Home of Slightly Cracked Dreams

Or why there was no Menu Plan Monday post yesterday.

5:30am - get up, make tea. Sit quietly and enjoy the peace.

6:30am - howls of protest from the bathroom. No hot water. Hubby plays with gas etc etc. no hot water

7:30am - call gas company, automated system for which you need a customer number. I don’t have one. I can call another number and talk to a real person. I call the other number, wait on hold for 10 minutes to be told they can’t help me without a customer number. Then my phone cuts out. Another fault.

7:45am - try and wake up two teenagers. Wave them off for showers at the in-law’s and the day.

8:30am - call gas company again, organsie replacement bottles for Wednesday. Suggests hooking up bbq gas bottle til then.

9:00am - call RE agent and advise one empty gas bottle was installed in the new house.

9:30am - call Telstra and advise of phone issue. Fault on the phone line. Again. Two days to fix, divert to mobile, bla, bla, bla. The usual. This would be the 9th such fault in 5 months.

10:00am - Internet? gone. I almost start crying. To keep myself busy I make baby food for Meg.

11:00am - I hear msn log in - Internet! Hooray!

12:00pm - Hubby gets home and fiddles with Hot water. After an hour he gets it working. In the meantime I’ve got the baby out of bed (first time she’s woken up since going back to sleep at 5:30am) changed her nappy and noticed a blister on her lower tummy. Noticed another one on her chest. While feeding I see loads of red spots on her head. After feeding I check her back and there’s more. Then she throws up a fair bit of her feed. In between phoning gas company and changing the order for 1 gas bottle, calling the RE agent telling her what the problem is, making lunch for kids, I spoke with a friend on msn and was worried about chicken pox with the exchange students here and the ABA meeting I was at on Thursday with 3 babies and 3 pregnant women. Called 13 HEALTH and it wasn’t conclusive, so I jumped in the shower (finally!!!) and then called the dr’s for an appt. At this stage it’s nearly 2pm.

2:00pm - dump the girls at the in-law’s and race to the Dr’s with Meg (could only see me at 2:20pm) almost certainly NOT chicken pox and either a reaction to injections or low grade viral infection. Should clear now, definitely within a week - if they don’t start going down tomorrow we’re to go back.

3:00pm - get to the in-law’s and collapse into a chair and my wonderful father-in-law made me a cup of tea. The german girls got dropped off there. Another cup of tea to calm my nerves before coming home at 5:00pm.

5:00pm - order pizza for tea. Collapse in a heap.

I’ve got a few projects on the go at the moment. Things I don’t have time to do when I’m studying. Spring cleaning, catching up on the ironing. Things like that.

One of my projects is a spot of gardening. To start with last weekend I (with a bit of help from M&M and Kiki) repotted some plants we’d bought the weekend before at the garden shop. A lemon tree, an avocado tree, and a pink frangipani tree. I documented the whole experience with the digital camera, and here it is for your viewing pleasure.

This is what we started with:

They look a bit sad really . Kin and kids to the rescue though.

The kids collected gravel to go in the bottom of the pots in their wheelbarrow. Then we had to open the bag of potting mix (Hubby for some reason thought we’d need twice as much potting mix as we actually did).

We started off with the lemon tree

Then we planted the frangipani/stick

And finally the (very sick looking) avocado tree

And then I placed them around the garden in places where I’ll (hopefully) remember to water them

I really enjoy sitting out there in the mornings with a cup of tea reading or working on my paperwork. Sunday mornings I’ve taken to sitting outside with Emma going through our recipe books and magazines and doing the menu plan. It’s just perfect.

Unfortunately, during the moving process, I had an argument with the pot the avocado tree is in, and the pot won. But being the generous blogger that I am, I took a photo of my injury so you could all share my pain.

So there you go, an afternoon of gardening at Kin’s. It doesn’t happen often, which is why I documented it with photos.

I’ve got quite a few other projects on the go at the moment. I don’t know if they’ll be documented with photo’s to quite the same level, but I will definitely keep you updated with how I’m keeping myself busy during my break from uni.