Galling

Every so often I find myself suddenly incapable of consuming any form of dairy - even as minor as a dash of skim milk in my cup of tea. It's as sudden as flicking off a light switch.

I have realised over the last few weeks that this instant incapacity for cow juice coincides with a general malaise predominantly involving feeling very uncomfortable in my own skin, some impressive stomach bloating and this pain on the right side of my body which reaches around my back and takes up the whole upper right quadrant of my back. It's similar to that pain you get when you've squeezed yourself into that bra that is really too small but you just can't bring yourself to wear the same one again for the third day and where the hell have all my bras gone anyway. You know that sort of mildly gripping pain you get where it feels like you can't really draw in a deep breath. But removing the bra does nothing to alleviate the pain. Or more discomfort really.

I mention this in passing to mum, as I'm making us a tea and offer her a green tea as that is what I'm drinking while the whole milk thing turns my stomach. And she is all 'it's your gall bladder, you can't eat anything fatty or rich anymore, it's what Jannie had and she got very sick and now she's a skinny minny and the sky is falling. You know, how our mothers do better than anyone else in the whole wide world.

But I think she's right. I get the pain if I eat anything overly rich or high in refined sugar* or dairy based. And no it's not indigestion - I am well versed on that having incubated four times with a propensity for foetuses to hang around under my ribs rather than my hips.

I'm going to go and see my GP this week to see what he thinks.

I mentioned it to my neighbour the other day who on seeing us heading off on the walk to school joined us and she has exactly the same thing.

Funnily enough, she said she's really pulled her diet into line over the last 12 months and now she can lash out every now and then without many ramifications but she still can't eat yoghurt and that is something she really misses. Over the last few weeks the one thing I've really missed eating is yoghurt.

The upside of all this however, is a renewed drive to lose weight with a whole new perspective and attitude. You see, the trying to lose weight from a position of self loathing had only resulted in my creeping up the scale rather than down it and eating a really bad diet. Blackbird suggested that perhaps I say to myself that while I'm not pleased with this body right now, this is the body I have and that did much to shift my mindset.

So I've returned to an eating pattern/lifestyle/diet that worked for me 12 years ago when I lost 20 kilos eating that way. It was a 'diet' recommended to my by my GP at the time who had also lost something like 25 kilos following the 'plan' by a French guy called Michel Montignac. Back then I followed what he laid out in his book Dine Out and Lose Weight but may lash out on one of his more recent books to see what has changed over the last decade.

The main thing it does for me is return me to a more 'whole' food diet with far less refined sugar and a lot less fat to what I've been scarfing down of late. And I LIKE eating this way. It's so STUPID that I fall out of the habit of it when it clearly works for me and my body.

So I started this month and have lost 2.4kgs. Just like that.

I'm trying to focus on that rather than the cold hard reality that my baking has not only made me fat but pissed off my gall bladder.






*oh the injustices of the world - after consuming three oat and raisin biscuits the other day such was the pain I had to go and lie down.

Speeding

So Grover now sleeps in a normal bed and survives without a day sleep.

Don't give up ... we don't need much of anything

This song came out when I was in Year 8. I was 13. I used to lie in bed listening to it every night on Love Song Dedications. It kinda played to that whole teenage yearning and anxiety and desperation.

I still love it and it still runs as a bit of a soundtrack to my life.

But man, is that not the most boring video clip in.the.universe!

Where was this song when I was incubating HUH?

Even more reasons to love Sydney

Chk Chk BOOOOOM

What I love about living in Sydney

You start with this:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/814694/man-shot-twice-in-leg-in-inner-sydney


and you end with this:

9 ... by Felix

Nine things about me:

1. What's the best thing about turning nine?
   You're older
   
   
2. What sort of things do you like?
   Pokemon
   
   
3. What would you like to be when you grow up?
   A wrestler or a game designer - then I could make my own Pokemon games and play them. I've already got ideas.
   
   
4. What do you want for dinner tonight?
   Pizza
   
   
5. Who's your best friend?
   (Jasper: Felix is) In the world? Maxime. In your class? Aww I don't know, Kyle* probably.
   
   
6. Summer or Winter?
   Winter
   
   
7. Best thing about school?
   Seeing my friends
   
   
8. What's your favourite junk food?
   Sour stuff
   
   
9. Cat or dog person?
   Cat**.
   

* Kyle has cerebral palsy which has affected his legs. That Felix would become good friends with someone who has special needs does not necessarily surprise me but blows me away all the same.

** I made him say this because once the little fellas are both at school we'll get a cat again, but we will never EVER EVER have another dog. As long as I live.

9

Felix turned nine today. NINE. 9.

How cool is that?

He shares a birthday with Blackbird's Youngest and she did a cool thing to mark the day on her blog.

I'm going to copy - because I'm shallow and predictable like that - and will post it tomorrow.

For his birthday there were Pokemon cards (of course), a Ben 10 Alien Chamber (natch), and ...

a Wii.

Well, it was sort of a birthday present. He wanted one and we told him he'd have to save up for it. So for the last two years or so (have they been around that long? really? are we that slow in adopting new brain-cell killing technology?) he has saved all his birthday and Christmas money and other donations from grandparents as has Oscar. With his birthday money from Grandmama he and Oscar had saved about $300 and we kicked in the remainder.

So life as we know it has ended BUT I also have a brand new bargaining chip. HAHA.

It also means I can start using the Wii Fit I was given for Mother's Day last week. Noice.

Mum, the boys and I headed in to Chef's restaurant for brunch which, while brief and disjointed due to taking small children for walks and so forth, was delicious.

Dinner was his request - spaghetti with meatballs (I made salad and garlic bread too) and pavlova for his cake.

Quite a day. As it was nine years ago.

Chapter Five: Did I mention that it rained?

So there is a running gag over here that if it doesn't rain on the Easter long weekend then it mustn't be Easter. To keep in step with tradition, showers were forecast for late Friday through Saturday and then heavy rain periods on Sunday and Monday*.

Believe it or not, but I don't much mind camping in the wet. We have a kick-arse tent and hello, did I mention I have four sons, the idea of mooching around in drizzle doesn't much bother them. Well, most of them.

Anyway, it did rain on and off over the first few days (Friday - get there, set up, drink wine; Saturday - drive an hour to Goulburn to buy everything we forgot including a GAS BOTTLE and GAS and Easter eggs and chocolate for me and maybe some more chocolate and oh yeah perhaps some food for the next few days; Sunday - first (and traumatic due to poor planning on our part) cave tour and general hanging around) but the main impact it had on us was not being able to sit around a camp fire.

But then on Monday a bit of cabin fever set in and oh yeah, MY PERIOD ARRIVED. Awesome. At least the insatiable appetite for chocolate could be explained.

So we decided to do this round-trip bush walk which took in an old quarry site and a waterfall. It was 4kms all up and we figured that was what we'd been doing going to school and back each day all term so it should be no problem whatsoever.

I stuffed some snacks in the bottom of the baby carrier, made everyone carry a drink bottle, Chef got the camera gear organised (including the tripod! Cue classy artistic shots!) and we set off.

There was some very light drizzle - more like that moist misty air than anything else when we set off. Certainly not enough to make us not go. Although part of me was thinking, 'I wonder if this is a good idea'.

It took us a little while to be sure we were on the right track.

Let me just leave that statement with you for a little while.







Yeah. One of the things we loved most about Wombeyan was how hokey it was. But the part of the hokey that included basically no signage was a little irritating. A few days later we were talking with one of the rangers and he was telling us about this 9km walk he did one day. I asked him if there was a booklet or a brochure with different walks you could do starting from the caves area and with an excitable, 'no!'. Awesome.

So we're heading up what we think is the track which could also be a fire trail but the one sign we saw (back in the middle of the campsite with an arrow pointing in this vague direction) had us thinking 'this must be it'.

Then that wet air became rain. Not heavy rain, but rain all the same.
Jasper had insisted on wearing shorts - partly because Felix was and partly because we hadn't moved into 'big' (i.e. long legged) pants at home yet because it wasn't cool enough. So yeah, we'd set out for a bushwalk, in the rain, with our little scarecrow child wearing shorty shorts. Awesome.

Early on we did score some points with the kids with some kangaroos on the opposite hillside. There's a merino sheep in that picture somewhere too but I could have already been hallucinating. Grover, while the youngest, is an absolute lump of a kid and carrying him on my back was kinda making me dizzy and faintly nauseaus.

But I do love me some Australian bush and it was looking quite romatic in the what was now quite heavy rain.


And well, I am very partial to a rocky outcrop

By now we were basically committed to this walk. We were up a significant hill and the whole thought of what we'd do if we had to go back was enough to keep us going forward.

The boys were enjoying it. Chef and I started to - silently - have our concerns. Then we came to a blockage on the track. And by a blockage I mean a very large multi-trunked felled tree. There were five main branches/trunks and it was basically when I started thinking of that family who had broken down in the snow somewhere in the US - and the husband had gone for help and she fed her small children on breastmilk. I was thinking how much it would take for me to breastfeed an almost nine and an eleven year old when I realised I wasn't breast feeding anyone and hey, I'd packed Space Food Sticks! And bananas!

Anyway, with Grover on my back I managed to scrap under two of the branches and very ungracefully scale the rest. Then it was me and Chef getting Jasper over and under, then Oscar (OI) and then coming to the fork in the trail.

OH HELL YEAH.

Except it wasn't really a fork, it was more a range of possibilities.

Felix who was now having an AWESOME time went off down the first way and I - because I'm like that - followed. We came to what looked like a very old dam wall. Here's an excellent photo of it for you. If you squint you can see it up there.
That was the moment when I thought 'is this it? is this the effing waterfall? because if this is the effing waterfall I'm really pissed off now.'

But Chef - the man of reason - had recognised the other trail was the correct one and was heading off in that direction. Except part of the track had fallen away/was too slippery due to the now torrential rain/wasn't really part of the track but in the blinding rain seemed to be so it was quite a procedure getting me, Jasper and Oscar down it.

By this time Jasper was all, 'I'm fweeezing. This is a bit daygerwouse for me. I'm fweezing,' and so on and so forth.

Oscar was getting anxious.

Felix was having a blast.

Grover was fine except for when I had to lean forward/back/up/down.

And Chef said, 'well, if we don't have to call the SES it'll be a good walk'.

At that point we came to the base of what was quite obviously 'the waterfall'. Of course, taking in the decade long drought in the area and ignoring the downfall we were currently experiencing, it was really just a rockfall. Here we cracked out the snacks - space food sticks, bananas, mandarins. We were sort of protected in the gully and were remarkably in good spirits. We agreed that a photo was in order because there was no way we had schlepped that effing tripod with us without using it. It only took two shots and I do believe, apart from me looking slightly crazed and Oscar holding back tears as Felix has just shoved him and he'd fallen over a tree root and Grover looking scared and Jasper looking like an icicle, it's quite a good shot of the fam.



By now we'd be walking for well over two hours. Of course in thinking about distance we had forgotten to consider the topography. To school and back is 4 kms but it is on a footpath and is flat. Yeah. Idiots.

Anyway, we trudged our way out and were spurred on by the promise of hot showers.

Then we got back to the tent. One of the ropes that the little fellas insisted on 'twanging' had given way in the rain so the awning had fallen down in one corner, thus creating - OH THE IRONY - a waterfall into the middle section of the tent.

So for another 10 minutes everyone was left shivering outside in the rain while Chef and I - on hands and knees - mopped it out and assessed the damage. Blessedly my predisposition to plastic crates has kept all our food dry and the bag with all our jackets, scarves etc was in the far corner and the water had not yet reached it. Score.

So that, my friends, was the day we went bushwalking.




Oh, and some of those classy artistic shots? Nope. Not one. Too busy getting kids over logs, under logs, along slippery NARROW paths. You know. Here are some real quality shots for you to enjoy.



*It maybe would have helped had I known this forecast before the events that followed.

In other news

For sports fans out there, just go and be outraged over here. Devastating expose on Rugby League (as if we didn't know) by Four Corners tonight. As one Twitterer said tonight, what sport has to teach their players how not to rape women.
*****
I've been in touch with The Spastic Centre (OH how I wish they'd change their name, isn't it dreadful) about accessing some services for Oscar. I did this when he was a pre-schooler but was informed he was 'too good' to qualify for any support. Hence why it's taken about six years to go back. In fact, I only did go back because our CP specialist said that I should.

So - we're on the wait list (9 months) for speech therapy. That actually works quite well in terms of determining the need for auxilary speech devices, trialling them then putting in funding requests for one for use at (suck in air here) h.i.g.h.s.c.h.o.o.l.

We're on the wait list (4 months) for physio. However the physio might decide to leave it until closer to the surgery. Yeah, the 's' word. More on that in a minute.

They have a recreation therapist and she is going to provide me with a range of options/clubs/ideas etc for activities for Oscar so he can stop driving us (and yes, probably himself) insane at home doing very little. We've been playing phone tag for a week.

They also have a hydrotherapy pool and stroke correction classes for children of Oscar's age. It was becoming an issue for me - and I'm guessing him - at the place we were having swimming lessons as he was staying in a particular group getting older while all the other kids were progressing nicely and were always a lot younger. It was also costing us around $180 a t.e.r.m. We went for an assessment at the pool last week and this week he'll go into the group - 2 to 6 kids of his age, three therapists in the water with them for 45 minutes. It's nice and quiet, huge change room area for him to get ready etc and oh yes, it's F.R.E.E.

Next year when he turns 12 he can use their gym for free.

They also have a dental clinic who can refer him to the dental hospital to get his braces put on (under a general) - which would also be f.r.e.e. (Although granted the waitlist will probably see him getting them just in time for his 30th birthday)

So yes, it has all been very positive - in that depressing special needs kind of way.
*****
We also had an appointment at the hospital with our CP specialist and the peadiatric orthopeadic surgeon as he hadn't seen Oscar for about 2-3 years and his left foot was - in my and in our specialist's - getting less flexible.

And - oh what a surprise - surgery is required. This we always knew - but I kinda had it in my head it would be when he was 13 or 14, not THIS YEAR. Well, early next year probably.

Basically they'll cut tendon from his leg here and put it in his foot there, and remove some tendon from over there and put it on his foot around here, and then they'll cut around his ankle and that was when I fell down dead. No not really, it wasn't anything I didn't already know but once you're hearing the word 'sawing' and 'bone' and it's about your child you tend to feel a bit hurly.

It's going to involve six weeks in a cast with no weight bearing whatsoever. Hi, can you just fill this order for jumbo valium now?

Apparently the Spastic Centre will be able to help us with pre and post-op support, rehab and all the 'stuff' like putting in ramps in the house etc. to get him around.

Oh just take me out to the back paddock and shoot me dead now.

It's going to be absolutely hell. He will be traumatised to a point I don't think we would have witnessed since he was a neonate.

I'm just giving you all a heads up now. Get ready to assume the crash position.
*****
Mum has had every test under the sun, seen a new gastroenterologist and is the proud recipient of the all clear. Except for the fact she still has chronic dioarrhea and is now weighing in under 60kgs. The last time I weighed that I was N.I.N.E. years old. Crikey.
Anyway, we're saying our thanks that it's not cancer or some other dreadful ailment but still it is a concern there is no answer.
This new specialist seems like a good egg so there is a plan to get to the bottom (hahaha- bottom - geddit!) of it.
*****
I bought some new clothes last week even though it wasn't in the budget but there was 30% off everything at Katies and Target. It has made me feel better, even if some of it was in a size getting close to triple digits.
*****
We've been really unhappy with Jasper's kindy - that they're lacklustre, that they don't even acknowledge Jasper when he arrives, I've seen the staff use not really appropriate behaviour responses, blah blah blah. I talked to the director about it last week and it is seriously like we're at a whole different pre-school. Today I got a full rundown of his day. Their morning greeting is like the arrival of the queen of Sheba, but get this - Jasper is actually talking about his day there. Let's see if they keep it up.
*****
Today I spent about s.i.x. hours sorting and storing all the boys clothes - and then rearranging the bigger boys bedroom because you see, it turns out we don't have two bigger boys, we have three. Jasper has decided he is a bigger boy now and 'Leelix and Ogga are my fwiends' and two weeks ago announced 'I'm not sleeping in your bed anymore, I'm sleeping in with the bigger boys.' And so he did. On a mattress on the floor. So today we re-bunked the bunk beds, set up the other bedhead and now, Grover has his own room.
*****
More camping stories to come.
*****

Happy Mothers Day everyone

A meme

So Blackbird tagged Duyvken and Duyvken tagged me - YAY!

What are your current obsessions?
Sodoku - I know, I'm about 10 years behind the trend.

Which item from you wardrobe do you wear most often?
Do not get me started about the current fug I am in over my wardrobe. I am so sick of my uniform of a cotton knit top and shorts/skirt/jeans. So.sick.of.it. I have an entire wardrobe full of clothes that don't fit and it is really pissing me off. I don't have any jackets or cold weather gear, just some hideous cheap hoddies that make me look even more like I have totally given up on looking half decent.

What's for dinner?
Tonight was farfalle with meatballs, which were actually left over hamburgers from last night in a homemade tomato sauce. Dessert with a rhubarb and apple crumble.

What's your greatest fear at the moment?
That we will never get above this financial pit of pathetic horror. That I will never lose the 20 kilos I need to lose. That something will happen to one of the boys. Oscar's surgery that is earmarked for early next year (I like to get in early on the worry thing). That the big dint on the running board of the car (from Chef hitting a rock and the dirt road to Wombeyan) will get rust in it before we can afford to get it fixed. Money. That I've been in a bit of a fug since before the school holidays (a month ago) and it's only shifted slightly.

What are you listening to?
Classic FM in the mornings (oh Margaret Throsby how I love thee) and Richard Glover in the afternoons, Justine Clarke in between.

If you were a goddess what would you be?
Some buxom wench who feeds everyone.

What are your favourite holiday spots?
Reality: camping in the bush. Fantasy: Italy, New York, Canada, Scotland

What are you reading right now?
Nothing. Maybe that has something to do with my fug. I think I'm going to borrow The Poisonwood Bible from the library - everyone raves about that.

What is your guilty pleasure?
Huh. Whaddya know. I don't have one.

Who or what makes you laugh?
My children, my husband, Jon Stewart

What is your favourite spring thing to do?
Borrow the in-law's trailer and clean out a whole heap of shit. That and washing down walls.

Where are you planning to travel next?
We're going back to Wombeyan Caves at Christmas. Yes.We.Are.

What is the best thing you ate or drank lately?
The apple and rhubarb crumble I made tonight was pretty good. The red wine I glugged down last night as Jasper had a mega-meltdown was just the ticket.

When was the last time you were tipsy?
Probably when we all went out to dinner - but that was a very generous version of tipsy. Maybe a few weeks back when we had our neighbours in for dinner and I drank a lot of sparkling shiraz?

What is your favourite ever film?
The can not be only one - Stranger than Fiction, Footloose, Steel Magnolias, St Elmo's Fire, Adaptation, pretty much anything done by the Coen Brothers, Hoodwinked, Transformers, Ghost Town and so on and so forth.

What is the biggest lesson you've learned from your children?
Patience, nothing good comes from anger, that every single person is different, that if dinner is going to be later than 6pm expect early signs of the apocalypse.

What song can't you get out of your head?
Homer singing "Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig. / Does whatever a Spider-Pig does. / Can he swing / from a web? / No he *can't*, / cause he's a *pig*. / Look out! / He is the *Spider-Pig*!"

What book do you know you should read but refuse to?
Anything by Salman Rushdie.

What is your physical abnormality/abnormal physical ability?
I just have no idea what this means? My third nipple? My 11th toe?

What is your favourite colour?
Green.

While I adore being tagged, I don't tag, it makes me all hot thinking about how I would choose them.

Chapter Four: The Caves of Wombeyan Caves

So this is where I should probably declare my love of rocks. I studied geology for the HSC and it was my favourite subject. By.far.

I wanted to be a geologist/journalist who wrote for National Geographic* but discovered that at uni, to study geology, I would have to study physics and chemistry.

Which scared me a lot.

So now I just subscribe and wonder what could/would have been.

But rocks still have a place in my heart.

There's over 500 caves at Wombeyan but only five are open to the general public. We managed to get through three of them this trip and they were just spectacular. This is on the track to one of the caves, looking across a valley to another cave. I find it deeply compelling - what's in that cave, is it just a narrow opening? Does it run deep into the hillside? What was this like 100s, 1000s of years ago.

I get carried away in all that fresh air.

This was walking up to where you meet the park ranger to go on a guided cave tour, looking back on Wombeyan valley. I can't tell you how restorative I found the whole location:

From the same spot, this is looking across to Victoria Arch - a massive opening and quite the landmark of the caves
This is in the Arch looking up
To enter the caves you have to go through quite ominous looking doorways:



I was a bit worried I might freak out with the whole confined spaces issue but it was cool. Literally and figuratively. Besides I had things to take my mind off cave-ins, crawling through spaces my body didn't fit and so on and so forth.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, here's just a few samples of what is inside the caves


Just lovely.

However.

On our first cave tour, just after we'd negotiated the vertical staircases (also known as ladders. Shut Up.)

carrying a small child and guiding a special needs child Grover says, 'bot bot?'

Oh crap.
It dawns on me that it's 10.30am and he normally has a day sleep around 11am. Considering the interesting definitions of sleep he'd been trialling I realise we've just embarked on a 45 minute tour through.a.cave. with a baby who wants a bottle and to go nigh-nigh. Oh crap.

The whinging started.
Then the crying.
Then the hitting.
And some more crying.
Then the screaming.
And some more hitting.
And I started to totally lose my shit.

I swear to God we put the breeding program of the three young couples also doing the tour back by a good decade.

He was not coping.
I was not coping.

The big boys were having an absolute blast.

The next guided tour we took was a lot more successful as was the self-guided one. Thank God.

We've saved two of the caves to explore on our return at Christmas.

Back fat, flat arse, exhausted child.

* I also wanted to be a policewoman, politician, speech writer, actress, business mogul.

So excited