Ten days, so far so good

You may have noticed that I've been making a bit more of an effort to write this month. Every day so far, to be precise. And here I am today, day eleven, and I'm reduced to writing about my writing. Ack! Can I have really run out of ideas so quickly?

In truth I have not. I have simply run out of time this evening.

I will be back on track tomorrow!

A terrific success

Wow. The cake stall this morning was amazing. In all the years i've been doing this I have never seen it be so successful. I didn't really do much with this year's stall. It seemed that it was all organised well and I was glad to take a step back. I simply baked and ate and sold a few. The stall made nearly $900 in 3½ hours!

Afterwards I had a fairly pleasant day at work followed by a wonderful night meeting up with some crafty peeps. Does pulling apart some knitting that I'm unhappy with count as starting a new project??

Bakin' time again

Last year I got busy making cup cakes for the annual child care cake stall. Tomorrow it's on again! I've been busy all night making banana cup cakes with cream cheese frosting and a new recipe - Chocolate Mud Cupcakes from this book.

As an aside, have you heard of BetterWorldBooks? A great place to buy books online - new or used. Good prices, excellent shipping fee and to top it all off, part of the takings (maybe all of them?) go towards funding world literacy.

Sorry, no pictures tonight. I'm so tired I can barely stand up. Icing these guys will have to wait for the morning.

Following the hair trail

I've got an appointment to see my hairdresser in a couple of weeks. He's a very popular guy - bookings three weeks in advance! Not exactly cheap, but I'm willing to pay the price since it's been TWO YEARS since I've paid him a visit. People have been commenting a lot lately about the length of my hair. It easily reaches to my bottom and I can wrap it around my neck like a scarf!

A bit hard to find recent photos that fully display its length. Here's one from Christmas.

Me and my Ma, Xmas 2009
So then I got curious. Trying to remember my different hair lengths over the years. Started going through old photos, pre-children...

So now I present to you some embarrassing pictures of Jen through the late '90s. Most of the pictures were taken at parties. Lots of (too much) alcohol was consumed at this time. Not many pictures to choose from (our first digital camera was a 1.2 megapixel beast which cost >$1,000! and our biggest memory card was a whopping 16Mb!) and I was pretty good at hiding from the camera. I apologise in advance.

1995 - Third year at Uni. Working at the computer lab at Uni - obviously working, if you look at the computer screen. Hair mid-long length, played with a bit of bleach. A year or two before, that bleached bit was dark blue.

1995-ish

1997-98 - or thereabouts. This was taken at a friend's 21st. Dan and I were together by then. My hair was long, long, long. Nearly as long as now. Again with the bleach and the blue.

1997-98

June 1999 - Turned 24. Got rid of the blonde bits (dyed my hair black - ha!) but still hadn't lost the bleach bug. I bleached a nice straight line across the bottom of my hair and dyed it red. Started working at my current job not long after this. They still talk about my hair sometimes! Finally found a picture.

June, 1999

Nov, 1999 - For some insane reason I decided to get my hair cut short. I guess I needed a change. I did sell it to a wig maker for $20/ounce. I got $140 for it. More than paid for the haircut. Here's the bleach again. I just couldn't let up, could I? I'd forgotten how much I coloured my hair. It wasn't that often but bleach is permanent! This pic is me at a '70s party. Hence the dress.

Nov, 1999

May, 2000 - The last big cut. Dan and I were about to head off to Egypt so I cut my hair short. Boy-short! It was nice enough on the first day, possibly the first week but afterwards, so terrible! I'll never do that again! Especially at a cheap hairdresser! This was our combined birthday/going away party. My hair is blue, but it was hairspray. It was a costume party. Monsters.

May, 2000

That concludes our trip down memory lane. Thanks for laughing as I cringed my way through that! I don't think I'll be doing anything too drastic in a fortnight's time. Winter's coming (apparently... didn't feel like it today) so I might want to keep my hair-scarf!

Those creepy eyes

The other day, perhaps it was last weekend - I couldn't be sure - Atticus grabbed an empty toilet roll, drew a face and requested arms and hair. I happily obliged. I love it when he gets creative and crafty. Elora, of course, quickly followed suit. And repeated it a few days later. (Hey, we have four toilets and five people in this house - we get a lot of empty toilet rolls!)

Their creations are great! Nifty! Neat!


But those eyes. The eyes Elora has drawn give me the creeps... Almost as much as this creation last month. The white clay face was made by Dante at school or aftercare. She added the weirdo baby dolls.


Again with the creepy big eyes...


Shudder.

The tiniest snail

My mother found this in the garden this afternoon. Must have just hatched. So new that its shell was transparent and its body/foot was white! The shell length would have been about 3mm.

Elora was fascinated, of course. Her first instinct was to run and grab a leaf for it to eat. Atti just wanted it on his hand.


Here it is on my mother's thumb. Take note, ladies and gents. That thumb may look pink but it is in fact the brightest shade of green. Plants grow like crazy at my mother's touch. You name it, she can grow it. You almost kill it, she'll revive it. My brothers and I are constantly bringing sorry looking specimens to "plant hospital". She is a wonder, my mum.

Tonight's gem

Travelling home in the car tonight Elora came up with this, out of the blue.

"If I eat lots of cucumbers, because I like eating lots and lots of cucumbers, then I will shoot lazies out of my eyes and shoot them at everybody."

The newest school boy

Atticus started school on Jan 28th, the same day he turned 5! What a momentous occasion - and only now do I find a chance to write about it.

To be honest, I was worried. I mentioned it before. Last year at pre-school was interesting. Troublesome. Terrible. Well, not that terrible - could have been a lot worse. But, after seeing the paediatrician we got him off the medication which is known to cause behaviour problems, over a period of three months. He was completely meds-free a week before he turned 5 and started school (and got a hair cut).

The first day of school was a little fretful (for me, not him - he took it all in his stride, with only the slightest amount of worry glimpsed) and even though it wasn't a really huge step for us (since we've already got a kid in school and Atti has been attending the place for a year, albeit in a separately fenced area) I still found that I got a little emotional that day. No tears but definitely a bit of a lump in my throat. His wonderful godmother came with us that morning, too. How delightfully sweet! Thank you, Anna. It meant a lot to us that you did that! (Just to be fair, though, Dante's godfather did the same on his first day.)

It struck me that up until that morning, Atti did not seem to me to be a small child - he was a big boy, half a head taller than his sister. But seeing him in that red uniform, surrounded by lots of other kids in that same red uniform, he suddenly shrunk! He looked so little! The wonders of perspective, hey?

Now, it's been over a month since he began kindergarten and I have to say, the change is INCREDIBLE. Yes, I'm capitalising that word because I cannot emphasise it enough.

He has just grown up so much! He listens (most of the time) to us. He writes his name beautifully, he colours in inside the lines, draws terrific pictures. He gets himself ready for school in the morning. He doesn't whinge and cry when we tell him "It's a school day." Lately he has started getting really excited about letters and words. "Munching Mike!" he'll exclaim when he sees the letter "m" and "Munching Mike's mum!" when he sees a "M". Also, "Slippery Sam" and "Annie Apple" and I don't know who else. The other night I noticed him looking at the alphabet chart in his room with renewed interest.

I love that alphabet chart by Jan Pienkowski. I loved his drawings when I was a kid. I couldn't resist buying that chart a long time ago. It's a little torn now but still makes me happy and even more now that Atti has taken to it. Not too long ago he asked me to remove it from his room!


His teacher, Sandy, has amazed me, too. She is efficient and friendly but also won't put up with any of Atti's antics. A surprise because she used to be the dance teacher at school and took his class last year at preschool. And he never used to participate. I guess having her every day is very different to having her for one hour once a week.

And he loves being a big boy now. The other day I found something he'd broken at some point and asked him about it. "Oh, yeah. I did that when I was four. I was naughty then but I'm five now."

Dante is a little embarrassed because Atti likes to play with him and his friends at lunch time, but I've also noticed that the boys do play together at home a lot more these days. A couple of weekends ago Atti had a nap and Dante wandered around the house looking a little lost and asking when Atti would get up. It's lovely to see, at long last!

So that's it, in a nutshell. The change has been mind boggling. Exciting and amazing and I am completely floored by it. And so very happy. I feel like a huge weight has lifted from me. I know he'll start to get tired towards the end of the term but I hope things will only get better from here in.

Atti, my little big boy.

Big brother always knows

Have you got a big brother? Or two or three or four, like me? And do you have that unwavering, persistent innate feeling that your big brother(s) is/are omniscient? All knowing? Like me? (A lot of the time, anyway!!)

Yesterday I was talking about classical music with a friend and it brought to mind a memory of my second oldest brother playing his favourites whilst sitting on the floor of the lounge room reading the broadsheet (and having to constantly shoo the cat away - they always like sitting on newspaper, don't they?? Amazing how they know exactly what section you are reading, too). A particular piece came to mind but I had no idea WHO it was by or WHAT it was called.

So I sent off an email to my brothers.

"What's the name of that 'bom' piece? The one that goes dah-da-da-dah... bom."

And sure enough, big brother knew exactly what I was talking about. I knew he would!

Happy birthday, older and wiser big brother Chris!



Rachmaninoff Opus 32 no. 10 (Largo) in B minor

Nice sunrise, beautiful morning

Saturday morning's sunrise. It was a gorgeous morning to be out and I couldn't resist taking this picture with my poor old mobile phone. Still, the natural beauty of the clouds reflected in the (dirty, polluted) river is not entirely lost.

Just thought I'd share.