Dear diary the more hospitals edition

So I know it's not Sunday, and that it's been almost a full week since I last blogged, but things have been pretty hectic the last week so again you guys have been neglected which I apologise for.

So you can probably tell from the title that we had more hospital drama going on at our place than an episode of ER. Well apparently my big sister didn't get enough of hospitals the other weekend when she had to take my nephew to hospital after he swallowed a coin, because this weekend she ended up there herself with pneumonia. Now this second visit in two weeks isn't as much fun to blog about as my nephew's visit as it doesn't come with a catchy nickname. (Mainly because pus lungs isn't as cute as piggy bank, and is in fact both incredibly disgusting and very mean to my big sister.) Luckily at the time of writing this my big sister has been discharged from the hospital for a whole day now and is back at home in her comfortable bed recuperating.

Sadly I wasn't able to visit my sister while she was in the hospital, and I still haven't been able to go visit her even at home because the day after she was admitted into hospital Miss K came down with some mystery illness that sent us rushing to the after hours medical centre when her fever hit 38.3 (100.94 farenheit for all of my yankee friends). Now apart from her high fever and general fussiness there were no specific symptoms to speak of so the doctors all had to shrug their shoulders and admit they had no idea what was wrong. Well two days and many fever spikes later we took her back to the doctors just to be told that despite several other symptoms appearing, including a concerning lack of balance when she tried to walk, that they still had no idea what exactly was wrong with her and all I could do was keep giving her paracetamol and wait it out. Luckily today she seems much better and her temperature has gotten back down to normal levels so (touch wood) she's all better.

Ben and Tristan are down visiting at the moment adding to the general feeling of pandemonium around here, but Tristan bought brownies with him so I've forgiven them. They also bought a heap of very noisy and creepy dolls for Miss K called Sing-a-ma-jigs so the house has been filled with slightly off key and eerie singing for two days now. But the brownies were delicious so I've forgiven them for that too.

On top of everything else happening I am madly trying to get ready for exams which happen in less than a month now. I am almost completed half of the work required to be ready for the exam, but trying to find time and energy to study has gotten harder and harder lately so I've had to take a few days off to focus on Miss K. But now that she's feeling better I'll be back with my nose against the grind stone for the next few weeks.

Well that's all I can think of for now, my thoughts for any of you readers who are in New York, or have family and friends there as they now begin the recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy.

Until next time, stay awesome my wonderful readers, and I will try to be back in less than a week.

30 day challenge finale

So I looked at the calendar today and apparently it's Thursday. I don't know when that happened because I'm pretty sure the last time I looked it was only Tuesday and I still had one more day to try and do some cleaning before I had to come back here and face the music. But I have run out of stalling time so someone start the band as we round up the very last week of the 30 day challenge. Cue the banner

So first a recap of the jobs I was meant to do this week. 

• Tackle one shelf in the pantry
• Pick a room, wash all windows
• Scrub the grout in the shower
• Find another hot spot in the house and clean it up
• Vacuum the couches and under the couches
• Go on a cobweb hunt. Get rid of every single cobweb in the house
• Pick a room and wash all walls from floor to ceiling
• Pick a room, wash all windows
• Steam clean the carpets

Now before I tell you what I ended up accomplishing this week I will start with an excuse. My dog ate my homework and I slept through my alarm this morning before getting stuck in traffic and I had to go to the doctors first and the queues were huge. Plus I have this cough. 

So this week sadly nothing got done. Well not exactly nothing, I did get some homework done, and yesterday I went shopping, so that was kind of fun. But sadly after our very dramatic weekend I really couldn't find the inspiration to care about cobwebs and grout so cleaning this week was basically making sure there was nothing on the floor that I could trip and break my neck on. And even that was too hard some days. I did kill a massive huntsman spider who was holding me hostage in the toilet, but given I never did get around to cleaning the remains of his insides from the toilet wall I guess that can't even be counted. 

So yet again the 30 day challenge ends with a whimper instead of a roar. I would love to be able to finish this series with the proclamation that I am now a cleaning goddess who laughs in the face of grime and folds laundry while vacuuming the floors, but I am still exactly the same lazy slob I was at the beginning. But it's not all doom and gloom, I did manage to get some of the things on my list done, I ended up taking 4 boxes and 3 bags of things to a local op shop for donating, and we do have some spots in the house that are starting to look a lot better, but there is still a lot to be done. 

I am actually hoping once I've finished school for the year that I will have some extra time to devote to the housework during the summer. Of course that is provided I don't get distracted by something shiny again. 

Well that's it for the time being, I now need to go back and find something else I want to accomplish and make a new 30 day challenge. If I can force myself to focus for long enough I should hopefully have something ready by Monday. 

So until next time my wonderful readers stay awesome, and if any of you can think of anything that might stop me from getting so distracted next time, feel free to drop me a line in the comments and I'll be sure to try it. 

Dear diary the piggy bank edition

Hello again my lovely readers, I am back again. I know I keep disappearing off the radar for too long at a time, but this time I had a really good reason. Or my big sister did anyway and I just went out in sympathy.

So this week was pretty boring until Friday night. Mum and I were sitting quietly in our lounge room watching telly when we got a call from my big sister saying that my nephew had swallowed a coin and it was now stuck in his throat. Well mum and my baby sister rushed to their house to help in any way they could, and came back with my niece while my sister and her husband rushed my nephew to the after hours medical centre. From here they were directed to the emergency ward at the hospital, and from there after a restless night they were sent to a hospital in Melbourne so my nephew could have surgery to have the coin removed. All three of them returned yesterday afternoon looking very exhausted. My nephew got to keep the coin once they removed it (in a specimen jar of course because after 2 days in his throat it's pretty yuck) and he has x-ray pictures of his throat complete with coin as a memento of his adventure. He has also gained the nickname piggy bank for his newly discovered way of storing coins.

Everyone has of course been pretty stressed and on edge around here lately as we all sat around in mum's lounge room waiting for another phone call updating us on his progress, and poor Miss K was pretty stressed by last night. Of course that didn't stop her from creating some new art work for me to clean up. While putting her to bed last night I found two new drawings in our kitchen. One on the pantry door and the other on the lino. Mum later found a third drawing in a plastic bowl. So Miss K has cleverly discovered that while I have said time and time again that I don't want her drawing on the furniture in the lounge room, I never said anything about the kitchen. Plus she is allowed to wander through the kitchen whenever she wants as long as she stays away from the rubbish bin and the stove so the whole room is just a blank canvas waiting for her to come and decorate it. I am now trying to figure out how to find all the pencils and crayons in the house that she has stashed in her various hiding places and keep them in the lounge room where I can watch her like a hawk.

Of course the big thing that comes with Miss K getting stressed is the massive temper tantrums, which only serve to remind me that the terrible twos are well and truly on their way. To be followed shortly after by the terrible threes which I have it on good authority are much worse. My patience is being tested already on a daily basis so I could just cry every time I remember I have another two and a half years of this sort of behavior to get through still.Luckily for me Miss K's mood switches on a dime right now so usually a tantrum never lasts for more than a minute then my sweet baby girl comes back.

Well that's it for another week I guess, I'm off to go dance with Miss K. Stay awesome my lovely readers and I'll be back on Wednesday with the final update for my current 30 day cleaning challenge.

Why I am growing grey hair

So I don't think I really have any grey hair just yet, and I'm too lazy to start looking for them, but if I was growing grey hairs, this would be why...

Yes that is a cupboard door covered in pencil markings. I have spent the last few months trying to encourage Miss K to enjoy making art, while discouraging her from making art on our furniture. Unfortunately I must have been sleeping on the job today because when I went to do the dishes this morning, I found this piece of work on my kitchen cupboard. I could not believe that she had done this, because she does know that I don't want her drawing on anything that isn't paper, but apparently she isn't scared of me because it didn't stop her.

I dragged her into the kitchen when I found it, and I made her look at it, and her reaction was absolutely priceless. She put her hands up to her mouth and pretended to look horrified when she saw it, but it wasn't enough to stop me telling her how naughty she was for drawing on my furniture. Of course by the time I found it she had long forgotten even doing it so my scolding was pretty pointless, but I felt better afterwards.

Luckily it was only pencil and not permanent marker so it should be easy enough to remove and I'll just need to be more vigilant in the future to make sure this doesn't become a regular thing.

30 day challenge update

So what do my internet connection and a lawyer have in common? Neither of them work unless you pay their bill.

With that in mind I apologize for the lateness of this update, and without further ado, I think it's time to get on with my latest 30 day challenge update.

So I'm sure that given it's been more than 2 weeks since I've updated this you've probably all forgotten what jobs I was meant to be doing this time around. So for all of you wonderful people, here is an update. For anyone who wants to re-read the last post, you can check it out here

• Tackle my craft area, throw out anything I don’t think I’ll ever use and organize everything else into tubs and folders
• Clean the stove and oven
• Empty the bathroom cupboard and dispose of almost empty or expired products
• Empty the laundry room out and sweep and mop. Return everything to the room neatly
• Empty out the computer desk drawers and throw out old cables and other junk. Return necessary cables in a neat fashion
• Reorganize Miss K’s toys, throw out any toys that she has outgrown or doesn’t play with
• Pick a room and wash all walls from floor to ceiling

So I am proud to be able to say that this time I was actually able to accomplish some of the things on this list. While I didn't get anywhere near the craft desk, we now have a sparkling clean oven, bathroom cupboard and computer desk (thanks to mum). Miss K's toys have been reorganized and I managed to force myself to part with one or two of them. (I am really much too sentimental about her things.) I also didn't get around to washing any walls, but I'm not stressing too much about that one. And just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I even went back to a few of the jobs from the week before that I didn't get around to, and now I have gotten rid of all my old clothes that no longer fit me, and all the appliances got a wipe down. Mum even got into the pantry and emptied that out, which is no small feat considering it is one of our larger junk areas in the house.

So this week was pretty huge as far as cleaning goes, and I feel all the better for it. Now I am up to the 9 days of cleaning, and the jobs I am meant to accomplish this time around are below.

• Tackle one shelf in the pantry
• Pick a room, wash all windows
• Scrub the grout in the shower
• Find another hot spot in the house and clean it up
• Vacuum the couches and under the couches
• Go on a cobweb hunt. Get rid of every single cobweb in the house
• Pick a room and wash all walls from floor to ceiling
• Pick a room, wash all windows
•  Steam clean the carpets

 So there you have it, 9 more days 9 more jobs to go. Given that this is the last 9 days of the challenge your next update will come on Wednesday instead of Monday, but I know that you are all such wonderful and patient people so you won't mind an extra two days of waiting.

Well that's all there is for now, I'll be back again with your regular scheduled blog shortly. Until then, stay awesome.

Dear diary the Facebook games edition

So I'm back again. Did you all miss me?? I'm sure you're all thinking that since I haven't been around here blogging very much lately I must have been out doing lots of wonderful and exciting things so that I had something to talk about with you today. Well I might have been cleaning like a woman possessed all week to make sure that I'm back on track with the 30 day challenge. Or I could have been passed out drunk all week in a depressed haze. Or more likely, I have been sitting on the couch all week drinking coffee and chatting with visitors.

One thing I have done way too much of this week is played Facebook games. When I first got onto Facebook back in 2008 I played Farmville. I actually came slightly obsessed with the game. Even when I wasn't on the computer there would always be a window open in the background with my farm growing and doing whatever it did whenever I wasn't looking. That game became my life for a while until I realized that I was spending more time harvesting pretend crops and feeding pretend animals than I was socializing with real people. So I gave up on games for a little while. Then the games got too advanced for my antique of a computer so it wasn't worth playing them anymore. Then I moved to mum's house where we only had a wireless modem with 3gb of downloads per month so it was pointless even thinking about loading the games up because that took up too much internet.

But now that I have a new internet connection and a lovely new computer I have gotten back into the Facebook games. There is now a new Farmville game, and it is so much better than the old one, so I'm back to harvesting pretend crops and building pretend hen houses and picking imaginary olive trees. It is a little bit sad that I have so much time for growing pretend strawberries, but the pot of strawberries my friend gave to me last month sits in the same place it did the day she gave it to me neglected. The strawberries themselves don't seem to notice but I can't help but feel a little bit guilty that I'm not as excited for them as I am for my pretend crops. And my hidden object game. And my solitaire game. One of the joys of having an addictive nature is that when I find something that gives me a mini high I grab onto it with both hands and use it for every drop of happy that I can squeeze out of it. But the fun never lasts and I am finding myself once again losing my enthusiasm for computer games.

It could be that the nice weather that today brought with it is starting to show glimpses of what summer will be like and I am starting to want to be outside and be active again. I miss the constant sunshine and the lazy evenings that summer brings with it. One of my cousins has come down from Darwin this week for a short visit with his family and when I caught up with him it was raining and miserable and as we sat outside having a cigarette he told me about the constant 35 degree heat in Darwin and for a moment I was so jealous of him. Of course the wet season in Darwin is not as fun as the dry season, but I could handle having summer all year long.

The best part of the warmer weather is that Miss K can finally go outside. We have spent the last couple of weeks trying to get her used to grass, after spending months avoiding it because it was too wet and muddy. Today she finally walked on the grass on her own instead of just standing at the edge of the footpath and poking at it with her fingers. Her suspicion of it has been amusing, but once she realizes the opportunities that await her once she stops restricting herself to the narrow strip of concrete that runs down our yard, she won't know herself.

Well this wasn't really an update of my week, but that's just because there hasn't been anything to report. Unless you want a recount of every single cup of coffee I drank this week, but I'm sure you've all got better things to read than that. I will tell you though that Miss K and I are both doing great despite the fact that we are now both on week 2 of this horrible cold that refuses to leave us alone. My bad mood is slowly lifting and I have found the motivation to clean on several occasions this week, but there will be more on that tomorrow for my 30 day challenge update.

So until then I bid you all adieu my lovely readers as I am now off to hibernate. Stay awesome.

My mini me

So I have been pretty darn slack with the whole blogging thing of late, and I must apologize for that. As you can probably tell from reading my post about how horrible the world is lately I haven't been feeling very chipper lately. It happens from time to time, and when it does I tend to let the little things slide for a while until I am able to cope again. That is why there was no dear diary this week, plus there won't be a 30 day challenge update this week either. So technically it will be a 37 day challenge this time as I took last week off and have started doing the jobs I was meant to do last week today. But given that I am the rule maker here I'll allow it this once (and probably every single time after now too.)

So I have decided today to share with you something that makes me smile every time I see it. Now I know that I am Miss K's mum, given that I was the one that was there for all 17 hours of her birth. But I have to take my mum's word for it when she tells me over and over again that she is so much like me when I was her age. Until I stumbled upon photographic evidence that proves once and for all that she is a mini me of the highest proportions. So this first photo is a picture of me at around age one I think. The person pixelated out is not in the witness protection program, it's just my big sister, and given I haven't asked her permission to put this photo out there in the big bad world of the interwebs I figured I'd give her a mosaic face just in case she is ashamed to be my sister. (Can't for the life of me imagine why she would be though)

 

I @#$%^ING LOVE PEG TOYS!!!!

Now I do apologize for the terrible quality of this picture, unfortunately digital SLR was not a term people in the 1980's were familiar with.  I love this picture because the look of insane joy on my face is one that I see on Miss K's face all the time. And earlier this year I finally managed to capture it permanently with my camera.

 

I @#$%^ING LOVE SOY SAUCE!!!!

What you see here is the result of a game of cupboard peek-a-boo. The funny part was every time we opened the door she had something new in her hand. By the time we finished our game there wasn't a single thing on that bottom shelf that she hadn't managed to paw.

So now I know that Miss K gets the same manic look on her face when she's excited that I used to when I was her age. If that's not proof that she's just like her mum then I don't know what is.

Miss K learns something new

Today we interrupt your normal reading to bring you another story in pictures. For two reasons, one because the pictures that go with this story are just too cute not to share, and also because I am too lazy to sit down and actually think of intelligent things to write so the pictures will make up for my lack of words today.

So this story actually happened last Friday. To set the scene, I must explain that it was verrrry early, mum was at work so breakfast was just me and Miss K. I figured it was a perfect time to try to make her learn to feed herself properly finally. For the past I don't know how long now, I have been loading Miss K's spoon up with whatever it is we are eating, and then handing it to her. From there it makes the necessary trip into her mouth with fairly predictable results and lots of happy sounding noises. Well I was informed by our Maternal Health Nurse last week that Miss K should know how to feed herself by now, so I was obviously a terrible mother for coddling her so much. (My little sister is reading this behind my back as I type, and she assures me that indeed I am a terrible mother, but given that my nickname for her as a child was fatty-pumba-stinky-turtle-milky-headed-moo-cow I don't trust a single word she says to me.)

So on several days last week we did attempt to encourage Miss K to fully feed herself. It started when I chucked a temper tantrum at her one night and just refused flat out to feed her. There were much tears and reproachful glares from Miss K, but she eventually got hungry and attempted to feed herself. It was incredibly messy but that didn't matter, what mattered was the fact that she can indeed feed herself if she puts her mind to it. With that in mind I decided on Friday morning to try again. Of course once Miss K realized once again she would be feeding herself, the inevitable tears started very quickly.

 

Doesn't that face just break your heart?

But again she realized pretty quickly that I wasn't going to give in to her sad face and she decided to give in and feed herself.

 

She's still trying to figure out the whole how to get the spoon from the bowl to the mouth thing, (I had no idea it could be so hard) and quite often by the time the spoon does reach it's destination it is upside down and completely empty as you can tell by the splatters on the table. But she persisted.

 

And persisted

 

And she tried to do it exactly how mum does it, to the point where she scraped the spoon on the side of the bowl before each mouthful to avoid drips. (I'm not sure she knew that was why she was doing it, but that's how it's done)

 

After about fifteen minutes I did give in and take over, mainly because the bowl was getting too empty for her to be able to get anything on her spoon, but I was so proud of my little big girl. 

 

That's my happy face. And apologies for the bed hair, like I said this was first thing in the morning and as you can tell my morning routine definitely doesn't consist of brushing my hair before my first cup of coffee. 

So there you have it. That's just one more thing Miss K is mastering, and doing a wonderful if reluctant job of it too.

I hate the world today*

So mum has run off with my car today leaving me stranded at home with a grumpy 1 year old, being taken care of by an even grumpier mum. I say stranded as if this is somehow a horrible position to be in, but it's 12:30 in the afternoon and I'm still in my jammies and super warm and fuzzy dressing gown, so I am more than happy to be car-less for the day.

So my title seems a bit extreme doesn't it?? Well there is a good reason this post sounds negative today, and that is because the world is full of horrible and nasty people and that is another reason I have holed myself up in the house today. If we had a bomb shelter I'm sure I'd be sitting in it polishing my grenade collection right now. (Assuming we had a grenade collection in the bomb shelter.)

So last night I went to an old friend's house to drink bourbon (just the one, I'm a responsible person OK?) and watch crappy television. This friend is actually also an ex boyfriend, and the last of my ex boyfriends that I talk to (apart from Miss K's dad but he doesn't count.) So by the time I finished my drink and decided to head home it was 11:30 at night, meaning that the roads would be very empty and if anything went wrong, I'd be all alone which is an incredibly unappealing prospect for a young woman. Well luckily for me the gods seemed to be smiling down on me almost all the way home, then they must have gotten distracted by something shiny because I came upon a group of around 30 young males wandering along the road looking to make trouble. I patiently waited for all of them to cross the road so that I could continue driving, unfortunately for me they managed to see an invisible "pick on me" sign that seems to follow me everywhere. Luckily for me the worst they did was scream into my open window and run at the car, but that was still terrifying enough given I had no idea what they were capable of doing. Needless to say I planted my foot on my go pedal (it's the one on the right.) and hot footed it out of there as fast as I could. I was still shaking when I finally got home.

The stupid thing is those idiots probably thought they were being hilarious, and they would have laughed about it all the way to wherever it is they were going. And they probably wouldn't have done anything other than cause general nuisance to me, but how in the hell am I supposed to know that?? I'm a young woman on my own in the middle of the night with a group of young and probably drunk kids surrounding my car. And when it comes to the fight or flight response, my first instinct is always flight.

Well as if that wasn't enough contact with jerks to last a person at least 24 hours, we got a call this morning from my younger brother telling us that his car was stolen last night. Now this is the second time he has had a car removed from his yard, the first time was several  years ago, and the hooligans first filled it up with petrol, then pushed it off a small cliff into a local lake. Luckily for us they were stupid enough to run away from the petrol station without paying for the petrol, so they earned themselves plenty of attention from the police, and they also allowed their faces to be seen on the security cameras at the petrol station before they ran off, so they were caught very quickly and taken to court. Now this time, the thieves weren't stupid enough to fill the car up before their joy ride, but that only meant that their joy ride only lasted a very short while, because my little brother hadn't filled his petrol tank in a while and it was running on fumes. They also didn't bother destroying the car this time, so apart from a smashed in window the rest of the machine is still working.

I am so tired of feeling like my family is the last of the non-jerks in the world. We really do seem to be an endangered species in this current climate of increasing violence and yucky stuff. (I'd come up with more examples but that requires too much thinking about bad things and I just can't be bothered today.) So you'll understand if I say the world can go get buggered today.

Well mum has actually just returned from her retail therapy, and she has bough supplies to make us both feel better, so I now have yummy and very fattening chocolate desserts to eat, a new crafty project to attempt and Miss K has a new toy to play with so if you excuse me, I'm heading into my happy place.

Stay awesome dear readers and I hope my good mood can return soon so I can resume my normal wonderful blog.

*Of course that world doesn't include my wonderful audience, you people are great, and in fact the only thing that could make you greater is if you could drop me a comment and tell me things. Anything really, I just want to meet my readers finally.

30 day challenge update

It's that time of the week again, start the marching band and everyone join in the parade!!! Or I could just put the banner up and get on with it... Yeah lets just go with that.

Yes I am back with another update on my 30 days to become tidier. Now for all of you who need a reminder, my jobs for this week were:

• Take all of your clothes out of their drawers and cupboards and sort them into piles to be thrown in the bin, donated to the second hand store or kept. Only put away the clothes in the keep pile
• Empty the freezer and throw out food that you no longer want
• Wipe down every appliance in the house
• Pick one room, wash all windows
• Clean the hallway completely
• Find another cupboard full of junk and empty it out
• Pick a room and wash all the walls from floor to ceiling

So this week was slightly successful, but still not a complete total crack open a bottle of champagne and celebrate because you are just that awesome success. Because there was so much that ended up being missed, it would be quicker to tell you what did get done. So the freezer got emptied out of all old food, leaving lots of room for my supply of coffee flavoured ice cream. I also got into the wardrobe in mum's room and cleaned out the floor space there, leaving everything neat and tidy. I know I was meant to clean a whole cupboard out, but given that the floor alone took a whole afternoon I am happy to count that as an entire task and leave the shelf space for another week. On the plus side, during my travels into the wardrobe I managed to hunt down all of our Christmas decorations, so given there are only 84 days left until Christmas, we are more prepared than we were this time last year.

And that is all that I accomplished on my list this week. Given that it has rained for 4 of the 7 days this week it was too wet to slosh water around again, and the rest of the jobs kind of got forgotten between visiting family and re-reading the Hunger Games series for the third time in a row. (Seriously, how good are those books?)

But I will persevere because despite appearances things are slowly getting done around here so I'm still hoping to actually have a happy ending to this month. With that in mind, here are this weeks jobs to attempt.

• Tackle my craft area, throw out anything I don’t think I’ll ever use and organise everything else into tubs and folders
• Clean the stove and oven
• Empty the bathroom cupboard and dispose of almost empty or expired products
• Empty the laundry room out and sweep and mop. Return everything to the room neatly
• Empty out the computer desk drawers and throw out old cables and other junk. Return necessary cables in a neat fashion
• Reorganise Miss K’s toys, throw out any toys that she has outgrown or doesn’t play with
• Pick a room and wash all walls from floor to ceiling

So as you can see the jobs are getting tougher, which means that my will to clean will probably shrink even further this week. But I will try my absolute hardest to get something done this week, but probably not today, because I have just discovered a new flavour of Tim Tams, and I must take them over to my big sister's place to try them out.