Sunday, March 30, 2008

Moving Day

My middle daughter and her partner moved into their first home yesterday.

It is a tiny renovated cottage in Cockatoo, a leafy place on the fringe of the 'burbs', in the Dandenong Ranges. It will need more work to get it up and running properly, but that matters nought to them. It has three tiny bedrooms, a lounge, living, kitchen area with a pot belly stove, and a bathroom with a cupboard in it for the washing machine (the laundry!). There is a covered deck at the rear, which was probably the clincher on the house.

In a world where the young want so much so early, I am proud of their determination to buy what they can afford. She is doing her PHD in Psychology and he is now working as a sound technician and stage manager in a large theatre restaurant. A one year old bubby and two lively dogs makes up their contented little family.

How close would you drive your parent's van to the power pole?

They pulled together his brothers, and her sister and partner to do the move from Watsonia, about an hour away. We were thankfully spared that end of it, but were elected to put an electric fence around the derelict wire one at the rear to keep the dogs in. My farmer fella knows all about such things, and had the necessary unit to power up the doggies.

Once it was up and running with the power switched on, the dogs took numerous shocks as they explored their new back yard, with yodelling squeals pealing through the hills, and all the neighboring dogs taking the call up in sympathy. Poor Hunter the boxer retreated under the house to recuperate, making his mum very concerned and just a bit guilty. Better than taking off through everyone's backyard, we all commented.

Poor stressed Seeker wanting out

They have factored in a new boundary fence into their budget, so that should be installed very soon.

I had made the sandwiches and cake for lunch, to fuel up all the flagging energies, so was pretty popular, and my man was sucked into the moving. He's a bit sore today, but he amazes me with his energy and enthusiasm, considering he's 20 plus years older than most of them.

My grandson, happily oblivious to the activity around him.

Telling them to watch Wendy Harmer's "Stuff", on ABC TV, where she wanders through people's lives chiding them about their accumulating unnecessary junk, we did a runner late in the afternoon, leaving them to their piles of boxes, bags and disconnected furniture. The baby was due to be delivered home in half an hour, so his mum would really be up against it. Asher is just walking, and will enjoy climbing over everything and exploring his new home.

You can't beat the cosiness of a pot belly fire.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Ode to the Beaut Ute.


After a small, whingy digression yesterday, I am back with renewed vigour.

When I first met my man eleven plus years ago, he had a ratty little Toyota twin cab ute which he loved with a passion. He had a bunch of little kids and was building his new house, so it was used for carting all sorts of gear.

He was keen on impressing me (then!), and decided to wash the grubby little thing to take me out for a night on the town. "Hell On the Hill' was in its infancy then, and there were no solid fences around the house.

He left it parked out the front and went inside to get a bucket of warm water. Coming back out again, he was horrified to discover said ute rocking off down the hill with no one in control. Our hills are not to be taken lightly, and she crashed through a rough wire fence half way down, across a disused road, and took off the bank with gay abandon. A second scruffy old wire fence hooked at her and she came to a panting halt hanging precariously over the bank.

My man had rushed out and leaped at the door, managing to get halfway in, but had no hope of pulling his carefree little girl from her chosen path.

If that wasn't bad enough, his brand new oven was sitting on the back, and took a nasty tumble.

He rang me, panting with the drama, saying, "I've had a major!". Not knowing him well enough to understand this often used phrase of his, I said, "A what?"

Now I know what 'a major' is!

The ute was a write-off, and the oven went to be panel beaten and wires reconnected, and still stands in her slightly creased state in our kitchen today. It seems to not understand 'simmer', but I have now learned to appreciate her inadequacies.

So, there have since been many years of muttering about his need for a ute. The government department he works for has recently and unfairly begun to threaten his dogged determining to bring the work ute home, so we asked a local car broker to hunt one up for us.

That was six months ago, and we had pretty much given up hope, until two days ago when our man rang saying he had found what we wanted.

Woo hoo!

It came up to visit last night for us to test drive over the weekend, and my fella was quite impressed. "So, come on!", I said after dinner, "Lets go out for a drive."

Well, he got into that ute and we screamed off round the windies for an eleven kilometre white knuckler. It was like he had driven it for ever (probably in his dreams). We passed many peaceful wallabies out for their dusktime graze on the side of the road, watching them leaping into the bush in fright. "Big cat!" he smirked, recalling the times he had to deal with delusional spotters of lions and leopards supposedly at loose in the Aussie bush.

My stomach was starting to swirl as the oncoming dark lost my contact with the horizon, but we made it home in one piece.

I think he likes it! It's not a big important sort of ute; not the kind you would take to a ute muster, but it will cart wood and feed, and earn its keep.




Thursday, March 27, 2008

Ohhhhh.............

~ Chromed ~
Pastel on board
Beautifully framed in brushed silver moulding and white mount board.
Available for purchase @$600 + p.h.

I've got the gloomies today. Although all my surgeries have healed OK, I can feel my knee breaking down almost hour by hour, and the bones are crunching against each other in my wrist. It seems I have no cartilage left in either place ........................

And,
my beautiful laptop, that I have really enjoyed for just over a year (out of warranty) has been rejected by my local computer fixer. I paid AU$4000 for the sucker. It may need a new motherboard and a visit to Toshiba.

Ho hum!

Monday, March 24, 2008

Just Photos

My man's beautiful black exhaust pipes we painted with heat treated ceramic paint. Look Good? We think so.

Late in the afternoon, when the light wanders in and out of cloud, just one hill lit up like a beacon.

I love clouds, especially when a hole opens up to reveal the sky beyond (click on to see larger photo).
Almost a religious feeling ................


Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Please. We Want Rain!

It stubbornly refuses to rain. If wanting a downpour could pull it out of the sky, we would be flooded.

I just want enough to top our tanks up, make the grass grow a little, and wash all the sheep poo into the soil. It looks like someone has opened a huge bag of black jelly beans and spilled them everywhere!
There is not a blade of grass in sight. Any shoot that dares to pop its green head above ground level is chewed off with ruthless efficiency by our sheepies.

There are grey clouds all around, but nothing seems to be dropping anything, yet!

Bowling me over at feeding time.

We have been feeding out hay for a few weeks now, and they have learned to love it. We were also given some beans that look like brown broad beans, and when I scatter them on the ground, they crunch them up with relish, sounding like pop corn going off.

Feeding Frenzy
The last bales we bought were lucerne, which is the Rolls Royce of hay, so they are not suffering, but our bank balance is. Time to get on with turning them into our intention - 'table sheep'. Well, four of them anyway. The mums will remain and meet their Cheviot lover, Herbie, again in May. And, one cute little cheviot type girl will stay too, because I want to paint her, then she can become a mum as well.

Note the wool caught on the barbed wire. where they poke their heads through to get to the grass.

Doggie Business:
Dear Old Connor is exhausted having two gorgeous poodley ladies on heat at once. I'm not sure how Zara's teddy came to be there, but a totally candid shot of him dreaming happy dreams.


Tuesday, March 18, 2008

I love the Smell of Oil Paint

Work in progress........

Most of yesterday was spent out in the studio painting the edges of my gallery wrapped canvases in readiness for Art Melbourne 08 Exhibition in mid April.

I am paying for my laziness just painting to the edges and not the rest. For a time, I did think I would frame them, but decided I liked them better 'au naturelle'.

All colours have to be perfectly matched; no mean feat for the six large paintings.
But now they are done, I am really pleased I have, because they look great, giving them an extra dimension and finish. I just have to sign them and then wait for them to dry enough to put a sealing finish on.

Baw Baw Shire have entered this great event as a gallery, and invited artists to apply. I was accepted, which is very pleasing.

Yesterday I booked my man and I into a motel for the opening night, so we can really enjoy ourselves. We rarely go to Melbourne now; we can't bear the traffic and the crowds, but I do miss wandering round the Gallery and having lunch at Southbank. My accident injuries also impede our freely walking around, so that's probably a stronger reason than the other.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

~ 'Kiri' ~
Pastel on Board
Commission

I fixed my laptop (with lots of help from my son-in-law-to-be), and it was going great. I spent many hours loading all my programs in. It lasted around 24 hours, and crashed again. I hadn't backed it up when it was perfect.
I am devastated.............

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Another stinker of a day today. I am off to have my skin checked by a dermatologist as I have two small carcinomas on my face, and who knows what elsewhere. Not dangerous ones, fortunately, but they have to come off.

This intense heat makes each day a planning nightmare, with how to dodge from one place to another without expiring. The car and house are both air conditioned, and Safeway, and hopefully, the skin doctor. I wouldn't imagine he would enjoy hot sweaty patients to handle.

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Our local beekeeper came around yesterday evening to see our 'dinosaur' of a honey extractor. He has been using a hand driven one for years so I offered him the option of using ours when he needed it. It will be sitting around doing nothing for a time as we only have two hives. We do intend to expand our numbers next year, but it takes time to split a hive, install a new queen, and then not raid the hive while they build up numbers and honey supply.

He is a tall, intensely shy man in his thirties. His parents are German and must have kept a tight hold on him as he is quite awkward around others. He shears sheep locally and did ours over Christmas.

Sitting talking on the veranda in the cool of the evening, he told us of his experiences shearing away, and how he didn't enjoy that much, with the rough accommodation, and sometimes wild shearers. He is altogether too fragile to enjoy the ribald jokes and beer drinking.

He brought me a container of his beautiful honey. I will be looking forward to doing the same next year.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Sex, Lives and Computers

~ Tabby Kitten~
Pastel on Board
Sold

I had to give up on my laptop; I really did. Days of trying to work out the meaning of the terminally ill vertical lines, and it's insane OCD looping left me wandering round talking to myself. My man, who has no interest in computers other than being forced to use them at work, emails, and searching the Harley sites, kept saying, "You can take it to a professional, you know". I knew that, but I didn't want it to beat me. Plus, most of those guys are self taught and just bang around trying things that might not work anyway, as your dollars pour down the drain.

Sometimes I thought I had the solution in the bag, and sometimes not, but it went to my son-in-law-to-be last night for the final tune-up. We sat on their cooling veranda after another horribly hot day, eating lemon sorbet and watching him banging away happily on the keys. I now have three hard drives, not two, and when I get it the way I like, he will copy it onto a disc which can be loaded anytime I want a refurbish.

He thinks it was a clash of programs, maybe a Microsoft update, or the iTunes I was loading into my man's new Shuffle. Either way, it spat the dummy, choking on the conflicting information, and made me dig deep into my self-accumulated knowledge base. Though beaten on the last leg, I think I did contribute here and there.

It's still not quite right, as, in it's original working state, it was a high resolution (1920 pixel wide) TV screen with Media Center, which I loved. I could plug in the rabbit ears and sit it on my lap anywhere and watch telly or a DVD. Now it's 1600 wide, so needs to be adapted further.

In the fullness of time.


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My recent surgeries have knitted nicely. It is amazing how quickly a big incision will heal, and can be used, and I am walking around on the knee reasonably well. I must be healthy. The dressing on the wrist came off at 6 days old, pretty fragile and easily broken, but a few days later now all is sealed. I remember how we used to keep the stitches in for ten, having to go to the doc's to have them out. Now they're dissolvable, and it's all over in days.

My surgeon had given me issues in the past with his lack of empathy and sense of detachment and hurry. In discussions with a close nurse friend, she ventured that he possibly had high functioning Asberger's (a type of autism), which left him brilliant, but unable to sympathise or connect with his patients on a personal level. She said she had seen it before in her forty odd years of nursing.

We decided that a change in approach might work, and it did! I had my list of questions in my mind, and looked him in the eye and asked them very clearly and he answered them all to my satisfaction.

He ventured that my hand would possibly never close properly, now that the tendons had shrunk and the joints seized up, but to try some more physio. He agreed that the MRI showed I had no more cartilage on half of my knee, leaving bone on bone, so would probably need a knee replacement in the not-too-distant future.

So, I am a bit wrecked; something that I knew already. The next battle will be to deal with compensation issues with the TAC when my injuries are 'stabilised' in a year to eighteen months post-accident.
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On a cheerier note, both my poodley gals have come on heat together, on the same day. This is a phenomenon I had heard of, but not experienced. Baby Zara, who is almost 23 months, hadn't had one before. Poodles can take a while to mature; even Lily made 18 months before she started.

So this is Zara's first one. We will possibly breed her on her next heat, in maybe 9 months time, which I am really looking forward to. Standard poodles can have up to ten puppies, and that's a lot of fun, curly kids.

Her dad is one of the most highly decorated dogs in Australia, with over 110 Best in Shows, her aunt is an Australian Champ and took out Best in Show at the prestigious Victorian Poodle Show last weekend. Zara's full brother took out Best of Breed and Best Intermediate at the same show, and he and her mum are both Australian Champions.

She's never been shown, because of our busy lifestyle doing other stuff, plus I couldn't be bothered with all those rubber bands, and keeping them quiet and clean. She's a busy little country yobbo, and would much rather dig a hole or chase a bunny, than strut around the show ring.

But her pups will be highly valued.

I would have loved to breed Lily, because she has some major breeding as well, but she never 'took' in the two tries we had, including AI, so we gave up. Such a beautiful girl wasted.


I keep promising to have her speyed, but she's got away from me again. Maybe after this heat.

Dear old Connor at fourteen, who was neutered maybe seven years ago, still has memories of 'fragrant ladies'. Now he has two together, and his interest in them has increased considerably today. He will be on his best behaviour, trying to strut his creaky old body round and appear attractive (seen that before in humans!). It doesn't matter how often I remind him of his incapabilities, instinct still kicks in................

"Instinct is untaught ability"
... Alexander Bain

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Baked Pipes

Although it's going to be 40c today, I have the oven on. The scratched pipes that came off my damaged Harley are going in to be baked this morning. Why, you ask?

They were beautiful pipes; big slash cut with a wonderful 'note'..... all important in a Harley.

My bike has been repaired, sitting patiently out in the shed for my attention, and it has new pipes.

My fella has a love for matt black: I love chrome. His pipes are a bit scruff, as he tends to put his boots on the hot metal occasionally, leaving burnt rubber marks on them. Then he polishes it off and scuffs the chrome, leaving a very ordinary looking mess. Not the way your Harley should look. Once you damage chrome, it never comes back.

I suggested he refurbish mine rather than buy new, so he got out in the cave and lovingly sanded them back, taking all the gravel rash off. Then he went to the local auto paint suppliers and came home with a spray can of primer and a special black top coat. We've been spraying light layers on them for two days and they look great.

But, to set the paint, they have to be baked in four stages of ascending heat; the first being 240c. Thirty minutes in there, then thirty out to cool, and raised to the next temperature. My oven can do 240c, but after that, they will have to go on the bike and taken for a run. Hopefully it will work, and he will have his lovely matt black pipes he's always wanted.

"Everything has it's beauty, but not everyone sees it"
... Confuscius

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The joys of Living on a Hill

On yet another hot day, I am in the best place to escape it while I do my blogging. It's 35 degrees outside, and again, I thank heavens for the wonderful invention of the air conditioner!

It's blowing cheerily overhead, noisy but comforting, keeping the overwhelming heat outside from intruding into my oasis of cool...............

I have a big one down in my studio, put in when I had it built, knowing that sweaty hands, and too fast drying paint would take the spontaneity out of getting down there when I felt like it.

The house? Finally we have one this summer and it's wonderful!

The house is well-insulated treated pine on a concrete slab. Because of our position on the peak of a hill, the extreme wind conditions preclude trees from being close to the house, so no shade. We do have wide shady verandas all round, but when the sun moves up and over, the mezzanine floor above begins to bake, and then when sinking in the west, cooks the bedrooms and lounge. The early evenings can be roasting on a day like this, and as the sun drops, I go upstairs to open the sliding door to the west to let the heat out at the top of the house.

I often wonder whether one of those cute little whirly-gigs that spin might be useful, but we are frightened of breaking the seal on the roof.

Heat rises, and it can be a hot box in summer and winter, as the huge flue from the heater runs the full height of the house inside, radiating into that top room. Fuel must be loaded carefully into the efficient solid fuel heater, just enough to make the house snug, without over-heating the upper floor.

My man rule on most things is 'more is best', so I have had to bar him from stoking the fire in winter, lest the top room become unbearably hot. I call him my 'wide-brush man'.

There is only the sliding door with an accompanying window in that room, which faces where the weather generally comes from.

I must be very alert to oncoming storms, because driving rain can pour through the wire screen and onto the wooden floor, dripping through the boards onto the slate beneath, finally splashing and making a hell of a mess on anything nearby.

It took a long time to waterproof that, as that same driving rain would penetrate along the closed sliding door with a similar result. Finally we came up with a lip of wood along opening vertical and the base, creating a drain that ran it back out again.

But our views are stunning. We watch eagles soar past at eye level, and the weather coming from Westernport Bay through to the Dandenongs.

We see snow in winter on Mount Baw Baw and here sometimes, and fireworks at different towns all the way along the Princes Highway on New Year's Eve. During summer, we smoke-spot for the DSE, and I have reported fires on days such as this before anyone else. I have even alerted them when a fire changed direction, running along the mountains 40 kilometres away.

Our outlook changes hour by hour and day by day, with mists in the morning and storms in the afternoon.

Oh, to have one of these............

There, I've waxed lyrical about where we live and the day's nearly over. Lily is pushing her nose under my hand and staring hard into my face, wanting her dinner. No more messing around in front of the pooter, there's work to be done ......

Monday, March 10, 2008

Hot, hot, hot...........

Another stinker of a day today @ 39 degrees c.

The day was spent inside, windows shut and the air con on. Finally it's beginning to cool down, so the windows are now opened, the noisy blower is off and the dogs are lying on the veranda outside with their bellies full.

My man was called off to fire duty today in readiness for a possible call out for fire fighting. He has been doing it for many years now for the DSE, and loves the camaraderie and adventure that fighting a large fire brings, plus, it gets him out of the office!

He has been to most of the major fires in Victoria in recent years. Thankfully, this year has been a quiet one, but in past seasons there have been some massive infernos. Last year burned up one million hectares and took 69 days to get under control, and the year before was pretty serious as well. He has some frightening moments each season, but thankfully his experience and the department safety strategies has got him out of trouble each time.

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I have had my first shower today as the strapping has come off my knee and the wrist went into a plastic bag. It felt so good, even though I had bucket washes down pat. It's just not the same.

The knee looks good with only two small incisions and a bit of bruising. I remember maybe eight years ago, I had the same done and had to stay on crutches for six weeks. Now I am able to walk almost normally, so long as it's not too far, and I go slow.

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I was setting up iTunes for my man's new iPod Shuffle, and my laptop spat the dummy. I pulled out the factory reformatting disc and ran it through, thanking heaven that I had used Norton Ghost to build a ghost drive only a week or two before. Apart from iTunes and a few bits and pieces, my whole drive is tucked safely away on my external drive, along with my files, programs and settings.

Reformatting didn't fix the problem, as there was still the original blank cream coloured screens with vertical lines popping up and freezing the unit. "Ha, what next?", I thought, and decided it might be further back into the programming. I put the disc in again to scrub the entire hard drive. I had never done this before.......

I began this at around 6pm, and
as the hours ticked over endlessly, I realised it was going to take forever . I was worried that I might be asleep and be needed to click an OK or something, so took it to bed and left it running next to me on the table. Awake and asleep over and over, I snapped awake when it prompted me to do something, and it began again, not stopping until 2pm the next afternoon.

But that didn't fix it! I wrote off to my computer forum, hoping for assistance, but apart from a couple of limp suggestions, the lines remained and it began 'looping', starting up, showing screen error signs, and then winding down, flashing a tantalising blue screen filled with writing. One second is not long enough to see anything.

Desperate lateral thinking kicked in, so I got the camera out, focusing on the screen, and snapping it as it rushed by. I put the jpeg into Photoshop and brightened it up, then imported it into my OCR program. A bit rough, but I got a semblance of text and cleaned it up, checking it against the screen shot.

It's a long story, isn't it?

Back into the forum and put it all in, but no answers, so I got on the Toshiba website looking for the suggested drivers and following the muddy trail left by this text. I think I know what to do, just don't know how! (that looks like 'howl, doesn't it? Yup!)

I think iTunes clashed with the moving around of some movies that wandered into the files from my Media Centre TV recordings. There is text in Toshiba to back up that possibility.

I am a bit concerned about stomping around my lovely Qosmio with hob nailed boots and really messing it up, so am calling in emergency help with my daughter's partner, who is a apparently an IT whizz. It will be interesting to follow the process and see if I was right. I love learning all this. Its such a logical process, usually ........

Anyway, I got my lovely nine year old banger of a pooter out and dusted it off, doing a defrag, installing anti-virus, and plonking in Firefox and a few upgrades. It still works, though somewhat slower than my lovely lappy!

I am so used to a huge screen with high resolution, I had to raise the the pixel count so I didn't feel I was inside the bloody thing. Everything was so big!

Oh dear! I must be patient......................


Thursday, March 6, 2008

Done!

Well, now I look like half of "The Mummy", swathed in bandages as I am.

Knee Arthroscope and my wrist plate out all in one is the way to go, though I haven't tried showering yet, while keeping the bandages dry.

It was fairly unremarkable, with a pleasant anesthetist who promised to administer pain medication before I woke up, and did!

After waking, my lovely nurse and I had to work hard to get my habitually low blood pressure up to the level she wanted. 80 over 40 was not good, she said. Lots of drinks, drips and feet higher than the head over a few hours and she could be heard tripping happily up the corridor to her nurse mates saying, "She's up to 92!" And them clapping for her.

I thought I had bed bugs in the night, with some sort of reaction to medication happening and found myself scratching madly like a dog with fleas. Bed bugs don't happen in posh hospitals.

Finally fully awake at 6am, there was lots of activity in the distance in this upmarket 'private' hospital, but nowhere near me. No-one came in with a morning cuppa, or a wet flannel and towel, and breakfast finally wandered in at 8.15, but put on a trolley far from my hands by a stranger on a mission elsewhere. I had to get up and hobble round to get to my cold, hard toast, and cornflakes, which I hate.

By the time my assigned morning nurse finally wandered back in and asked me if I had had a shower, I was ready to tear her throat out. I responded to this ridiculous question with a cool, "How can I, with no towel, and bandages all down one side?" I think she knew she was in strife, because she began to fuss around me like she had been there all the while, but still no wash. I told her I would have a 'degrease' when I went home.

My surgeon came and treated me like an idiot, which got my hackles up even more.

By the time my man came to get me, I was muttering, "get me the f.... out of here!"

Back home now, I have just let the sheep out, and decided that walk was too far for my leg and crutch, so I am imbibing in a pain killing champagne, and feeling much better.

Off to the doc's next Wednesday for more of the same............

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Community Duty

..... that's what my man called it, when he went down on his Harley yesterday to pick up my grandson from his school (see post below). I am sure I will hear more tonight, but his mum rang up very pleased with his excitement and the positive impression it made on the other kids....... hopefully the bullying brats. All of a sudden, everyone knew his name.
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I have heaps of jobs to do today, before checking into hospital at 11 a.m. tomorrow for a bit of 'slicing and dicing'. It will be good to get it over with, though I'm not looking forward to the process ......

Just to add to the festivity, I have my first 'working' appointment with my dentist today, who has lots of fun projects planned out for me ~ $2700 worth of fun!

Eight years since the last visit, and I am going to pay for it in more ways than one.
I had x-rays done yesterday, and the radiologist said, "This doesn't hurt, but that's the only thing that doesn't with the dentist!" I think he meant the pain in the wallet!


Not Me!

Dentist: a prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coin out of your pocket. ~Ambrose Bierce

Sunday, March 2, 2008

So Much to Do and So Little Time

Finally! I have approval from the TAC to have my knee exploratory arthroscope at the same time as the plate comes out of my wrist. I had my MRI last November, then Christmas, my surgeon's leave, letters to go to and fro between him and TAC, and finally a appointment for my case worker and their muscular-skeletal man this morning..... has led to an OK for me.

I might mention also, that my injury is 6 months old on the 9th of March.

I am really looking forward to putting it all behind me, and just getting together again, so when they offered me Thursday, I only hesitated for a second before agreeing.

I am also pleased that when it comes time to be assessed for compensation, my knee has also been accepted as part of the accident.

Now I must get myself together and do as many jobs in the next few days, that I can't do for a time afterwards, like bathing and clipping the poodles. Afterwards, I'm just going to stagger out to my studio and paint.............

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Leap year came and went with a joyous occasion, when a daughter decided to propose to her long time beau, and he accepted!

I heard on TV that morning where in olden days, the women would wear a red petticoat which showed their intentions. That way, if a man didn't want to accept, he would spot the flash of red as she came towards him and he could scarper off to the hills!

Fortunately, she doesn't wear petticoats, and he was pleased to be involved. There are rumblings about going somewhere unusual and a no-nonsense ceremony, so we're looking forward to discovering 'the plan'.

We wish them much love and happiness.

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My grandson and I had some fun over the weekend with the wire and snippers we bought him for his birthday. Armed with those, and the delightful blog Bent Objects, we raided the garden and built a beautiful Hawaiian lady, complete with cherry tomato bosoms and cucumber leaf umbrella.

We carted her home to his delighted mum and she will becoming the 'Incredible Shrinking Hawaiian Lady' on the kitchen window sill along with his other creations.

Great fun.