Powertry

 I did something unusual (for me) (of late) last night.

Well, being out at night was the first bit of unusual - we will check PASSED against the "being able to drive at night" checkbox for our post cataract operation checkbox.

And even though it WAS our anniversary - the traditional gift for sixteen years (I know, that is a BIG number) is apparently NOTHING because its no longer special - V did give me the gift of going out without him last night.

Last night I went to our beautiful little local(ish) bookshop that has some lovely community events.  One is the Book Club that I am part of and meets the last Sunday of the month - and another is the Budding Poets Society.

This image was advertising last night's poetry, not of last night's poetry.  A picture of the organiser and a few enthusiasts in the bookshop.

I used to HAUNT poetry nights.  Back in the day - the day was very, VERY long ago (last century) - I could be found at a poetry afternoon or night or two per week.  In Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane I spent many an hour listening to poets speak their (and occasionally other) words and spoke a few myself. 

Younger me even went to FESTIVALS to listen and speak.

But children - and work and life - came along and the muse took a nap.  I drive a mean spreadsheet and my macros could be called poetry, but my spare time is sparse and bereft of inspirational sparks.  And even were there sparks, the light and energy to capture them is so fleeting that I stopped seeking them out.

So last night, I ventured out.  'Salina is a regular at this event.  She does not write poetry (yet) (she does wield a mean journal though) but has read one of mine there before (The second one in this post - I had forgotten I even went to the workshop!)

The little space was fairly full - probably up to about 20 people - and some beautiful new words being trotted out.

I only have my old work to lean on.  'Salina did "My Addiction" - a poem that used to be one of my standards and a bit of a party piece (oh, my wild days of youth when I knew how to party!!)   

'Salina didn't grow up with her mother dragging her to poetry dives, and so didn't grow up with me reciting this and other things around her, so it was a clean palate that the poem landed on, and she did it justice - and hearing a poem that I know so intimately read with another's interpretation was refreshing.

Everyone got to read up to 2-3 poems, and there was a list for people to put their names down - pre- and post- intermission.  Intermission was nibblies in the room we normally use for the Book Club.

On the list was was a grizzled older poet who had a full life a tales; a (very-nearly) former English teacher; a woman retrospective about life turns; someone who asked for divine guidance in a library to guide her to a book of poems (she found an absolute beauty by a refugee); a man whose health issues have forced symbiosis with poetry; a first-time reader with a lovely snapshot of a relationship end; a lady reading some classic Australian poetry; a woman who interwove some classics with her own.

I read "Drought Breaking" and "The Spinster Song" before intermission, and "Powertry", "Ode to the Dishwasher" and "Fanta Boys" after.

It was fun.

Who knows.  I might even write again.

Thursday in the Key of B Major

 I really think that this wind should blow off to next week.

It's been days since the wind began. It just tuned up Sunday, foxing a pleasant breeze and promises of a paradisical day.

Monday it added raspberries, a soft jazz riff and a hint of cowbell.

Tuesday it turned up the wail and added wah-wah to the mix.

But I didn't mind. I was ensconced in air-conditioned rooms at a workshop for work.

Wednesday the upper layer of the planetary husk started lifting, and a Beethovenic manoeuvre by the local big smoke's Puffing Billy (we are imagining the puff in this electronic era) (and the Billy is really a misnomer too - it is called creative licence) by the local big smoke's Puffing Billy's rail signal network deciding "nah, stuff it, Red it is. We THINK that there might be a train." Right at the crescendo of the peak hour symphony.

The last movement. Today. A westerly came in with Dad to see what all of the fuss was about. It whipped up and down the boulevards of the local big smoke, snaking shortcuts through the coffee shop we dined at. The reverberations rumbled as we manoeuvred bureaucratic bundles and toe curling action.

 Then Dad headed back, his guidance was the ever blackening sky an. 

Lightening and thunder and waves of squalls werr our dinner music and then the rain steadied for a few beats...

Whoops in the Nor-Westerly, swinging the woodwind section in and the house now thrums with piccolo.

Finale.

The Colonisation of Jeanie

 I have always grown up with stories.

There's the ones that Mum and Dad and grandparents and neighbours and classmates and siblings would tell.

And there's the ones that school and radio and books and the telly would give.

Of late I have invested time and money - and a small amount of saliva - into teasing the truth from family  narrative and weaving it with the weft of history.

However history has a way of moving around when you put it under the microscope.

When first I got my results it advised a good dose of Scotland with the rest a brew of basic white girl - the family lore was "English, Scottish, Irish, French, German and whoever else decided to invade ".

But my grandmother always said that her family came from "outside Glasgow".

It was discovered many years later that her family name was on an American college building during a tour my aunt made. She discovered the contribution for the building came from a wealthy local family who had several generations before come from Londonderry. Technically yes, outside Glasgow.

And this many years later, I learned that many Scottish families traversed the sea for generations, following the harvest and being bodies for hire between the geographic boundaries of Scotland and Ireland.

And I learned that my grandmother's mother - a mythical creature even for my grandmother - had a mother born to a Lanarkshire stonemason come publican in Newcastle and an Aberdeenshire lass who had eight children and at least five lived to adulthood.

And my grandmother's grandfather was six years old when he and five siblings and parents travelled from Old Monkland, Lanarkshire   to the brand new world of South Australia, which was apparently in greater need of coal miners than their homeland (and cheaper to send than try to keep alive during famines caused by weather, crop failure and being at the behest of an uncaring class structure - far more common than sanitised history books had me assume).

(LATE EDIT - I had put "possibly on the same ship as two uncles and their TEN children but no wives or mothers" but worked out it was a census when my great-great-grandmother was 18 - her father and uncle had these 10 including her aged down to 4 with no mother and she was the oldest.)

And then I discovered that another forbear may have come indirectly via Ireland during the plantations experiences of the 18th and 19th centuries and have done a deep dive into podcasts about that on a few long drives of late.

Hooboy. 

No convicts. No royalty. Just a lot of callouses in this tree.

And then - Ancestry have had a good hard look at the data collected vs the data assessed and the imaginary lines that used to often move as fealties and armies waxed and waned and have "upgraded" and my brew of basic white girl is now more English than Scot. 

(And Danish, Dutch and Icelandic touches rather than the previous tones of Norway and Wales)

Still callouses. Still white. 

Bloody colonisation happening even to my DNA.

Still. Outside Glasgow!

The land of the long weekend

 We do love a long weekend, and thanks to Bonnie King Charlie we got one.

Mind you, I still give kudos to his Mum. I always do that with birthday greetings since motherhood arrived upon me - it's the anniversary of them being your parent - the birthday person had very limited control over the matter, whereas the giver of birth had time ahead to anticipate the occasion.

We had a lovely one to, with a few unspoken milestones reached, a successful social outing and a wonderful genealogical breakthrough or two.

I awoke this morning and contemplated my paternal great-great-grandmother, who has long been a bit of a brick wall. She was a Jane - I have a few - and her surname is relatively common. I had her father's name - a John - and very little detail regarding the mother apart from her first name.

I did not even know if she were a colonial, a migrant or a convict. Just that she married my great-great-grandfather and they had 3 sons - 1 who died in childhood and the other 2 who were migrating north as she entered old age.

I googled the parent names and the area that she married and a very peculiar and Australian name appeared. VERY peculiar and Australian.

Apparently not that far from where my great-great-grandparents lived. And they had a Facebook page for history.

So I asked the question. "I was wondering" I said, and "would you know".

Not only was a local historical receptacle of information able to answer my query, she was a direct descendant of the sister.

The same 13 year old sister my great-great-grandmother had brought out with her when she was an old maid of 26 from a pretty dire economic situation in Northern Ireland.

And apparently the same sister who had married at not too great a distance from where my Jane had found wedded bliss with her equally geriatric 27yo Cambridgeshire fellow that had swept her off her feet (I mean, isn't that what 19th century marriage was all about?)

And another poster piped up that at least 2 other sisters had migrated there either with Irish husband in tow or finding one pronto on landing.

In the space of less than one hour I had not just found a whole family for her, I had found a story and a tribe of sisters around.

And I love that she was a laundress. I wonder if she was a pegger?

She had a photo of their great-great-grandmother and, although a different age than my photo of ours, there was absolutely no doubt about their genetic link.

Blink Twice if you are okay

 So yes, Debby, the second operation was on Wednesday.

I am on the other side safely.

 

I would be holding a newspaper, but they aren't a thing any more around here.

Wednesday was, by all accounts, a beautiful day - I did wake with a slight niggle of a headache, but I thought little of it.  I had eaten my last food well before the midnight deadline, and was on water until 9am as it looked like I was a fairly late in the list.

Turns out, however, that the slight niggle of a headache was in fact the migraine fairy's gift, and by the time I thought "hmm, I should hit it with the good medicine" (as I now know from previous experience I am allowed to) it had amped up to the second cycle of migraine hell, whereby all within is evacuated.

By the time I got into the hospital, we were at the far end of this cycle, which means that the nurses could tell pretty soon that I was to be put in a dark corner to endure my misery without too much interruption.

Unfortunately, hospitals work on systems - and not all hospitals are equal.

The first eye operation occurred in a very old hospital in town - I have now had 3 operations in that one, and, while "very old" is the first expression that comes to mind, very organised and efficient can also be applied.

This operation is the second that I have had in the newer hospital - the other being the colonoscopy in 2020 linked above - and I don't know if my experience tainted by both being associated with migraines, but this go around was neither organised nor efficient - at least, not from the dark corner in which I lay moaning.

In their haste to get me through to this side of the waiting area, they failed to stash my personal belonging - that oversight required far more interaction than I could actually consciously navigate.

The other hospital has a nurse hand-off protocol to the pre-theatre room which has an extremely well-organised nurse's station.  This one had a row of chairs, a few beds and the nurse balancing files and pre-op requirements on a small desk.

They lost my file.  They failed to give me a shower cap (not so technical term for the keeping of hair out of ones eyes - or indeed theatre - when one's eye is to be operated on).  The man in the next bed droned on and on about his numerous surgeries at the hospital, casually throwing racist terminology about and using his deafness and age as an excuse for ignorance. 

The nurse was not the best at administering eye-drops - I mean, I may not have been the best at receiving eye-drops also, given the sheer effort to open my eyes at that point, but she was very short with my shortcomings in that regard and did nothing to up her own game.

Then they had a poor student nurse come around and check vitals and details - I advised the one vital I required - stat (I love medical terminology) - was an emesis bag (see, another medical term!) and the poor dear didn't have the time (or training) to pull the curtains closed before I used it.

The anaesthetic nurse then came down to see what was the go, and after a discussion with the Dr advised I could stay and have it or come another day - given the 100% rate of migraines for operations in this hospital, I figured have it I would - and she put some drugs in the dripline to help me through. 

There was a short comedy routine about finding something to put the drip bag onto - I thought that surely there must be something attached to the whizz bang hospital bed to use given ironing boards in the 1970s had already dealt with similar requirements - holding something high attached to the hot thing moving around on the horizontal surface - but finding such a thing was outside their scope.  When the orderly finally arrived to wheel me down to the corridor outside the next waiting area before theatre he proved my theory right.

I remember absolutely NOTHING about the operation.  

The usual sandwiches (one meat & pickles, one ham, tomato & cheese) and the cup of coffee for post recovery that they gave me (instant, white) were A-MA-ZING (after I removed the plastic cheese)!  I think there is extra chew in the crusts of hospital sandwiches or something.

I didn't really come out of the migraine stupor until about 8pm that night.

The general routine for my ophthalmologist is to do checkups the next day, and they have found a little bit of a pressure issue in the second eye, which, while it is not entirely unusual can be a concern when you have an added layer of WTF with your eyes, so that means closer monitoring - and the joy of some sulphur tablets for two days.

The side effects of sulphur tablets (besides, hopefully, fixing the pressure in the eye) is it is a diuretic (so more weeing), may make me feel nauseous, my food taste awful and possible headaches.

The good news is I can see distances without glasses!!  I still need something for reading, but was able to, for the first time in my life, go into the chemist and buy some cheapies from their stand.  They all looked ugly, so I bought the ugliest (and cheapest) pair that I could.

And in the blink of an eye

 So I am on the other side of the operation and it went very well. Very blessed indeed.

Of course, now that means that I have one far superior eye and my view slants to the left, but what is new! (A little political/physical play there for folks that require the explanation).

My life is a regimen of bells and whistles alerting me throughout - get up, prepare breakfast/lunch/leftovers, get dressed, get going, set up, eat breakfast, call my parents, start work, inbox, workflow, meetings, teams, discussions, deadlines, lunch, budgets, pack up, drive, collect daughter from school, drive, get home, set up, start work, phone calls, problem solving, spreadsheets, macros, shut down, pack away, prep dinner, argue with teenager about setting the table,  drink wine, watch a quiz show, cook dinner, watch local news, eat dinner, argue with teenager about eating habits, watch sitcom, argue with teenager about clearing the table, shower, get tablets, watch cop show with teenager, argue with teenager about phone usage (while sharing the couch - it's our us time - we bond over Bradford), bedtime routine, sleep.

Since the op, I have had to fit in four rounds of eyedrops in the good eye.

I was talking to V this evening.

"You have to remember" I told him " that she is a 14yo girl, and there is nothing more argumentative in the world than a 14yo girl."

He raised his eyebrows (as apparently neither of us were blessed with the cool single -eyebrow-arching trait).

"I was actually known as anything-for-an-argument-Jeanie when I was a teenager, because I used to argue anything."

"Used to?" he said.

I have not done much in the way of genealogy for a while. I have wintered with a few shows courtesy of Netflix of late.

I did Bridgerton. Apparently all of the mothers of 14yo girls are watching. I think that I might have found out why.

Queen Charlotte, The Queen's Gambit and Inventing Anna took me through the last few weeks. I am a very slow binger, falling asleep before an episode is through. How lucky are we that this is a possible way to watch, pausing for another 20 minutes tomorrow as opposed to the good old days of what you slept through you missed and waiting for next week's episode of my childhood?

12 days until the next eye gets done.

Pirate Leave 1

 I am officially on my first round of "Pirate Leave" from work.

I could have had my last food at 4am (I didn't, I slept instead) and am on water until 9am (man the coffee smells good).

10.15 I am expected at the hospital and they are doing "the good eye" first.

I am a bit anxious. 

I don't do leave. I mean I do, but generally it is in order to be busy elsewhere. I don't actually know how to relax these days, and reading is my general relaxation outlet when enforced. 

There are 3 weeks between this operation and the other to ensure that pressures stay on track due to the Fuchs factor. Apparently I can pop the lens of my glasses on the done eye and I might be useful - I have threatened to be the blind sage in the corner at work should that not be the case. 

Of course, that is dependant on my driving ability - I currently have custom hours so I don't drive in the dark so I do have a workstation set up at home. I don't mind working from home, but it does make a bit of a disconnect from the team camaraderie.

Anyway, that is my day ahead - handing over control and hoping for the best.

See you the other side.

Five go driving around Tasmania

.

December 1983 if memory serves me right.

We were in boarding school by then. I think that it was the last big holiday before BushBabe's last year of school - or maybe it was a year either way?

Anyway, I was at that rather gangly age where society and I weren't gelling all that well, and my beautiful mother decided she would try to make my awkwardness better by getting a local dressmaker to make me some clothing that would make me feel that much more uncomfortable out and about all over the nation.

It took a full day of driving for us to get to Brissy, where we stayed with the wonderful Grandma Mart.

She met us at the door, cigarette holder in one hand, hat and gardening gloves in the other.

Several times she stressed the importance of booking two taxis to get us to the airport at 5. There were two very good reasons for her not to offer her services.

The first was she had only obtained her licence the decade prior, in her sixties and newly widowed, and coming back from the airport into Brisbane peak hour traffic required a level of insanity it took years of practice to even attempt.

And the second was she didn't do Five AM.

However the taxi telephonist and Dad knew better, so it was at the ungodly hour of five am that we learned what Grandma was trying to save us from.

Whilst the taxi did indeed have five passenger seats, it also had newly converted to LPG per new taxi legislation, which meant that approximately half of his bootspace had been given to the tanks.

For a moment the taxi driver and Dad both believed that they could convince Mum to leave half of the luggage behind rather than look for a better solution.

When we got to Launceston, however, it turned out that the hire car was a sedan. Mum had not had a sedan for years for good reason. She was an awesome packer of cars but preferred to err on the side of more than enough room rather than anything resembling minimalism.

The thing about Launceston is there is so much history involving sinking buildings - PLUS it rained so much that the buildings that we were in felt like they were sinking.

The drive South involved a lot of historic sights, and then Port Arthur (pre-massacre but still gruesome enough) and the arguments regarding the Casino.

Nowhere else had a Casino in the country at the time, so Dad was petitioning Mum for them both to attend, as he didn't want to attend alone. Mum was pulling the "but I am a mother of children and I never could leave them alone" card. BushBabe threw in her offer to accompany Dad and pretend a 3-15 month older.

Again, nobody won.

Rounding the bottom of Tasmania, we drove through amazing forests with strange little timber towns that travellers dare not stop for fear of the locals.

One experience that I will never forget is rounding one corner of those woody hills to the stark nudity of the hills around Queenstown, Tasmania. Due to some fallout from mining - or the industry surrounding it - vegetation had all fled. It was cold and windy and miserable and the car was silent for the Queenstown to Strahan leg of the journey.

The Gordon below Franklin argument had just been had, and even hardened country voters had paid attention to the plight.

All I remember of the cruise that we went on is seeing some more historical sites, relics of man's inhumanity to man.

All I remember of the last leg of our journey was there were poppies - and big signs saying not to stop. I got apple perfume from somewhere.  Oh, and Mum nearly got blown down by the draft of a big truck and someone had snails or spatchcock or something French and fiddly at an overly dark restaurant.

I would say Happy National Chocolate with Almonds day, but

 that was yesterday.

Today is actually State Revolution Day, which I thought must be something to do with Argentina as it's Argentina Independence Day, but apparently something to do with 1932 and the Paulistas and Brazil. I must admit that I am very uneducated about South American history, but I can blurrily trace the lineage of the  monarchy back to Stephen, which has been useful.

It is also NAIDOC week. NAIDOC Week will celebrate and recognise the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

I find it sad that so many people fear looking frankly at such a situation and instead of thinking "what can we all do together to make it better" the way that they used to, command "Hush. Eyes in front".

I miss having an inquisitive voice. I never realised - or forgot - that I used to be reticent to take anything at face value, but my mother showed me through example the power of seeking understanding without bludgeoning - or being bludgeoned - with doggerel and sneer - or smear.

I digress. I am sorry.

I had a lovely long weekend getaway to the house of a very old friend.  

I got to listen to a curated soundtrack of my - well, in the good old days her seat would have held the navigator, but in this day and age she merely had to choose the right settings on Google maps - so offsider would have to be the term, so my offsider that was interesting.

 I was reminded a little of who I used to be many, many moons ago.

We got to fall in love with a little dog and old cat and ate and drank and shopped (within our very specific limits).

We chose recipes for a dish for a shared feast.

For old times sake, I developed a migraine (hours after boasting of their dearth) and thus thrust the responsibility of dessert on the offsider and old friend.

I got better enough to enjoy a gathering of friends, including six women aged 14 to over 5 times that (although most of us were shy of sixty) (goodness that came quick).

We discovered just how delicious grapefruit can be in this: A Zest For Life - glorious-grapefruit-sherbert-with-three-ingredients-vegan/

I got to have a talk on the phone with my Mum. I am so thankful for modern technology. Dad was preparing for a day afield, and she was manning the fort.

I miss my Mum. Too often she is only the other person in the room when having my morning phone call with Dad, as her mind is easily cloudy these days and he is craving human contact - but this one morning over the weekend she picked up the phone and she was sharp and wisps of the witty woman that she was fluttered in.

Bookending such a lovely weekend was EOFY workloads that can only be understood if you have ever worked in a finance team in the trenches at this time of year.

* I just read about Palau Constitution Day and I am starting to think that the world is being rewritten by AI and/or it is time for me to sleep.

Night All.

June!

 I know that I am stating a known fact when I say "June! What the?"

Because yesterday was February, right? 1992?

Where has the time gone? Blink of an eye, this year - and yet a year ago seems at times a lifetime.

The 36 hours of my weekend were 1/6 driving, 1/9 sleeping, 2/11 on the sidelines in hospital, 1/13 having cups of tea, 1/50 waiting for take away, 1/18 watching the Broncos lose (I lie - they only lost the 2nd half), 1/29 cooking in a hurry, 1/40 on the phone, 1/100 waking up with the sun streaming in as the vestiges of Rage Against The Machine's "killing in the name of" played out (it must have been in my dream as I cannot imagine Macka playing it on Australia All Over which is mandatory Sunday fare at Mum and Dad's).

I also spent about 2/79 sorting through a third of a box of paperwork - letters home from boarding school and later from my siblings and I - and those from their parents to them. Dad has been threatening to dump the box as he is sick of sorting through all the stuff. Mum is no longer in a position to help and we are all so busy.

I am so blessed that I can recognise at a glance whose handwriting is whose. Grandma Jean's curlicues and flourishes, Grandma Mart's "chicken scratch" (she called it) from her years of education in a left-unfriendly system, my sister's precision lines and my brother's bold round writing - and mine.

Mine is where we can be glad that computers were invented.

I also invested five minutes in walking down to the Dr station with the patient and another maybe 3 in him pronouncing her fine to be busted out with no more clues as to what took her there in the first place.

We had waited 20x that length of time waiting for them to do so of their own accord.

Apologies, future medical interaction recipients, but the annoying advocate wanting attention that you may meet was made no longer meek from this.

But I also got at least 50 hugs across the weekend, so that's good.

One of whom sat next to the spouse of someone who has been diagnosed covid.

Then again, the Dr who assessed at both A&E and who we got the release from had a terrible hack from "the dry air" so who knows.

Good thing that it's now endemic, hey?

Detritus

 I, too, fell foul of exactly the same issue as this gent when younger. (Link is to an article titled "I just realized I’ve been misspelling and mispronouncing “detritus” all my life." by Dennis G. Jerz)

Like until about last year.

But I have a far firmer hold onto the detritus of life these days.

Or it on me.

About seven years ago, when working at a small community organisation, I had cause to attempt to document and archive a few rooms for the organisation.

One of the issues facing such small community organisations is that even smaller community organisations have need to dissolve and find a willing resting place in the original small community organisation.

An when they do they leave donations. Some welcome, like currency, and some endured, like histories and files.

Finding the balance between being ruthless and being nostalgic is sometimes difficult in small community organisations.

But sometimes you have to let it drift off with the tide.

It's a bit like being a middle-aged people-pleasing person who receives overtures of friendship from another and, not wanting to appear to be elitist or standoffish, does not firmly say no to overtures of friendship.

One hopes, statistically, that such a response would be the winning option.

But (as I experienced only last weekend) it really only takes one experience of the overturee demanding as price for receipt of this "overture of friendship" that you be available at all times to be the recipient of "overtures of friendship" and if you fail to respond in as alacritius a time as they see fit they react in ways that make you think "hmm, there is something in that  elitist or standoffish option after all."

Finding the balance between being elitist and being friendly is sometimes difficult for  a middle-aged people-pleasing person.

Sometimes the tide is assisted by a deluge. Sometimes white ants.

And sometimes you need to hose.

Once upon a time in Vegas

 One thing that I love about reminiscing about places that I have lived is that I have had many to choose from.

Although I have been in Paradise for the entirety of this blog's life, prior to that I lived in many parts of the Eastern Seaboard of this continent. Mainland only.

The first quarter of my life I lived only two places, but between the post-school era and the pre-Paradise phase, I had over twenty addresses in a decade and a half.

Not long after I returned to Vegas (the fond nickname for the State Capital, as opposed to the Nevada destination)(during the latter stages of that time), I met 'Salina's Dad and not long after that I moved in with him. And during that while I had the most beautiful landlord and landlady couple.

George and Georgina lived down the road and around the corner from the duplex that was their retirement plan.  They lived underneath that house, and their adult son or daughter's family lived upstairs.

Georgina always wanted to feed you something when you arrived. Their flat was a large kitchen/dining/rumpus room. I remember nothing else of it - I suppose it had a bathroom and bedroom, but this huge low room had her command centre in the kitchen corner. 

This was where she could see who was coming and things on the stove (like a rich stew)or in the oven (perhaps kourabiedes) and the grandkids playing or watching television or doing homework. Or the tenants bringing by their rent.

George going down to his patch and then coming back with offerings.

George had a steep backyard, unsuitable for playspace or lawn. But with post-war Greek economic refugee ethic, he carved a staircase and his garden from this slope.  Every piece of exposed earth had purpose, with compost and mulch and a scraggly orchard (a mango in the corner) and at the bottom, a cement blocking rectangle housed hip height beds around three sides and a seat along the middle and a shaded end with a frame and chain link enclosing the whole structure of absolute bounty.

Playing Angels

 To put this into context, the school of my childhood was regulation small. Two teachers with 20-40 kids across eight years.

The working bee to make the playground after the septic system was installed had several tractors at it's disposal, and a full contingent of outdoors men all trying to outdo one another.

It was the playground of kids dreams. 

There was a cubby house made of an old electric wire spool that could house three little kids - bright red with a door and a window cut in;

A swinging bridge with timber planks strung by high -tensile cables across 80 metres of gully:

A pyramid of logs bolted together with big industrial nuts - steampunk before it's day;

A treehouse with a ladder through the middle and rails all around, Swiss Family Robinson style. ***

There were four girls and a boy in my year. One, occasionally two the year above us and one, occasionally two the year below. **

There was J, the tall, confident one; S, the pretty blonde exuding a tough skin; H, the feisty, sporty redhead - and me, the nerd. I devoured long words for breakfast, dreamed over recipes for food that I would never eat, and observed from the sidelines in hindsight a lot. ****

This , of course, made it ideal for us to take on the roles of Charlie's Angels*, being action heroes across the swinging bridge in the downtown of our imagination. We would entice littler kids, who were always harassing us to get them to do so, to be the Mexicans or bank customers or spies in our dramatics.

J and S (& occasionally W from the year below) were hybrid Jill/Kris Munro characters, while H and I were Sabrina/Kelly girls. It is one of my strongest childhood memories.

That and the night where I wore pyjamas out to dinner.

* Recently at work I joked about us being (insert my boss's name here)'s Angels and realised that I am now from the television equivalent of three Charlie's Angels generations ago. I discovered that those that I work with have only a historical knowledge of the original cast, and were comparing the Netflix series with the movies! Plural!

** I went to a school jubilee - I was going to say the other day but it would be twenty years ago now - and saw the boy from my year. We occasionally granted him the role of Charlie, but generally we never heard boo from M.

"What did you do?" I asked him.

"I played a lot with boys either 2 years older than me, or 2 years younger," he replied.

*** A year or so after I left that school, the education department did a safety audit and found the playground wanting. The cubby house was a great place for kids to hide after lunch if they didn't want to go back inside, the swinging bridge was a falls risk and the cable was shedding shards of steel fibres, the nuts were accidents just waiting to happen and the logs were extremely effective at camouflaging snakes, and there was no paperwork whatsoever on the treehouse! It was demolished.

**** I only today realise what The Spice Girls were emulating - Us!!!

The Middle

 Statistically, middles were approaching extinction until the intervention of both the pragmatism of need for aged-care workers and the whimsy of big family Mum bloggers.

In the good old days, families writhed with multiple marriages and fluctuating child records by the score - the role of the middle was shared by many, easily outnumbering the sole oldest of the brood and the never-really-sure-of-their-retainment-of-their-title youngest child. With the balancing equation of mortality, the middle was the far likeliest title of whoever you met.

In the modern world, however, we have our time-saving devices and keeping more and more people alive in more age categories and ability to control our fertility and make considered choices about the children that we conceive and carry. 

Is the most numerous the oldest now? 

This was by the logic that every oldest has been the youngest but not every youngest has been the oldest. Does that work?

Only children can be both.

 It takes at least three children to even get one precious middle these days.

Of course, once you get over 3, the middles are the majority.

I do know that when you come from a family of three, and you were the middle, you were never the only child at home.

Put away the violins! That wasn't what I meant. 

I read an article tonight about kids going to kindy at 3, and the family folklore was that my big sister was sent to kindy early as she would get bored at home.

 These days I think that it was for Mum to catch her breath in dealing with the "dream" of having a big kid and a baby, but that took a thick lens of hindsight.

I also think that big sister missed having her Mum. Both of them did. 

By the time I was a big kid, Mum had my baby brother AND a schoolgirl to juggle.

I never got her alone.

Then I look at the family of my 6th great-great-grandfather, born himself in the melee in the middle of 6, then had 13 children with two wives, all peasant labourers in small neighbourhood communities where at least two generations either side had come from less than 5 miles away.

All very, very middle.

Now we three are dealing with being there more for our parents. Pretty darned happy that I am one of three.

And the middle. Love you both heaps (& your spouses)

BTW history nuts - I googled "what happened in 1703 UK" and found out about the great storm. Oh my.

Sonny and the Crew

 One of the benefits of genealogy is you get to be a detective and imagine lives from clues. You also get to look at loved ones and think "the world has seen this before" or "ahh, now I see why".

I never met my father-in-law. For the early years of our marriage, V's father was a very (very) rare late night phone trip. But when he did, he was quite the tripper. 

I can still remember our first conversation. There was a string of words presented to me that rang like poetry and made me have to think - while at the same time making no logical sense whatsoever.

There is no way in this world could I ever imagine my father in the same communicative space as him.

But when you open the doors to generations above, you realise that you are cracking the books on whole different genres of lives.

In the last years of his life, however, he was a regular Saturday afternoon converser. Over several conversations he gave me clues about his family. 

(It's such a pity we have the technology in this day and age to be concerned about privacy that I obscure it, because it's a really cool name.)

Now that I have started to scratch the surface on the family tree, while I have not yet found one or two mentioned who were real people in his recollection, the few that I have found makes up  for some of that.

Another benefit of genealogy is seeing the real impact of economics and geography on groups of people through time, as well as the social effects of education and religion and alcohol and music and sugar and sobriety and shame and acceptance through a lens of history.

So while I can find five generations of working with animals going back through the same names on different continents in this section of my family library (mimes a bookshelf), there and there I have two sides of Crimean War fallout,  here we have several generations of marry early, marry often, and light on the paperwork trail Americans wandering around Missouri from Civil War days (I have now learned at least three things more about Missouri in the  Civil War) before the desperate gallop each generation to get to California.

It's been very enlightening.

Pre-dawn musings before a drive

 I am not a fan of being cold.

I didn't waken that way however. I woke up hot from too many covers and in a strange bed (at Mum and Dad's place).

I am over here because the long awaited road trip is finally looking like all ducks align (crossing as many bones as possible).

My mind then switched to grinding on whatever subject handy rather than putting itself back to sleep mode - and through throwing off the hot covers am now shivering despite piling them all back on.

Insomnia has been known to plague me, and generally at home I will get up and do it sleep eludes after a certain amount of time. I don't have that luxury here.

From the bed, however, I have planned potential routes for the road trip ahead with Dad.

D'ye Ken John Boyd

 I figure,  with the profligacy of John Boyd's in the world - and the proliferation of progeny of their offspring, chances are we are all descendants of a John Boyd.

My John Boyd was a Scot, a stone mason and a man who sat on council in the new land, one who signed a public letter of thanks to certain crew members of the ship he sailed out on, 

and one who hosted his daughters' double wedding.

Romantic? Or Canny Scot?

I know all of this through the little bit of research that I have done myself.

For Mother's Day I got myself an Ancestry deal - and the "grab a bargain" part of the deal (I wonder where I got that from) meant that I had to dedicate myself to exploration of that forest.

I found his Margaret, I found that he was also, apparently, a publican (that counterbalances the sheer weight of abstinence society founders in another branch) -  I even found a photo of either him with his brothers - or his son, also John Boyd, and his other sons. Whoever they were, I wouldn't mess with them!

And he is just 1 of the 32 of his generation in my tree.

(When researching for a photo for the above facts, I came upon:

-  a John Boyd who may have been instrumental in sending my John Boyd out - for history geeks check this article!!!!!

 - a John Boyd that comes with a trigger warning  - link contains explicit descriptions of court charges and the offence as well as editorial comment.

Hopefully not my John Boyd - This article from 24 August 1861 - 162 3/4 years ago and published in the Sydney Mail, page 6 on a Saturday - could be written today.)

 - and a John Boyd reference in an article where the sheer number of topics covered 

  just tickled me 

- OMG a John Boyd instrumental in an amazing rescue 

I must stop now because they keep coming and I must get to bed. So - do you ken any John Boyds?

Herr Otto Hug

 Enquiring minds wish to know: 

What is a medical clairvoyant?

Instead of "Dr, what is wrong with me?" you ask "what is GOING to be wrong with me?"

I wonder how he would be with cataracts? Or Fuchs? Or health insurance claims?

How handy would he BE to have around - although would the forward warnings about ladders and mushroom meals be enough to avert any medicinal maelstrom - or would the harbingers of demise cloud his judgement?

Good thing he is going to Rocky next week...

Earliest Trove sighting 23 September 1878

He is advertising that he is going to be "removed" - I wonder if he saw that coming?

5 May 1880

( can't seem to share the photo of the above, but the above link is worth a look - he does appear to be more than your average medical clairvoyant!)

Below the guy one column over is offering Allan's AntiFat so it puts it into context - and the ad above Herr Otto's is for the principal and vice-principal position of the brother school to my high school - even though they have long Meghan Markled us.

June 25 1880

Qld Health, we may have found the solution to the regional medical crisis!

Mayday - and other maritime adventures

 Happy May day.

Over here it is the first day of Winter.

I greeted the day with tshirt and three Sun salutations at my yoga class. We ended it with parent teacher interviews.

However my evening got hijacked by a chance encounter with an article in the personal section of a northern newspaper in 1920.

this article

I was actually looking for his wife to check on when she was meant to have arrived and found an article that took James Augustus Edwards from "veteran of the Crimean War" (from an article about his son) and "bad author (from unkind - but probably true - reviews) to "orphan at 10, at sea at 13, cabin boy to a newspaper artist on Crimean warship at 14, ran away to Australia at 15" & more & more in a happy 79th birthday greeting.

Odds are, he might even be in this picture - Sunday morning divine service on board the "Caesar" in the Baltic fleet.

I Can't Drive 55

Remember when pen-pals were a thing?  

At boarding school a fad went around in 1983-ish whereby a certain magazine in the library had an advertisement towards the back of a completely legit international company that specialised in connecting young people to like-minded penpals for a very reasonable rate - and young ladies at the establishment flocked at the chance.

Of course, we all wanted a cute 16 year-old boy (added bonus enough brains to be engaging).

There was one girl  in our class who did receive such a penpal - I still remember her name,(but alas his is lost to the annals of time).

But apparently the odds were not in my favour - as the majority of applicants were 14 year-old girls looking for cute 16 year-old boys.

Nearly everyone was slightly disappointed.

But I ended up with 2 decent girls - one French who shared my name, and one US girl who shared tapes and introduced me to US music.

Unfortunately my follow-through with long-term projects could be dated from that point. I am to blame. I kept meaning to send a reply... I am not sure who sent the final missive but I should have still made an effort.

Anyhoo. That wasn't what I was going to write.

I had a fully developed concept of how THAT title was to smoothly segue into giving you an adventure of cake.

I had an RDO yesterday and went to my happy place, playing in the kitchen.

• I made cupcakes. 
• Gluten-free Carrot and Pineapple Cupcakes
•  Pecan Carrot and Chocolate Cupcakes

The icing is cream cheese, butter, pure icing sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and lime juice.

Not a redeeming feature in sight. (And oh look -jeanieVision TM)

But alas twas not to be.

We  had one each at work today. (We = my corridor and the next over - including payroll. You gotta include payroll!) - we did!

Enjoy one with your cuppa.

Cheers.

The Lounge of the Ladies at Legs Eleven

 

Many, many, many moons ago (when I was a sophisticated young lady of 24) I lived a lovely life in a cute little cottage in the middle of Sydney town.

My flatmate (2 years my senior and in each other's friendship - and indeed flatmate - circle for most of our adult years) and I spent about $100 (do you know I cannot accurately remember) each a week to live there.

Parking was difficult (although not as bad as another place I lived in not long after with her) and it was surrounded by industry - although there were other dwellings too.

The front wall fronted the footpath and was a dark green, The door red and every portal barred but plain.

(This is the house 13 years later than this tale is set - the stripes were not there when I lived there)

Inside some renovation had occurred. The floors were board and upstairs had two tiny bedrooms, one with a Shoji door and a secret balcony.

But not all.

The bathroom and kitchen were original, with exposed (but not in a cool, steampunk way) pipes.

The back "veranda" the sink where the back yard drained and slugs gathered - and that you had to traverse in torrential Sydney downpours to get to the loo.

This was 1993.

A lot happened that year. A lot happened in the world that I was unaware of - for this was pre-internet and we didn't have a television.

We were young. We went to movies and coffee shops and poetry readings and markets and worked and sewed clothes and saw bands and went to parties. 

We wrote letters and played records and cooked feasts and drank wine and played cards and backgammon and talked on telephone (but this was also pre-mobile phones so if you were out you were out and you maybe had an answering machine and you did you had to remember to turn it on) :(

And I wrote and friends would gather for feasts and wine and board games and music and talking - and I would read them the next instalment of the fairy tale that I was writing. Some of them even appreciated me doing so.

Ah.

But then I got a boyfriend and - well, and some other stuff happened and we moved on.

But there was a time...

Another 13 years between the first pic and this - in its most recent Google Maps portrait - 2000

Part of the Team

 As you may know, I am loathe to talk about my work. 

For many, many, many years, I was a temp, which was a fun career adventure trek until it was no longer fun. Mind you, it was the "it was no longer fun being a temp" was mildly better than the sheer dissolution (desolation) of hope that was "my first real full-time job in decades" lobbed hand-grenade. Shudder.

But this job. Chef's kiss in so many ways. I get to help people on several levels who can't rely on help elsewise. I get to use the mathematical and problem solving skills that excite my brain. And I get to work surrounded by a  bunch of wonderful people.

If only there were 2 of me. Or even 1.5.

And we were both paid more.

Finding royalty in genealogy

 Firstly, to cut to the chase, no actual corporeal royal's in the family chronicles - although it was courtesy of the Royal Family that my great-great-grandfather came to these shores.

And no, not that sort of Australian Royalty that has convictions and convicts.

Just an Irish labourer in Liverpool looking for a chance at a better life, who grasped it between potato famine back home and gold fever induced labour shortages ahead aboard a newly built schooner called the Royal Family.

(I would love to link to a picture here - search for "royal family" 1863 liverpool melbourne and you can see her)

Generally my hours between Paris going to bed and me doing the same is enforced research time on the couch.

My genealogy research is based currently on what I can find out for free. Investment may come when I retire but right now it's a hobby.

Anyhoo it's not that easy finding information on anything of that name, apart from the Royal Family (people) and Royal Family (toast recipients) in the 1860s.

At first I cast the net too wide, but could not resist a peak at how tame or royals are, comparatively...

Young Bomba and his better half Launceston Examiner Thursday 2 January 1862 - Page 5

TW - motherhood exemplified in the good old days 

Discipline of the Royal Family of England 

(courtesy of the Rochester Democrat via the San Francisco Herald)

Bell's Life in Sydney and Sporting Chronicle Saturday 19 January 1861 - Page 4

TW - this was a tolerant and accepting racial view for its time 

An Interesting Marriage at Brighton 

(Gymnastics Training)

The Herald (Melbourne) Thursday 30 October 1862 - Page - 7

Before finally I found the boat

By Electric Telegraph 

Geelong Advertiser Saturday 7 February

... and then straight down a rabbit hole I went 

Eight of the Lancashire bellringers - contributed very much to enliven the monotony of the voyage 

The Age Friday February 9 1863 - Page 5

I will bet they did 

by the Royal Family ... we may see an improved style of bellringing

The South Australian Advertiser Saturday February 14 1863 - Page 2 

And don't you imagine Mr George Coppin being some sort of wheeler-dealer! Added bonus in the above is reading of the furore created by the Christie Minstrel

There was a completely different story linked when I then found the dream business opportunity!

The Solitude Station - business opportunity 

The Age Friday February 20 1863 - Page 2

All from the comfort of my couch.

I also found Republican stirring and religious upheaval and Prince Albert dying and etiquette guidance and.

And now my hours between Paris going to bed and me doing the same are up.

Good night 💤 

Labels and little jars

 One of the great gifts that I have received over the years was a labelmaker.

(I could have sworn that I have whinged upon it in the past, but the delights of the deep freeze lottery must have featured more on the unblogged part of my life. I can only find one example)

The upside of a labelmaker is it's a viable option almost guaranteed to ensure that you know what is inside a container - much better than that "oh, I'll remember what that is" technique relying wholly on one person's memory.

Unfortunately for my late in the day conversion to this revolutionary concept, the corporate world of greed snuck under my radar and convinced me that the label tapes that I required to replenish last month would be most economically achieved if I bought a job lot - and the job lot had a mix of colours and the first colour chosen was gold.

My decision was made without full knowledge of how ineffective as labels they would be because that colour and my eyesight...

and yes, that label does call it Beef Not Madras Curry.

Because sometimes the old "oh, I'll remember what that is" technique works, as in the fenugreek leaves on the left 

 - but sometimes it fails, as in the Not Madras Curry Powder on the right.

I give spice mixes as gifts, as I love cooking and trying out lots of recipes (especially those from India and Sri Lanka) and a lot of my friends also love food but "wouldn't have all of those spices".

I have all of those spices. (and oh look, you get to view it in JeanieVision(TM) )

So while I made them up for Christmas, I made extra for myself.

It was nice.

But Not Madras.

The Ditch

 I got to pondering tonight about...

• The difference between the life that I led when I wrote my first ever (well second, but first "real") blog posts. I wonder who that first ever commenter was?
• The ditch between my culture and that of my husband's family's locale;
• And the distance between the start of the month and now.

Apparently there are similarities - I still whinge verbosely, we share a vernacular and it's still April. (Still?! Already!)

V is home and actually haler than he has been for some time. He now realises that the agonising pain that he had been in for the best part of this year - and the lack of energy and drive - had a root cause and was not the sum lot of his life.

The close call last week has opened the door to his heart blockage being fixed - and released him from about 5-6 points on the pain scale. He said tonight that it is easier to be happy when you're not in pain the whole time.

I have a generally very busy job and am lucky that my work can be done from home, so I could be with Paris during school holidays and work around V being in hospital and then recuperating at home.

I don't ever discuss my work on here but believe me that it has been crazy busy for the last 2 weeks and me not going on a planned trip with my dad to visit an old relative right now meant it only got to boiling point today rather than exploded spectacularly.

But then there's this...

And I have an RDO tomorrow, and the promise of a beautiful, fine, early Autumn day - and a rewarding job with my beautiful child and a ute to fill.

And V can supervise and smile.

Puzzle

 I was doing Sexaginta-quattuordle this morning. (I do it most days at varying times).

This is a word game where you have 70 goes to work out 64 five-letter words. (Although it does have an auto complete mode so technically you don't have to actually nut out ALL 64 words).

There is a technique that I have learned for this game. You can get up to five words incorrect, so the first three should use all the vowels and as wide a variety of oft used consonants as possible.

If you are lucky, you might jag one, but BEWARE! Don't go down the rabbit hole chasing a nearly got word or trying to do the above in only two words - that is the path to ruin.

I tried "great" and "could" and "spiny" but no dice - although that did point me towards the first word.

"Tough". Which is what this morning had been. 

It was going to be tough anyway as the first day back after a long weekend, key team members taking leave because of school holidays, invoicing and updating public holidays and meetings - plus enforcing screen restrictions at home with intergenerational peace negotiations and possible removal of devices looming on the getting to work on time horizon.

But I didn't end up doing any of that.

The next word that worked for my puzzle was "hoist".

I had to instead hoist the 14yo out of bed twice this morning. Thematically that fit.

My sixth word was "trunk" - which is going out on a limb in the "match life's curve balls with a word game" attempt here.

At 2am this morning, V had pain that went from the front of his trunk to the back.

The next correct word was "heart", which was indeed a bit of a word of the day, as the inability for one of the pathways in - or out, not sure - in V's couldn't pump, so that really kinked the morning all around.

"Soapy" was the next word. Hmm. Perhaps my second indicator that life doesn't emulate internet word games.

And the next was "corgi", which indeed threw it so far out of the window that I gave up.

"Angiogram" is not five letters, and although "stent" is, it wasn't one of today's words.

And apparently "vegan" is not oft thrown around at the hospital even though it is what V has been throwing around here in order to defy cholesterol and bad choices in his youth.

Hopefully though, words 14, 15, 17 and 24 all ring true for today and the future ("fixed", "rapid", "mirth", and "awake").

We will find out - hopefully - on Dr's rounds tomorrow what the moving forward plan may entail.

Kanonikos Plaki

 First, allow me to apologise to the Greeks for appropriating your cuisine and possibly misusing your language - or not. I mean, I don't understand Greek so I don't actually know how wrong - or, jagged it perhaps, right that title is.

But anyway, I digress.

In a way this dish is on the way to being another Jeanie Easter tradition - I am so easily led into making everything a set pattern - but this dish ticks all important boxes for any table which will be surrounded by a variety of requirements. This is its second year of gracing the table.

It is vegan, gluten-free, low-fat, high-fibre, and tastes delicious enough for people who are scared of the words vegan and gluten-free to delight. 

Added bonus is this year I eschewed the recipe and winged it.

The basic instructions for it (as I took no pictures) is:

Soak white beans (not, however, gigantic white beans as the resident V-man doesn't trust big beans so I didn't have any even if that fact wasn't part of the equation) for a bit and then cook until tender. 

 Put the beans and about 1/4 cup cooking water into a greased enamel bowl and put on top 1/3 chopped onion, 3 chopped cloves of garlic and about a dozen tiny cherry tomatoes from the struggling vine at the back door halved. Pour 1/2 tin smooshed tomatoes over (you can salt and pepper it too if you wanted) and do a couple of stirs but not too particular.

Place in a moderate to hot oven for about 20 minutes or however long other stuff is going on.

I didn't today but would probably sing even louder if fresh parsley or lemon juice were a final touch but was delicious and declared a winner on the cold out of the fridge a few hours later by V.

Oh look - I did take a photo - from back - beans, broccoli and  steamed beans, Traditional Cauliflower Cheese, roasted pumpkin/onion/carrot/garlic/potatoes, roast beetroot in foil and roast lamb.