Notes from the side of a volcano

How do you know you are having a really boring week?

When you come to write your blog and you realise that the most exciting thing that happened to you all week was cooking a poached egg while wearing your favourite fleecy dressing gown, lifting the egg out of the saucepan and accidentally letting it slip then looking all over the kitchen floor for it  .... only to realise it had landed neatly in the pocket of your dressing gown.

On that note, here's this week's new products and layouts (all atDesigner Digitals):

 

 

 

 

 

 

That last one was done last ngiht (while fending off with one arm Daughter-one who was trying to upload from a CD to her i-pod on my computer). I really wanted to scrap but was short of time, so I grabbed one of my templates and flipped it:

Last Sunday we took Daughter-Two to the Clip and Climb rock climbing facility on Dominion Road. While she went in with Bernard to register and be strapped up with a harness, I wandered down the road with the camera (as usual, you can click on the photos to see a larger version):

 

 

 

 

 

Clip and Climb was absolutely packed. Jammed into a confined space with no natural light and scores of over-excited chattering kids I am not exactly in my comfort zone.

Daughter-Two, as well, was getting anxious and hovering on the verge of "losing it". She was very patient waiting her turn to go on the vertical slide (where they winch the helmeted children up then let them "drop"). But she started itching and scratching, which was an interesting confirmation of what I suspected - that it is often stress-provoked (in that she probably releases histamine when stressed and she is overly sensitive to histamine).

Anyway, she finally got her turn - but did not make it to five metres as she planned. Instead she called out "stop! Stop!" at four metres. When she got off she was dreadfully upset because she had not done as she planned. She was sobbing about this, as the father behind us commented to his friend "how cute and adorable it was". Cute? Adorable? Not in my book. So I told her to calm down and agreed she could have another go.

This time she told the operator she definitely wanted to go to five metres and came up with the great idea of singing as she was cranked up. So up she went, with a look of abject terror on her face bravely but shakily singing "Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the pooh, cuddly little snuggly old bear.."

I'm sure everyone watching thought "that poor child, she obviously doesn't want to do it". But she NEEDED to do it and she did. She got all the way to five metres, then came flying down - and was absolutely glowing afterwards. "I was determined" she said. "It's great to be determined".

 

 

 

 

Then yesterday she went to her friend Lily's birthday party at the Tri-Star gym in Mt Roskill. She didn't stop bouncing or smiling the whole time. (What I love about the photos is that in nearly all of them her feet are off the ground, even when she is not actually ON the trampoline)

 

 

 

So it's been an active week for her - but a very unproductive one for me (what with helping Daughter-One swot, spending a day with her when she wasn't up to school, dyeing her hair purple - don't ask - plus doing TVNZ work, and all the usual cooking, cleaning and despairing of the state of this place). The despairing is surprisingly time-consuming but doesn't resut in much in the way of material improvements.

Ah well, I did get SOME designing and scrapping done (You can find all these at Designer Digitals):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And look at this gorgeous page by Merr of her precious grandson Cade (using the new My Windows template):

Single mother Saturday

It's been a bit of a long week. But Daughter-One has sat her first big exam (and came out smiling) and I managed to get some work done. But I can't relax even though it is the weekend as I am still holding the fort on my own as I have been all week.

So far my Saturday has gone something like this:

6.45am  Woken by Daughter-Two climbing into bed with me clutching her beloved and very large science encyclopaedia. Have a long conversation about electrolysis and viscosity. Viscosity is a big favorite. We have a round of "which is the most viscous?" (won by toothpaste as usual).

Then we move onto the relativity of time, and how it moves faster when you are having fun. Daughter-Two says "hmm, so to make the two hour trip to Cambridge to visit the Nanas go faster I need to do something I really enjoy. Let me think..." Then she gets a gleam in her eye and says "I know - I'll annoy Daughter-One" and laughs uproariously at her own joke.

7.45am Suddenly realise that all this talking has made me late and I have to get her to her Saturday morning drama class. Jump up and make her breakfast, let out the dog and throw some food at him, throw clothes at Daughter-Two and tell her to get dressed, chuck the festering pile of damp towels from the bathroom floor into the washing machine, eat some food, check my emails, shower and get dressed. Make Daughter-One coffee and toast and wake her up as otherwise there is no way she will emerge from the cocoon of her bed until I get back mid-morning.

9.15 am Start walking with Daughter-Two to school for drama class. Something is nagging me about the way she looks and she seems to be walking a bit funny. Suddenly realise she has put on her jeans the wrong way round making her look as if her bum is in front. The sun has come out and it's a quiet street so I say "quick, take off her crocs and pull down the jeans and we'll put them on the right way". She starts shrieking about people seeing her undies (a new and positive age-appropriate development I think to myself, ticking off a mental checklist).

I'm on my knees just pulling up the jeans when she calls out in my ear "Hypo Steve!"

Who's Steve and why is my daughter warning him about his blood sugar?  I stand up and am nearly knocked over by a postman on a bike laughing his way down the footpath. Realise Daughter-Two had actually  been calling "Hi Postie!"

Cross road to school but Daughter-Two suddenly stops dead in the middle of the road and shrieks "oh no!! Look!!" in tones of great horror. Cars that had assumed we would be safely on the footpath before they got close screech to a halt and I say "what?? what?".

Daughter-Two points to a flattened praying mantis on the tarmac.

Empathy for all living creatures (even the previously feared ants) has also recently kicked in (another tick on the mental checklist) but clearly needs some fine-tuning.

10.30 Leave drama class after spending an hour sitting in cold outside reading newspaper. Walk home and spend next hour cleaning kitchen, unstacking dishwasher and hanging out washing while fending off requests from both daughters (can I have raisins, can I have some more paper, can I write a story on your computer, can I have some cheese on toast and can you make it PLEEEESE, can my friend on her cellphone in the US only for ten minutes PLEESE..)

11.30 finally sit down at computer to meet a deadline. Tell Daughter-Two she will have to find something to amuse herself with. "I know" she says "I'll illustrate the story I wrote". Phew, I think. But she is still hovering. "You'll have to print it out for me" she says. Well, that sounds easy enough. Open Word, click print ... and up it comes with "out of ink". Hunt around for replacement ink cartridge, hint for scissors to open sealed ink cartridge, insert in printer.

12.00 Finally get some work done.

12.30 Time to cook lunch for Daughter-Two.

And why I am on my own again? Bernard was off in Wellington covering Reserve Bank announcements and had to stay on for the Qantas Media Awards last night where he won the award for best business website.

Congratulations honey, that is an amazing achievement.

Now get back here so you can put out the rubbish and walk the dog.

New in store this weekend

New this week at Designer Digitals:

 

My mother says I have to do a new post because the last post was too depressing. So here goes:

My Mother's Day Trip to Motuihi Island by Lynn Grieveson

Bernard wanted to go to Motuihi Island (an uninhabited island) and booked some tickets for the ferry a week ago. But the weather forecast said it would rain and hail all Sunday so we decided not to go. But when we woke up on Sunday it was sunny and not too cold so we decided to go after all.

Bernard said we could get the 9.30am ferry and come back at 12.30. I packed some snacks. Daughter-One said she would come too. We were about to leave the house. Then I told Bernard to check the ferry times again to be sure and he said there was no ferry back from the island until 2.30pm. There was some shouting and I packed more food and I asked Daughter-One if she still wanted to come and she said "no way".

We got to the ferry and it was nearly empty. The only other people on board were 6 people with lots of boxes of trail mix and baked beans and first aid supplies and who wore shorts and had hairy legs. We found out they were conservation trust volunteers who go out to the island to plant native trees.

It was cold when we left:

 

When we got out into the gulf it was much sunnier but still very cold. We went up the front of the boat and tried to do the titanic thing. Daughter-One says this was a fail:

 

When we got to the island all the people with hairy legs got on a tractor and disappeared up to the other end of the island to plant trees and trap pests and do other worthy things.

We had the beach near the wharf all to ourselves:

 

The island used to be a quarantine island where they left people who arrived on ships with diseases like yellow fever or scarlet fever. In the First World War it was the place they interned the VIP Germans and Italians like the ambassadors and the wealthy businessmen. I thought it would be a nice place to spend the war, especially if you could swim every day. We walked up to the headland where there was a cemetary for the victims of the 1918 flu epidemic. They had all died within a few days of each other:

 

We could see back to the city and it looked very grey and miserable, but on the island it was getting warmer and warmer:

 

We had a picnic in an olive grove:

 

Daughter-Two found a rope swing some boaties must have made:

 

 

It was so warm and the beach looked so good that we decided to have a swim even though we had no swimming togs or towels with us.  It was lucky we had the place completely to ourselves.

There are no photos of us swimming.

Bernard said if I put those about on the internet he would be very very angry.

The water was very very cold but the swim was great.

After the swim it clouded over a little bit:

 

Daughter-Two wanted to go to a forest so we went for a long walk up the island:

 

  

Then we found a gravel track and started to walk back to the wharf. It went past an old woodshed where the island trust has a nursery for native trees. All the people with hairy legs were in the shed and they saw us and said "come and have a cup of tea". So we went in and Daughter-Two said "Hello, I'm Daughter-Two and I am very worried about global warming". They all stopped talking and smiled and she asked them all about the trees they were planting. They took her outside to the nursery and asked her if she wanted to plant a tree herself. She planted a manuka (tea tree):

 

Then Daughter-Two said that plants need water and sun and love to grow, so she needed to sing the tree a love song. She sang a song called "Little Tree I love You". The men with hairy legs were not watching and were picking olives off a tree nearby but their shoulders were shaking.

Then we walked back to the wharf and as we got close to the beach where we swam we could see the masts of a yacht. It was a yacht called "Lion New Zealand" which Bernard said was a famous yacht:

 

Then the ferry came and all the people with hairy legs and us got on the ferry and went back to the city. And when we got off the ferry we went to the supermarket and it was hailing and then we came home and watched the news and it was snowing down south.

The end.

I had a parent-teacher meeting for DaughterTwo last week. They were very happy with her, especially since she has recently lost her teacher aide and is doing just fine. They have never had a child "graduate" out of needing a teacher aide so fast, and it is all the more amazing when you remember she was the child that was not allowed to attend for more than a couple of hours a day, had the teacher crying she had never come across anything like her - and forced the school to bring in an adviser from the local special school for advice and send the teacher and the deputy principal on a training course on Asperger's syndrome. Now I have trouble convincing people that she is on the spectrum at all (although to the trained eye there are always giveaways!). She is so happy and is loving school and her friends right now.

The day after the meeting I had to fast in preparation for exploratory surgery. Yes, every few years they like to stick cameras where cameras really shouldn't go. Autism and auto-immune gut issues seem to go hand in hand in many families, and they certainly do in ours. But fasting and low blood sugar are not a good combination, and every time in the past it has always ended badly ... But this time, probably because of the drugs that mask the low blood sugar symptoms, it was fine. OK, so I was a little light headed after hours of nothing but water, green tea and barley sugars but compared to the state I am normally in it was a walk in the park.

In fact, I felt so good after my enforced "detox" I decided I should become one of those yogis who apparently live on nothing but fresh air. It really is quite tempting. Unfortunately because I am unable to digest wheat or dairy, I don't eat anything much other than herbal teas, meat, fruit, vege and organic porridge anyway. When I told Bernard I was quite converted to the detox idea he just raised an eyebrow and said "what else could you cut out?"  Actually I am thinking of ditching the oats. I always thought I could tolerate them even though they contain traces of gluten but it might be worth a try.

So I rocked up to the hospital admissions desk all smiles and positively glowing (or so I felt - I probably just looked slightly deranged with lack of food). Then they made me put on a ID bracelet with my age spelt out in years, months and days. Surely a date of birth would suffice? They really know how to bring someone down.

Since I totally ignore my age, it was a bit of a shock to see it written down. Daughter-One has always been told I am 39 but recently she had started saying I am 29. I pointed this out to the admissions clerk, adding that since I also have a 15 year old it does make people raise their eyebrows. Bernard put his arm around me proudly and added "I knocked her up real young". Oh yes, we were quite the comedy duo.

The laughs soon came to an end once I was in that humiliating hospital gown, but I could comfort myself with the thought that the next thing I knew I would be ready to go home. Because every other time it's been a case of having the needle put in your hand, making a bit of small talk then coming around back in the cubicle with no memory of what happened and a nurse telling you to get dressed and go home. Unfortunately it didn't work out that way this time. I keep getting flashbacks, including at one point having a conversation with the theatre staff about a dream I had. Worst of all, I can't remember what I said, only the nurse laughing and saying "that was your dream, was it?". It's exceedingly worrying and I think I need more of those drugs to black out the memory of remembering.

However, all turned out well and the specialist stopped by with some delightful photos and said not only was there no sign of cancer, there was also for the first time no sign of inflammation. He did seem a little reluctant to make eye contact but I am telling myself that that's because he had a bad headache (yes, I remember him telling that to the nurse too..)

Moving on quickly .. here's what will be new in store at Designer Digitals this week:

 

I used the new paperpack to scrap a couple of layouts:

I wonder about Bernard sometimes, I really do.

We went out to the airport today to be there when my mother arrived back from England (where apparently they are making just as much a fuss about swine flu as they are here). And after we had had a cup of tea together and waved her off to Cambridge with my Dad, we stopped at the Airport Shopping Centre to do the supermarket shop.

Stopping at a new Foodtown instead of the dull tramp around the usual Pak n Save counts as something of a rainy Saturday treat in my books these days. Sadly.

There we were in the checkout and Bernard realised that the promotional stand nearby was telling him he could get a free personalised mug with his own name on it if he bought five packs of the soup he likes.

So he piles them onto the checkout and looks expectantly at the checkout operator. When no mug materializes he says "where are the mugs?".

Poor blushing checkout operator had to point out to him that he needed to send away for it, as she didn't have a box under her till filled with mugs bearing every conceivable name under the sun. Strangely enough.

Of course, there is no way he will be bothered to send away for it. Though I might. And give the name as "Wally". He can take the mug to work.

Today is also National Scrapbooking Day. To mark it, everything in store at Designer Digitals is marked down 20% until 6am Monday EST.

There are lots of new products in store, including these from me coming in a few hours:

 

And I have been scrapping - although I can't show you most for the happy reason that I have been more organised with submitting to magazines and have had two picked up this week :-)