New Year's Eve Eve

I just had 4 days with my parents - which wasn't ventworthy as it went rather well, all considered.

We went for an outing.

Dad got someone to have breakfast with each morning.

I fed the chooks.

Time stood still - but it also entered warps because the clock that chimes runs 15 minutes ahead because that is the way that it goes. Except that at some point it lost time so nobody was sure what it really meant when it chimed.

I had a LIST.

I did the floors.

I reorganised bookshelves and sorted paperwork.

I harvested silverbeet.

Large pile of silverbeet - cheese slice for scale

I made meals in the theme of disappointment. It's hard knowing a criticism is coming, especially when deserved. I would plead ingredient integrity and availability but to my side of the leger I did make a bit of amazing juice that was not appreciated AT ALL by one (the other wasn't casting her vote as vocally).

I made many spinach and cheese rolls.

I even had a half a handle on the bits and bobs for tax - however my computer battery went flat and despite various trying to get it charging it hit zero and didn't rebound. Computer guy is not in town but reckons power source.

And although I was TO THE MINUTE organised today as I had to finish some three day jobs that never get done at their place, at the final 1/2 hr a silent car glid up and parked ACROSS the gate behind which my packed car was parked. Visitors for my Dad dropping in unannounced who would love a cup of tea - the wife knew Mum before and offers to be with Mum for Dad to go to meetings with the husband - committees and Lions - salt of the earth.

I have also just realised that it might well have been a farewell tour for the latter hearing their offload of the medical drama his life has been of late.

Which makes me that much more of a bitch in hindsight for grumbling inwardly about the parking as I made them afternoon tea but did not attend as i had to handover to the carer.

I still got home safely.

One of my 'to dos' today I made sourdough pizza bases for NYE - two for me to bring home, one for Mum and Dad and one for the carer.

 sourdough pizza base

I also spent time remembering Auntie Glen and how today was the first 30th December for 35 years where I haven't reminded Mum to ring her best friend for her birthday - and unfortunately due to driving a car and daylight savings didn't get to ring my godbrother and my godsister.

Bespoke silverbeet and cheese rolls - reviews based on taste rather than aesthetics please 🥺 

Anyway - list and logistics to happen tomorrow here. Last day of the year and we're kicking it off at the dentist for Paris.

Way to pace yourself 2025!

Christmas Eve Eve

 Happy Christmas Eve Eve!

Which means that it's the night before the last day of work.

(During the writing of that paragraph a crisis has arisen over keys. I have realised how much we rely on muscle memory. I had an automatic response to hearing a car door slam of saying "honey, if you are near my keys on the bench can you please click the ..." and that was all of the instruction needed for a whole saga to ensue. Oh, and my daughter won a game of fortnite. Whatever that means.)

I am already nearly a day ahead of myself in having the majority of gifts already wrapped! 

You know those people who are organised in October? I am not they.

Of course, part of this year's secret lies in the paucity of presents and a complete lack of time to organise. I think that I have clocked five hours on preparation this year - and that includes the wrapping effort tonight.

Have you ever watched Red Dwarf? Then you will understand when I tell you that I am up to colour coding my timetable for the house situation.

I am approaching the next few days - and weeks - as coolly as I can, which, as it happens, I am apparently not very good at. I have been told.

They're probably right.

The pool fence yarn

I went to poetry tonight.

I do love a good poetry evening.

It is a mix of ages and people and everyone is there for the joy of words and connection.

Ah.

It's a bit like blogging but shorter and more immediate.

It's also a bit over two hours of me time once a month.

Ah.

And I get to share it with 'Salina.

Ah.

We are looking online at offerings of houses still.

We are holding powder until the right stars align - those meteors last week must have scrambled them.

One I saw recently had a swimming pool.

Hooray I hear some say but I know that (a) with such delights comes very hard work and (b) that was one ugly pool.

I grew up with a rectangular pool. Dad - or was it the husband of a relative? Anyhow he and a mate had met a guy in the pub who used to build pools on cruise ships - and for a non-taxable sum, a place to stay and to get fed for the duration he worked with Dad to build our pool.

We were the only ones in the area who had one when I was little.

Not that that meant our house was "the neighbourhood hang" - geography was too vast and everyone had a dam or tank to suffice.

But it did mean that there was always an option for a swim.

The technology involved with the pool was a hit'n'miss pump and a hose.

The pool was pumped from the river. As moss grew on the sides and the steps, we had stiff brushes to scrape them - and as scum and decaying leaves would form scabs upon the surface we had nets on long handled to scoop the pool.

Various chemicals were mixed with beakers of water and compared in the shadows against numbered charts of colour, and the resultant formula for clear waters sprinkled across the surfaces and swirled through.

The depths of the deep end and beneath the stairs were still freaky places I would not ever dare to venture to. I did not care that I was considered a wimp because I knew the truth.

I was a smart wimp.

The things to watch out for was slimy strings of amphibious eggs, black insects with hard beetle shells and hands of sharpened pincers, dead animals and toads.

Cane toads are ugly.

They are especially ugly when eyeballing you from between you and your exit from the pool.

Luckily there were two exits - the wooden stairs in the corner of the shallow end and the ladder - and I believe that it taught me to swim faster - both teaching and swimming faster - that very healthy fear of the cane toad.

They were in the pool DESPITE the 2 foot high pool fence directly past the concrete edge of the pool that's sole purpose was to deter toads from gaining access.

Should the bottom of the deep end get so murky and full of sludge that even the cane toads were coming up for fresher sir, the hit'n'miss would fire up and the next 14 hours - with intermittent orders poolside to scrub and calls of "how much fuel" and "is it blocked" while the water levels lowered and the sludge became more concentrate.

The next morning was old clothes, rubber boots and shovels as buckefuls of sludge were winched and dispensed to wheelbarrow and hence down the hill back towards the river.

There was a rectangular sinkhole at the far edge of the deep end where the last of the sludge was swept towards.

Then cracks reputtied and all sides repainted and sundried before the next cycle of pumped water re-entered the pool.

To quote the old man, you knew that you were alive when you hit the water in the morning for a few laps - or in the case of this particular wimp, you were alive after your Dad had had his "cold wash" and disposed of all cane toads.

Unsure of title

 Since the last post (& mostly not me) (no particular order):

• Real estate agents
• Unexpected answers to long-asked question
• How to make snake beans edible 
• Heart attack 
• Titanium rod
• Asparagus and white bean pasta
• Miscommunications 
• 21st
• Tomato pickers
• Small towns 
• Big families 
• Did I say amazing real estate agent 
• Work
• Boyfriend 
• Migraine 
• Poetry 
• Garden
• Packing 
• Finance
• pre-Christmas 
• Macros

I haven't forgotten you.

Just been a bit busy.

My Gorgeous Godmother, Auntie Glen

 My Mum's best friend had her as a bridesmaid when she and Don married in April 196? - 3 I suppose?  She joked with Mum that Mum grow for the job - and Mum stretched another 2 inches to 5'2".

When my parents got married, Glen was to be her matron of honour - but as she was also 8 months pregnant with her son at the time, contingencies were made.

Mum and Glen studied pharmacy together, and we heard through letters of Mum's high-flying friend from her heyday - moving whole states away living a very different lifestyle: he an industrial chemist and eventually executive of a multi-national nation-building conglomerate; she a very skilled executive's wife, poster-book PTA mother who, like Mum, kept her hand in the trade doing a day or two here and there behind the high counter at the chemist shops.

And she was MY godmother.

I obviously met her when very young - the November prior my April birth my parents and sister went to see the Melbourne Cup (Rain Lover won - of course my Dad had money on him, with a name like that!) and also Glen and her family - husband Don and son and daughter - so she probably knew of my being before I was, indeed, on this earth.

I cannot remember in which order it went - we to visit them in Sydney or they to come and visit us.

When they came to visit us (which may have been before) my older godbrother and I put together a project - we built a frog farm where they lived in complete masonite apartment luxury with a flyscreen net roof and doors and windows and water-wallowing troughs and grass beds.  We valiantly attempted to gather flies for our inmates, but it didn't take long for us to realise that it was a fools game so we liberated the frogs and looks at the ruined castle and reminisced.  

At the end of that holiday, my first remembered interaction with a real ambulance came when my godbrother parted company with Linda, a beautiful chestnut - only he didn't part company fully, with his shoe catching in his stirrup and his flailing causing Linda to bolt.  My godbrother lived, but the end of the "holiday", looking back through this lens, may not have been very restful to my godmother.

The Sydney trip involved driving both ways in the brand new (to us) Chrysler - a brave move on my Dad's part because he thought that we could fit into a sedan.  On the upside, it had electric windows - on the down, it had floating suspension.

The windows died less than half a day into our trip.  The suspension floated for both days going down, and the day and a half going back.  Three country kids who generally fought over who got the window seats fought over who got the middle seat with the view of the road, while either side of him (or her on occasion) were ordering Dad and Mum to pull over more often than not.  Sometimes not in time.

My reintroduction to my oh-so-sophisticated godmother at then end of this marathon was presenting my doll Sandra and all of her clothes to be put through the washing machine in the valiant hope she (Sandra, not my godmother) would survive the ride.  I watched.  

The highlight that I really remember was going to Taronga Zoo and learning that you could possibly take pictures through the wire diamonds and maybe get better views of the animals - I received a small camera for my birthday (maybe my 8th or 9th?) and didn't realise that I was short-sighted.  After I got my photos back (a month later), I realised that while there was no wire in the way, I still couldn't make out the animals in the distance!  

Oh, and my godsister and my godbrother - both older than I, like chalk and cheese from each other but whole different species to us.  These were verifiable big city kids who knew all about the world around them and I was in awe.

I did "a fortnight's" work experience when I was at University, and I stayed at my godparents house in Sydney.  My godbrother still lived at home, and my godsister was studying in New Zealand - and for six weeks I shared their roof and their meals and their lives and it was wonderful.

At the end of that year, the company that I did work experience for invited me back, and they were my family base for the next 5 years, enjoying Sunday dinners and being their surrogate daughter, sister (my godsister had returned to Australia soon after) and granddaughter (my godmother's mother was an absolute hoot).

It wasn't all beer and skittles - especially if you didn't have a coaster.  You don't get an immaculate house or system going unless you are quite particular about how you stacked the dishwasher or played a record or sat in the parlour - I was very country mouse at times, plus a teensy bit bolshie so there were times I found the soft spots at the edges of their tolerance levels, but we all enjoyed the sport!

Then I went on to live other lives and no doubt as did they.  We kept in touch the sporadic way that we did then and we do now - but each birthday, anniversary and festivity included a card or a call to the family or they to me.

My godfather passed a few years ago now, and my godmother lived alone for a long time, then in an apartment in a retirement village.  Of late her health had deteriorated causing her to moving closer to her children (who had both chosen semi-rural lives in the end).  She passed away this afternoon with my godsister and my godbrother beside her and I am sure that she is now with her darling Don and wonderful Mum up there looking down on us.

Love you, Glen.