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.