Going offline for a little while

We are packing up today. Ishbel's room cleared of her stuff, now being piled up with boxes. Tomorrow we get a truck and pack everything in to it. We should get the keys to the new house about 2:30pm on Monday.

We are about to pack the computer away and we'll be offline for up to 7 days.

Byeeeee

Dance group festival

today i went to Joan Sutherland Arts and dance centre with my school Faulconbridge. ( only the dancers.) I am in the stage 1 dance group. I am in the pink panthers.

love Ishbel

Antidote to the wierd stuff

Found these by doing a search in YouTube and restored my sanity.

First are The Corries singing Ae Fond Kiss (just for you, Mum)

Next is Karen Dunbar reciting Tam O'Shanter. She's much criticised on YouTube for missing lines but I think she's done quite well and it certainly shows what an exciting story it is. Or at least more exciting than when we were having to learn it as punishment at school. Erm . . . so Karen and Fiona tell me!!

We bought a bed on Saturday

I'm blogging about this because Karen mentioned it.

I had us heading down Parramatta Road to the big Home something or other centre at Auburn or wherever it is. We’d been down at the RTA so Ian could renew his drivers licence which we’d realised only the night before had expired over a fortnight ago.

Taking a wrong turn, or rather, finding we couldn't turn the way we wanted to get to the M4, we ended up on the Great Western Highway and Ian thought we were heading for Homebase at Blacktown where Ikea USED to be and where the marshalling point was for the cleanup after the storms last December. I’d forgotten about it being there but said I was happy to give it a try.

We’d been trawling around for a bed in Penrith a few weeks ago and couldn’t find anything we liked. They were either cheap nasty or the solid ones were like Tudor Great Beds. Lo and behold, thinking we were on Mission Impossible, at the second shop at Blacktown we came across a nice sleigh bed in Sleep City. It’s made of recycled timber and is as solid as you’d wish.

Here it is:

The King size was only $569!!!!! Any of the Queen beds we'd been looking at thus far were over $1000 - on Sale. So we bought it and a bow-fronted tall boy (just out of picture) to match, plus a new mattress.

We are well pleased with our purchase.

Oh no, it just got worse!

I've tried getting a sound clip of someone reciting Ae Fond Kiss by Robert Burns.

This is what I found Ae fond kiss recited by Robert Garrison - what makes an American think he can recite Burns?

I'm going to need some serious therapy.

Last weekend

Last weekend was supposed to be Ishbel's last weekend of soccer. It was hard enough to get her to make that one last appearance; not sure if she took on board that they are expected back again this weekend!! Might let Ian tackle that.

Around taking Ishbel to soccer, we cleaned out the shed and the area under the house and deck ready for the move. Our friend, Bec, came with her trailer and helped us and diffused the tension when Ian and I disagreed over what should stay and what should go - and almost every single item had to be negotiated despite Ian having told me before we got up that morning that he was quite resigned to throwing stuff out.

ANYWAY (deep breaths, HC, deep breaths), two and a half trailer loads to the tip and two loads to storage later the shed is empty except for shelving and there is just the old lounge suite lurking under the house. Getting everything into the storage facility was a bit of a squeeze - we all but held stuff in as we pulled down the roller door. Bec also took a trailer load to her house saying they wouldn't need the trailer before we move and that we could store that load with them. When I spoke to her yesterday, however, she said they'd had to unload the trailer - Steve decided he wanted to get soil and mulch and such for digging a garden!

Sunday was a far more civilised affair. In the morning Rob, Ishbel, Ian and I went round antique shops looking to see if we could find a tall boy. Three non-existent antique shops (don't believe the Pink Pages, Karen) and four really ones later we still hadn't found what we were looking for. But that's OK. I just wanted to check there was nothing out there before we buy from a 'normal' furniture shop.

And it got much better for me in the afternoon when I headed off to Lilianfels in Katoomba (picture of the lounge below) for my book group where we discussed the delightful The Uncommon Reader.

Meanwhile Rob was at his mate Nick's house for the afternoon. Jamie was playing golf as an end of season outing with his AFL team and Ishbel had Ruby over to play. Ian pottered about sticking up the polystyrene he'd got from work for insulating the underside of the house.

Proof I've been working way way too hard . . .

I've had an RSS feed going for a little while, keeping me uptodate on a number of blogs on all sorts of topics, mainly books or librarianship, but some fun ones too.

One of my feeds is the Guardian newspapers books blog. I was initially intrigued by the post heading: Classic Poetry gets the Jackson treatment. Can you imagine my horror however, when I followed the link to an article entitled Michael Jackson goes into studio with Robert Burns. Apparently poems featured on the album include Ae Fond Kiss and Tam O'Shanter.

OMG, it's going to take a while to recover from the thought. Where are my smelling salts?

Holy Blog Of Doom, Batman!

Holy Blog Of Doom, Batman! I just returned from my daily swim on the beautiful Fijian beach and realised I have not updated this since I had to start working to pay the ridiculous food and petrol prices to feed my kids... You would not believe that I'd been abducted by aliens. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!.

I am lost in a sea of pseudo-olde-english with a weight-lifting regime, a ticking crocodile, just generally being a nuisance to various lawyers I met recently, my day often feels wasted from the first cockadoodledoo from the rooster to I am begging my kid to go to sleep or so help me God that kid will be decorating my wall, 'Duct tape still life'. I am convinced that I absolutely deserve this after all my hard work. it will be fun fun fun till they take my TBird away.

I swear on the bones of my ancestors I will make more of an effort to blog more often until the nice men in the white coats come back. Fully! Assuming I don't get distracted by counting my chest hairs..


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And we'll be living in a wild life sanctuary

Found out why it's called Red-Crowned Court.
Apparently the garden is half native plantings, and has to be maintained as such forever, because it's a protected habitat for the endangered Red-crowned toadlet or Pseudophryne australis

Red-crowned Toadlet Fact File
Despite its name, this is not a toad but a colourful little frog. It is restricted to the Hawkesbury sandstone areas surrounding Sydney. It is easy to identify by the bright orange-red triangle or 'T' shape on its head and a stripe on its lower back of the same colour. On its belly is a striking, marbled, black and white pattern.
The calls of Red-crowned Toadlets can be heard all year round. They call several times in quick succession, as these frogs commonly live in small colonies and answer each other.
The Red-crowned Toadlet breeds in damp leaf litter. Hatching occurs when the tadpoles are well developed and the site has had heavy rainfall. Until then, the male frog usually stays close to the developing eggs, but this is probably to defend the breeding site rather than the eggs.
Distribution:Sydney.
Habitat: Forests and woodlands, heath (Hawkesbury sandstone only).
Status: Uncommon
Size: Up to 3 cm.

Coincidence . . . or is it just a small world?

I was getting my hair done today and mentioned to Robyn, my hairdresser, that since I'd seen her last we'd sold and bought a house. I told her it was not far from where we were (the shopping centre at Winmalee), in Red-Crowned Court.
"What number?" she asked.
"Four."
"No way!"
Turns out Robyn has house-sat there a couple of times for previous occupants (RAAF people now up in Queensland).
She said the lady used to feed the birds and heaps of
rainbow lorikeets, king parrots and cockatoos come into the garden.

Robyn said the birds are so used to people they will sit on your arms!