The lovely Stephen Estcourt has been working tirelessly the last few months to put together the World Party Tasmania and I’m excited to be attending!
As today went from bad to worse to slightly better to ear bleedingly bad, going out on Saturday sans children was something I was holding on to.
So Saturday! I will be in the city, maybe with my camera, attending an amazing food fair and getting to meet some more of my twitter peeps.
Are you going to be there?
After the nightmare that was my Gyn visit recently, I went to my GP to ask about the new drugs.
Surprisingly (ha!) with a close family history of blood clots, I shouldn’t be taking anything to make my blood clot, except under direct medical supervision, which we assume means only if I’m in hospital being monitored. I’m incredibly annoyed that they were prescribed without pertinent questions being asked first.
I had a good whinge about the medical system and got myself referred to a different Gyn, in a private practice. So dammit, I’m going to be listened to, even if I’ve got to pay for the privilege outright.
With the EDS, a family history of blood clots (from the other side of the family) Gyn issues and everything else stacking up, my GP quipped that our family had all these issues, so that the rest of humanity didn’t have to.
Which sort of hit home.
I try really hard not to count the labels were dealing with, but we’ve got a whole host of things going wrong medically.
A veritable melting pot of fuckedupedness.
I mean, sure I can laugh about it, but what a nightmare.
And once, just once, I’d like to be not saving the rest of humanity from disease. You know? It just feels like a little much for one person to deal with.
They’re definitely not wrong when they tell you that one broken gene leads to a host of issues.
Emma from Mommy has a Headache was one of the very first blogs I ever read, and she was one of my first commenters. So when I heard she’d written a book with Gillian and was looking for reviewers, I waved my hands wildly in the air (okay, I might have emailed her) and asked for a copy.
And?
It’s brilliant. The best parenting book I’ve ever read. I was giggling before I’d even finished the first chapter.
They declare it to be a ‘woefully inadequate guide to early motherhood’ and they’re right, insomuch as NOTHING can actually prepare you for childbirth and the sudden responsibility of a baby. They send you home without an instruction manual for gods sake. How are we meant to know how to stop the kid screaming?
Some things hit home – like ‘was a student midwife having a go at sewing you up afterwards?’ because um, YES. My vagina was not right for years after that. It wasn’t a student midwife, but a student ob/gyn who while she wasn’t doing her first set of stitches, was doing her first episiotomy. Add in my tendency to skin tearing and she pulled those stitches out three times before she finally gave up with a ‘that will do, sigh’. I mean, c’mon!
It answers questions you weren’t even game to speak aloud, like ‘will I ever have sex again?’ and ‘will I ever WANT to have sex again?’ as well as telling you how to avoid early onset ‘mumitis’ (when you turn into your mother.) Sadly, the mumitis information comes too late for me, as my garden and rapidly growing menagerie catapult me firmly into Mum territory. Of course, I’d argue that I’m merely being creative with my money, but no matter.
It’s definitely the book you want to be reading if you’re a real mum: aka, not a celeb mum. It includes a handy exercise guide (weight lifting! your baby will only get heavier and will want to be thrown in the air. Ski training! Someone has spilled yogurt all over the floor and you need to clean it up, without falling in it) and a guide on how to make mum friends (don’t try to bribe them).
Cocktails at Naptime is the perfect book for new mothers because we all need to laugh about how messed up our vagina is after pushing a 3.kg blob through it.
For more info about Cocktails at Naptime, check out the website, with links to where you can buy a copy and info on the authors. OR you can do what I do and check out their blog. Every book needs a blog of it’s own.
AND! If you’d like to win a copy of your very own, then leave me a comment and let me know your funniest/stupidest/worst parenting moment. The winner will be selected via Random.org.
Annnd, the winner is!
Kim! I’ll email you Kim.
It’s Spring finally and I can begin to plant all the things I’ve been waiting all winter for. I love gardening. There is something about playing in the food I am growing that gives me some peace and helps when I’m feeling panicky. If all else fails, I go and get my hands dirty.
Some things have been growing all winter and are now waist high, leaving me wondering if I’ve got room to dry strings of broad beans for winter.
This is about 1/8th of the beans I’ve got growing. Amy *might* have accidentally dropped 200 bean seeds into a freshly dug patch of garden and picking them up was too hard, so I just dug them in. This is what happens when you’re a lazy gardener.
So I have a metric shitload of broad beans growing and I am really not a fan of them. Although I can imagine drying them and adding them to casseroles and soups next winter will be fantastic. Dear family, be prepared to have loads of beans shared with you.
I’ve also got growing my standard things – kale (two types, russian and tuscan), lettuce greens, celery, beetroot, leeks, spring onions, garlic, cauliflower, radishes, capsicum, potatoes, parsley, chives, silverbeet, rainbow chard, strawberries and peas.
Planted but not yet sprouting I have carrots and beans (4 different types) and some sugar snap peas. Plus coriander, basil and mint.
We moved the A-frame that had been used for pulling out car engines by our houses previous owner into the garden too. I’m hanging my herb baskets on it in the hope that sunlight convinces something other than cress to grow. These baskets hold the aforementioned mint, basil and coriander.
The a-frame also gives me something to run our soaker hose over. Soon I’ll be planting strawberries in hanging baskets too and hoping it works. The plan is also to grow climbing beans up the frame, to hopefully make the frame part of the garden.
I went seed shopping yesterday which always makes me happy. I came home with purple runner beans, cucumber (2 types) zucchini, rockmelon (2 types, an experiment), corn and kohl rabi (another experiment).
I’m starting to wonder if maybe I need a larger garden – because I still have to plant enough tomatoes to make sauces with and I want to plant another 20 pea plants so I can freeze or dry some peas for winter.
It’s all very demanding and amazingly relaxing, especially when my social anxiety is playing up. Bring on the gardening. Just please, let’s not hide any snakes in there.
Unrelated: New theme! I bought Thesis, so I’ll probably have a play with the colours and stuff soonish. My brother’s girlfriend is drawing me a header in black and white, so I’ll have a graphic to pop up soon too. Until then, thoughts on colours, sidebar arrangements, things you’d like to see more of? Or we can talk about gardens and Spring.
This post sponsored by Nuffnang
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When Nuffnang rang me and asked me to participate in this campaign, I was happy to oblige. Of course, then I had to really think about times when something good came in a small package and that’s where I got a bit stuck.
The cliched thing of course is to talk about the children. At 7lb6 and 7lbs respectively, they were rather small, delicious and lovable. Of course, then Amy started to scream and scream, so she was less a ‘good’ thing and more of a ‘god I love this kid, but why is she the only one screaming’ kind of package.
And Isaac, well, it’s probably not fair to compare them, but he didn’t scream as a baby, so comparisons are hard not to make.
But hey they were small, cute and when I swaddled them, they looked like little packages.
Sort of.
I kept thinking and really, all I could come up with was baby animals (have you see the ducklings?!) and stuff like that.
Not exactly things in packages. I’m not married and not engaged, so I can’t tell a story of a ring in a box – well I could, but I’d be lying – although it would make for the perfect good things/small packages story.
I can’t do it though.
I think that maybe, my best good thing in a small package is always going to be a book. Inside of a book, I get an entire world, someone else’s life and a great story, all in a small package. That counts, right?
Anyway.
The point of all this?
Cottees Cordial is reducing their cordial sizes from 2ltr to 1ltr, but the smaller bottle is merely more concentrated. It all makes up to the same amount of cordial.
Now, I’ve been tempted to blog about Cottees before and just never gotten around to it. Simply put, they are the only cordial I have found that has natural colours and doesn’t send Amy off the rails. I can’t vouch for the other flavours, but the orange coloured ones are all coloured with turmeric and carmine, lovely natural things that don’t send Amy batty.
So Cottees are the only cordial I buy anyway. And now they’re getting smaller, which means they’ll fit in the cupboard better and I’ll be able to stock up when they come on special. Win win I think.
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Now comes the fun part.
Nuffnang and Cottees are offering $1000 cash to the person who shares the best ‘When good things have come in small packages’ story. Obviously I’m not eligible, but YOU are my lovely readers.
In the comments, share your best ‘Good things/Small Packages’ story and I’ll select the best 3 to go into the draw. The responses across all the participating blogs will be read and the best response will win $1000 for themselves. There is nothing random about this competition, with winners selected on how well their story is told.