February Use Your Words The Very Bad Day

Hello and welcome to the February edition of the new blogging game Use Your Words. It looks like this series was another winner for Karen at Baking in a Tornado, so she's decided to keep it around for now. 

This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now. 

So allow me to introduce you to the other bloggers participating in todays challenge. Be sure to visit them all and see how they manage to mold a group of random words into something beautiful. 

http://BakingInATornado.com                   Baking In A Tornado

http://www.justalittlenutty.com                 Just A Little Nutty

http://batteredhope.blogspot.com             Battered Hope

http://www.JuiceboxConfession.com          Juicebox Confession

www.theblacksheepmom.blogspot.com      Black Sheep Mom

http://stacysewsandschools.wordpress.com   Stacy Sews and Schools

http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/              Confessions of a part time working mom

http://www.eviljoyspeaks.wordpress.com     Evil Joy Speaks

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com         Spatulas on Parade               

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/               The Bergham’s Life Chronicles

www.fbxadventures.blogspot.com                      FBX Adventures (In Parenting)

http://www.healingtomato.com                     Healing Tomato

http://dates2diapers2.blogspot.com                Dates 2 Diapers 2

http://followmehome.shellybean.com               Follow me home . . .

www.outmannedmommy.com/                       Outmanned

Now the other thing you need to know is what words I have been given to include. This time my words were submitted by Spatulas on Parade and they are:  calendar ~ time off ~ jerky ~ teriyaki ~ hot dang ~ slammin 

So I mentioned in my last post how we had the worst bush fires in five years over the last week. I had to go to work on Monday despite the fact that the town I worked in was closed off from all freeway traffic and authorities were telling everyone to stay away from the town. Off course with all of this in mind, I had gone to bed the night before assuming that my boss would tell us to stay home the next day. Despite the fact that I figured I had some time off on the Monday, I was still up at 7am like I always am on a work day. (Trust my stupid body calendar to know it's a weekday) so I texted the office manager asking for confirmation that I should stay home and not do anything insane like drive directly into a fire affected town. Sadly for me she told me I HAD to go to work, and I would need to leave early because I'd have to find an alternate route into town. 

Now I don't know what any of you would do in this situation, but my natural response is to panic. I started tearing around the house madly trying to find clothes for me and Miss K and trying to remember where I put my shoes on Wednesday night after I finished work. I grabbed Miss K and started to take her nappy off, so I could get her cleaned up and ready for day care. What I didn't realise at the time was that I had grabbed her and ripped her nappy off mid bowel movement, when she was beyond the point of no return. I was so distracted and complaining to mum I didn't realise anything was wrong until I noticed the nugget on my carpet, looking a lot like a piece of teriyaki chicken. "Hot dang!" I yelled as I scrambled to pick it up. (Actually what I really said was a lot ruder and more appropriate for when you have a lump of turd on your carpet, but this is a child friendly place right here you know?) By this time Miss K was crying because she was upset she had just done a poo on the carpet, I was crying too from sheer frustration. I sat on my couch with my head in my hands heaving huge jerky sobs and just wishing I could go back to bed. (Or at least crawl into a dark corner and start slammin back the vodkas).

This was the point where mum stepped in and took Miss K off my hands so I could focus on getting ready for work. I had the quickest shower I have ever had, and then raced out the door while wearing my little sister's shoes (I never did manage to figure out where I'd hidden my own shoes until the next morning) and started the long and often terrifying drive to work along some of the most treacherous roads I have ever driven. A trip that normally takes me 15 minutes took an hour and a half of winding, narrow, unfamiliar roads in towns I'd seen on maps but never had the urge to visit for myself.

You'll be pleased to know I made it to work in one piece, and while the office manager was totally unsympathetic to the rough start to my day, my boss was a lot more understanding when we spoke about it the next day. When the freeways were finally reopened and I never had to make that drive ever again. I think the next time the town decides to combust I'll be telling the boss to close the office for the day and just let me go back to sleep.

Well that's all for now, I am off to go share a single bunk bed with a two year old because that's what you do when you visit family for the weekend. Thanks to Spatulas on Parade for my words, especially because I've never been given the opportunity to compare bowel movements to Asian food before, so this was an exciting first for me. Now go on and visit everyone else and enjoy the rest of the festivities.

The good, the bad and the natural disaster

Hello again lovely people, I've come here tonight with a sad story and some scary photos. For any of you in Australia, you will know that Victoria has spent the past week battling hundreds of bush fires and dealing with the devastation that fire brings. You will also know that last Saturday was the 5 year anniversary of the Black Saturday fires that claimed 173 lives and destroyed 2029 homes. The fact that it was also the day that began the worst rash of bush fires since Black Saturday was just cruel irony.

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Just one of the many fires from Black Saturday.

A lot of the fires were very close to the town I live in, and the town I work in, which is just 12 kilometers down the road from my home was shut down completely as fires threatened homes. This town is actually a coal mining town, and there are two power stations in the area, which provide electricity to a large portion of the state of Victoria. Sadly one of these power stations caught fire, as did one of the coal mines. As of writing this post, the coal mine fire is still burning and it will be for a long time to come. This is just a fact of life when you're dealing with coal, and fires in the mines aren't uncommon. Fires of this size are however.

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What a burning coal mine looks like.

There is also a paper mill and the plantation which houses the timber for the mill. This too caught fire, causing a lot of damage. Another fire caused by a lightning strike managed to reach the freeway which links my home town and my place of work, which is how the fire got so close to us. They closed the freeway from right before it reaches the opposite end of my town, right up to the next town on the other side of my town of work. That is about 25 kilometers of road that was being threatened. The freeway was closed for two whole days while they fought the fires.

How the world looks when it's totally surrounded by fires.

The thing that saddens me is how many of these fires were deliberately lit. There have been reports of two young gentlemen driving around with lighters and toilet paper starting fires along a stretch of highway in another town nearby, which caused several thousand hectares of bush land to burn down.

Now I mentioned the Black Saturday fires at the beginning, the loss of lives, and the loss of property that it caused. I can remember that day clearly, and it was horrifying. Luckily for us again our town wasn't directly in the line of fire, but we were under ember attack, and I remember watching the debris fall down from the sky as the wind carried it over to us from surrounding towns. When it rained in the afternoon that day, the rain was black as the water mixed with the ash and soot in the air. The sky glowed orange all day and the atmosphere was suffocating. Back in 2009 our emergency systems were basic at best. There was no efficient way to relay information to people in danger and part of this is the reason why Black Saturday was so devastating. There was an inquest after the dust had settled, and the next few years were spent creating new ways to inform residents of current fire activity and impending danger. This included of course a Facebook page (where would we be without Facebook?) and a new emergency services website with constant updates which tells us exactly where in the country there are fires, and what it means for people in surrounding areas.

What the website looked like on Saturday. The red triangles mean get out now, the orange triangles mean be alert.

It is sad that it took a widespread tragedy to let people know that we needed a system like this, but hopefully the changes that have been made will mean that we never have a repeat of Black Saturday ever again. If this past week is anything to go by the changes are certainly positive. So far we have had one loss of life due to bush fire this year, which is a huge difference to the 173 lives that were lost in 2009. 

So now the rebuilding begins. Teams have already started cleaning up the freeway, and although it looks like a barren wasteland now with nothing but charred trees lining the roads, in a few weeks the green will start growing back and the trees will heal like they do every time there is a fire. The people will heal too. We're used to fires, we do live in the country after all. And as soon as the smoke finally clears we'll all be able to breathe a little bit easier. 

This is what we're breathing in at the moment.

I would like to take a minute to give a huge thank you to the heroic members of the Country Fire Association and the Metropolitan Fire Brigade who have come all the way down from Melbourne to help us fight these fires. Without these fearless men and women I'm sure this story would have a different ending. This includes the people working in the command centres, organising the information updates and making sure everyone knows how to stay safe.

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