.  I had a m1graine instead. Niiiiice.  The new med1cat10n I’m starting after I see the nice psychiatrist in January is supposed to help, but I can’t start taking it yet. Second migra1ne this week. Usually I know what my triggers are but I have no idea why I’m getting them at the moment.

Also, I didn’t want to go to group because I am so over being the only atheist in the village (I don’t much like “Little Britain” but that particular character is hilarious.) It’s all very well relating whatever lyrics “back to the model” (this is part of what happens in group, we go over the hexaflex model of ACT – over and over, in the hope that it will stick…)but I am SO OVER HEARING CHRISTIAN SONGS exhorting me to “have faith” etc.  SO. OVER. IT.  Not a useful tool for me, can we please move on? ARRRRGH!

(Other things that happen in group therapy ARE useful.  I am definitely a convert to “open” groups where there are people at all different stages of wellness.  It is helpful to see people with the same illness who are making real progress towards having a better life.)

I did go and see my psychologist today. New rules mean that Medicare only pays for 10 visits in a calendar year, and that many only if you have a Mental Health Care Plan jumped through flaming hoops written for you by your GP.  Actually, nobody REALLY can get any clarification on how the new system will work, everyone I speak to has conflicting info – you get 6 visits then have to apply for more, no, you can only have ONE Mental Health Care Plan per 12 months, no, I heard it’s……  ARRRRRGH!

All that aside, I think I’ve made real progress this year in understanding my issues… learning more about the neurology underlying the psychology has helped.  (FACTS!  I like FACTS!  Give me SCIENCE, not woo!) I even have *gasp* a possibly life changing idea that *might* start sometime in 2012.  (Stay tuned to this EXCITING blog for an EXCITING update! SOON! *insert sarcasm here*)

Other things: I made a banana and raspberry cake last night (to use up bananas that were about to go black, and some raspberries with freezer burn) very similar to this recipe but with rice bran oil instead of butter.  Not bad.  I’m still getting used to the new oven and I under-baked it slightly, but never mind.  It’s still (mostly!) good.

And I put these silly stick on nail polish thingummys on my nails.  They seem to be wearing off rather quickly at the tips (even though I put a topcoat over them) and certainly wouldn’t buy them regularly, but… fun for a change.

Since we don’t really “do” Christmas, I don’t have any Christmas shopping to worry about (YAY!) and can now AVOID the shops except for a quick run for milk and bacon (mmmm, bacon!) tomorrow night.

I’ve been reading: the newest one from Jasper Fforde, “The Last Dragonslayer” – Fforde’s inventiveness reminds me of a childhood favourite, Norman Hunter’s “Professor Branestawm” series. This is a new series from Fforde, aimed at the YA market.  Lovely writing and a sequel has just been published – “Song of the Quarkbeast”.

According to my Shelfari list, I’ve read 170 books this year. I was a late comer to The Hunger Games Trilogy, but I’d certainly rate that as the most haunting series I’ve read in 2011.  And along with half the planet, I loved Erin Morgenstern’s “Night Circus”.  I’ve just started reading Christopher Fowler’s “Bryant and May” series (police procedurals with quirky twists, set in London) – don’t you love it when you find a series new to you with LOTS of books already written?

Upcoming reading: I’m really looking forward to David Finch’s memoir “The Journal Of Best Practices: a Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man’s Quest to Be a Better Husband” – for reasons that will become obvious later in the song.  (Now does *that* reference date me!! Hands up anyone who is now suffering from a Bob Hudson earworm?!)

And now it’s almost time to go and heat up some leftover (homemade, we don’t get takeaway or eat out…) Thai Red chicken curry for tea.

So what have I been doing instead?  Ummm…

Well, today we went to the doctor – our GP is BRILLIANT and if she ever leaves her current practice we may have to follow her (ewwww, that sounded kinda stalky, didn’t it?)  She is so helpful and sensible and even like the same tv programmes we do (we joked about needing the ‘traditionally built” blood pressure cuff, since we are fans of the books and now the wonderful TV version of Alexander McCall Smith’s “Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency”) and what an utter perfectly played bastard the neurosurgeon Monroe is.

Jill Scott and Desmond Dube in a scene from The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency... I covet her teaset!

(I LOVE the dresses Jill Scott wears as Precious Ramotswe – and I desperately want her tea set, if anyone knows the pattern! I’ve left the photo HUGE so we can all admire the tea set – the cups are different colours, there’s a pink, blue, and yellow one as well as the green in this picture. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)

In other news: I’m walking!  As the pain management specialist wanted me to.  At a pace where I get puffed but can still talk (just!) I am now up to 24 minutes every day. (My last post I was doing 10 minutes – so a big improvement there!)  WOOOOT!  I’m not actually *enjoying* it yet, but I do know that I am coping with the back pain much better – and if I don’t walk, the pain is worse.

Our local library here has just started lending e-audio books!  I’ve “borrowed” (downloaded onto my little MP3 player) Kerry Greenwood’s “Away With The Fairies” to listen to while I walk – BEING VERY CONSCIOUS of keeping the volume low enough to still hear traffic and also BEING AWARE as I cross roads – no “iPod Oblivion” for me – sadly, a young girl was killed in Melbourne just this week while listening to her iPod – didn’t hear the train.

And now it’s time for my walk – arrrgh, where did the day go?

Learning that coloured pencils don't like to blend on rough gesso!

(one side of the face is deliberately left unblended to show the difference.  This blending was done using a cream prismacolor pencil -  I have yet to try blending colour pencils with the other choices: Gamsol,  Blender Marker pens, and “Zest It“.)

This one was on plain paper, but wrinkled due to glue on back of the page...

Getting better, but started too small to work on the details...

The next two pictures were for Week 2 Mixed Media homework – we were learning to draw backs and bums (I’m not good at arms yet, LOL!) and the assignment was to include coloured pencil with watercolour and acrylic, plus play with stencils.

Mostly 'armless...

Again, wonky arms, arrgh!

I don’t think either of those pages are finished yet – more paint needed on both.

I’m trying to catch up with the classes (haven’t watched the videos from Suzi’s class yet) but again, my back has been bothering me. Boring and whiny, yep.

We haven’t been to anything for the Carnival of Flowers – I’m hoping to see at least Queen’s Park and Laurel Bank Park next week, while they still look good.  It’s a busy week though – Monday I see the pain management specialist, and Wednesday could be the hospital procedure to help my back; Tuesday I (finally!) see the new psychiatrist, and Friday is my appointment with the Helpful Psychologist.  Thursday is my regular day for our little scrapbooking group, where I usually draw or do stuff in my art journal, but if I have the facet joint injections on Wednesday I might not be up to sitting on Thursday.

I’m REALLY hoping that the specialist agrees that I need the injections – now that the weather is nicer I would love to be able to go for walks – but right now it’s a struggle to walk between the house and the studio.  Fingers crossed that he’ll agree!

What I’ve been reading: a very well written paranormal, from a male author  - Hounded (Book 1 of the Iron Druid Chronicles) by Kevin Hearne.  Very clever and funny.  Now I’m waiting for the library to get the next two books in the series.

Stork Raving Mad - Book 12 in the series

Stork Raving Mad by Donna Andrews: I’ve been a fan of her Meg Langslow series since the first book (Murder with Peacocks) = they’re cozy mysteries (which means that even though there are murders, you don’t have to read about gore) and each book really does have something to do with the punny bird in the title.

Art and Max by David Wiesner came in to the library, too – and it more than lived up to my expectations!  Definitely on the wish list.

So that’s the week…

[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!

A Sick Day For Amos McGee

I answered a question in one of the mailing list competitions Allen and Unwin send via email.

“But wait!” you might be saying to yourself “Caity, you don’t have kids!  You don’t even particularly LIKE kids!”  and this is true.  And often I have been verbally bashed about the head for expressing that opinion.  Child, singular, or even children, when under the supervision of their parent, and behaving reasonably, I can just about manage but kids, on the loose, unsupervised? NO THANKS! And that last includes the (now departed) tribe of Shouty Neighbours whose children galumphed up and down their wooden hallway not three metres from my bedroom window before 6 am EVERY DAMN MORNING and… wait, take a breath, where was I??

Ah yes!  Why am I so excited about a children’s book?  Well, to start with it’s a Caldecott Medal Winner – a sure guide to bloody excellent kid’s books since 1938 (this link will take you to a full listing).  The illustration style is just beeeeeyoootiful – “created using wood blocks for color work and pencil lines for detailing” according to her Wiki page. And if you go to the Dread Amazon’s link you can see some more of the pages.   The story is enchanting, too.

So suck it up – I don’t like kids, but I DO like kid’s picture books – they’re inspiring and their economical use of words (or not) is much harder than it looks.

Thanks, Allen and Unwin – you made my day!

• It’s not so much the lack of sleep that upsets me – it’s my struggle with my lack of sleep.  I almost woke Mr Beloved to tell him “I CAN’T SLEEP!” but by the time I even thought of using that strategy, it was 5 am.  *headdesk*  If I had been brave enough to do that earlier in the night, say at around 2 am, I could have had his help while I took the dreaded val1um (and possibly had some rest.)  But we  know about my fear of val1um and I am even more wary of it after the Incident of The Neck in the Night-time.  And by “brave” I am not saying that Mr Beloved is scary – just that I find it hard to be kind to myself sometimes and ask for help.
• I have a repertoire of “tricks” that usually help me sleep.  These include: slowly savouring about 1/3 of a cup of frozen raspberries; eating a small piece of cheese (protein helps? I dunno); taking off or putting on a layer of clothes; holding a cool wet face washer to my forehead; reading a cozy type mystery; playing the MP3 of the”Mindfulness of the Breath” exercise from The Happiness Trap (it’s not designed to make you relax but I find it very calming).    Sometimes NONE OF THESE WORK.  And I am learning to be okay with that – to stop struggling with not falling asleep.  (Also, I have just reserved a book at the library that looks promising: Sleep Well, Live better: 3 Steps to Good Sleep. We shall see. I am not keen to add any more med1cat10ns because of interact1ons with all the stuff I already take.)
• My sleep hygiene is important to me, even though some of the things I do (reading in bed!) are NOT recommended.  I am careful about how much caffeine I consume and when;  I take my evening med1cat10ns at an early enough time to let the sedat1ng ones help me get drowsy; I rarely nap during the day (sometimes to my detriment).  Even when I am super tired, I can’t actually get to sleep without reading at least a few pages.  (It’s a habit of at least 38 years, so it’s not likely to change!) The problems happen when I read entire books…which is something I did last night.  (Damn you, Charlaine Harris, for making “Dead Reckoning” the best Sookie Stackhouse book yet! But my insomnia was not entirely the book’s fault – I knew I was very wakeful when I got into bed.)
• I have times when the aches of fibromyalgia either stop me from getting to sleep or wake me up (and I can’t get back to sleep.)  Now I’m thinking about it, what I need to do in those times is have a nice hot shower/warm bath.  Hmmm.  Or do the full body scan mindfulness meditation, that seems to help.
• Sometimes if my nose is sniffly I can get really weirded out about putting my CPAP mask on.  Often I can overcome this by lying quietly in the dark and then putting the mask on while engaging “observing mind” – pretending I am a compassionate and gently interested scientist observing the feelings of the mask on my face.  (This is another part of the mindfulness training that the Unhelpful Psychiatrist dismissed as “just a bandaid”.  I don’t believe it is. U. P.  said I need to “address my underlying anxiety or the problem will never be solved”.)
• Sometimes if I write in a journal I can get to sleep.  Last night though, there really wasn’t any specific anxiety that was bugging my brain and stopping me from getting to sleep. In fact, the journaling seemed to be stimulating rather than soporific.  So after three pages, I stopped.
• I seem to have insomnia round the full moon.  Despite scientific studies NOT finding any links, there is so much anecdotal evidence for some sort of link that I have to wonder what the scientists are missing.  My bedroom has decent blockout curtains, so I usually don’t notice the full moon UNTIL I realise that I haven’t slept and oh look, it’s about a month since the LAST time I couldn’t sleep.
• (It’s just started raining.  I find rain on the roof is really lovely to help me sleep.  I have to have a fan on in the bedroom to move the air and to provide white noise.  The current pedestal fan was about $15 and the motor is SHOT so it sounds like a damn Cessna!  I will be buying a new fan TODAY.)
• AFTER a night of not sleeping, I get anxious and scared about not sleeping because I worry that it is the onset of mania.   I know that this story is not helpful and it’s one that often plays in my head. So, hey, let’s give it a name – hello, Thelma!  It’s you again!  (This may be my favourite defusion technique. My Helpful Psychologist and I recently decided to name my “OMG I’m letting people down” story as “Myrtle”.  The names sound silly, right? But it helps to show those unhelpful stories for what they are – just old stories my brain likes to play with.  Those stories are not reality.)
• The change of Seasons (hello, Spring!) is a time that manias can ramp up.  So it’s a time I am more aware of (and more anxious about) mania symptoms.  Now that I have expressed this, I can probably let it go more easily.
• I am very angry that instead of taking my concerns about not sleeping seriously, the unhelpful psychiatrist wanted to talk to me about my childhood.  WTF?!
• I know that staring at a BRIGHT SCREEN with the LIGHTS ON in the studio as I type this isn’t helping me get any sleep this morning.  I also know (from bitter experience) that I can (sort of) function for a day without any sleep the night before.  Science tells us that to readjust our body clocks, some sunlight in the morning is a good thing…I will be taking advantage of this soon.

So I’ve been having a few memory and distraction problems of late.  More so than usual – it’s taking me more pages to remember if I’ve read a book before (although this could also be attributable to reading too many cosy mysteries); I lose things more easily (“Darl? Have you seen….?”) and then yesterday was a doozy.

Started out with an almighty CRASH of smashing crockery at 6 am as I hauled the blankets back across the bed, having forgotten completely that I’d let the dog have the yoghurt bowl (on the bed) and forgotten to move it before I went to sleep… the bowl hit the floor and luckily smashed into two big pieces rather than a gazillion little ones.  (And for those of you who think either eating yoghurt in bed or letting the dog lick the nearly empty yoghurt bowl is unacceptable, what are you doing reading MY blog?!)

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah E. Harkness

Then last night as I was just about to go to sleep, having read a few pages of the interesting but ohmygosh-I’m-so-tiiiiiired book that I read before I go to sleep (in this case, A Discovery of Witches by Deborah E. Harkness, which is turning out to be better than some reviews lead me to believe) I put on my CPAP mask and realised  – OH NOES – it wasn’t working.

Because earlier on  I cleaned one piece of my CPAP mask – normally I’d clean the whole thing, but I noticed ONE part that just needed some attention -

Not me - someone else in the very attractive (!) Mirage Quattro mask

Small, silicone piece crucial to the mask working properly

and I lost the silicone piece listed here (for some reason in Spanish!) as “ports cap”.  But I didn’t REALISE I’d lost it until I put the mask on.

Much kerfuffle as Caity veers ever closer to panic (because it’s after midnight on Saturday night, the only place that sells the CPAP parts isn’t open until Monday and I CAN’T SLEEP without the mask) and Mr Beloved treats the bedroom as a crime scene, carefully and systematically moving scarves, clothes, blankets, etc while I dither about the edges…  and it’s not easy to find a clear silicone thingummy at something towards 1 am in a dusty room – but at last the missing piece was found and I could sleep.    Catastrophe averted!

Phew.  But it’s illustrative of my memory not being what it was, and my distractibility (is that even a word?!) increasing.  It’s hard for me to concentrate on things, is what I’m saying.  I write down all the medicines I take in a book, every time I take them, have done for the last year or two, just so I can be sure whether I have taken them or not… seriously, at my age, I feel like I shouldn’t have to do that!  Oh well, it is what it is.

And now I have to go do something or other but I can’t quite remember what it is…

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”.