Sleepless Nights

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  • An almost wedding and life

    So.

    Soooooo.

    Sooooooooooo.

    They tell you that your first line has to be your hook, in order to get readers, reading. But sometimes, life gets on top of you and starting a blog post anyway you can is the best you can do and the worst of blogging rule breaking. You can do it anyway you know, because it’s your blog and I’ve given you permission.

    I’ve been walking around today in a perpetual state of minor panicky-ness. Almost a panic attack, but not quite, I merely wanted to lock myself in my bedroom with ten or fifteen distractions (puppies! kittens! small children! e-books! iPhone apps! only some of these things were available) and ignore the world for today.

    It isn’t what happened however, despite my patented head in the sand method and a few declarations of “I don’t even want to think about this yet, so we’re not discussing it” and I was Productive and Stressed and probably Bitchy as well.

    The wedding is in forty hours and steadily counting down. We had our rehearsal this evening, and I thought I was calming down, until I got home and realised that no, I was not in any way calm and I should probably take a sleeping tablet and go to bed.

    We had our rehearsal this evening, while the children tried to kill themselves on a giant slide (it was FINE) and people jogged around us. It was kind of weird and I couldn’t stop giggling during the vow practise. Sorry Nathan,  I wasn’t laughing at you, I promise. But we pretended to get married and there you go. Suddenly it’s all very serious and important and stuff. It’s a little weird.

    After that, I went to Bunnings and bought myself twenty pots of flowering plants, to plant myself an “aisle” to walk down. Nathan has declared that he is no-way-no-how digging holes for me, so I may have to press gang one of our brothers into digging holes while I boss them around.

    Volunteers?

    My to-do list of Things That Absolutely Must Get Done is growing (cover a cake in white icing! put down new lino in the toilet! coerce Nathan into dragging the ceramic pot filled with strawberries out to the orchard! put up a marquee! bother a duck to see if we have ducklings yet! hide!) and my head is close to implosion point. A warm bath would be lovely, but my joints are absolutely so crappy at the moment that it would do more harm than good.

    Isaac is, however, well on his way to being Back To Normal, and all that that entails. While I am bemoaning my loss of free time while he stared into space, it’s been rather nice to have him well again. Weight loss stabilised at a little over 2kg and he’s eaten well (ish) today, so I imagine that it won’t take him long to gain it back. Fingers crossed.

    This blog post had absolutely no cohesion at all. I’m sorry.

    Also, I just deleted over 300 spam comments without checking them, so if you got caught in spam recently, I’m sorry. I just couldn’t bring myself to trawl through offers of Christmas viagra (give your wife a boning hard present) and Russian brides (alone this dark long season of holidays?).

  • Showcase Tasmania: Boks Bacon

    A few weeks ago, before my wedding preparations got derailed by a very sick little boy, I did a factory tour at Boks Bacon, to check out how their products are made and to talk to Marcus and Sean about the business and what they’re doing with it.

    Boks Bacon used to be a tiny little business based at Cygnet, run from the back of the family butcher. When people discovered the bacon however, word spread fast and Marcus expanded and moved the business out to Glenorchy.

    Boks make a range of products now, not just bacon. From schinken and gourmet sausages, to hams and pancetta, it was great to walk through their coolroom and sticky beak at the products, as well as getting to check out the actual factory and smoke rooms.

    I was lucky enough to get to try a few products as well.

    The bush honey smoked bacon was divine and in my opinion, nicer than the leatherwood honey smoked bacon. That could be because I find leatherwood honey in itself too strong. I grilled the bush honey bacon and served it with salad.

    And it was delicious.

    The leatherwood honey smoked bacon was nicer grilled, crumbled and sprinked over canneloni – it wasn’t as strong of a flavour that way. If you like leatherwood honey though, you’d love the bacon plain.

    I also got to try two different types of sausage – a thai spiced salmon sausage, that Nathan loved the flavour of and a chicken, rocket and parmesan sausage that Nathan wasn’t a fan of (he doesn’t like parmesan) but the kids and I loved. No photos, because I wasn’t that organised.

    Boks is a relatively small business, without a huge budget for marketing or advertising, instead choosing to rely on word of mouth and recommendations from customers. This is, of course the entire point to Showcase Tasmania – to show off some of our smaller businesses.

    Boks Bacon can be found at 39 Chapel Street, Glenorchy TAS 7010 Phone: 03 6273 8325 for direct factory outlet sales.

  • Grief, stress, grumpiness and man, I am tired

    I am getting married in just over a week.

    I discovered today that we don’t have as many tables as I thought we ought to, seating is a bit iffy (picnic rugs anyone?) and everything is needing to be tied together. If we add in an IRL fight with someone (and I am RIGHT and you are WRONG and being an IDIOT) and a Big Thing* happening at the same time, I have my hands a little full.

    Okay, they’re a lot full.

    Adding to this, the entire house has been stricken with some form of ‘flu and we’re all whining at each other, while we fight for space on the couch and which DVD we want to watch.

    To top it off, I appear to be getting my period. Cycle day 57 people. FIFTY FUCKING SEVEN. Tomorrow should be cycle day one. ARGH.

    And the cherry on top? I dislocated my GOOD knee yesterday.

    Never mind Internet, never mind. It will all be FINE, but you know. If bursting into tears while venting during a DM conversation last night is any indication, I’m a little stressed.

    +++

    When I was a kid, each year before my birthday, Nan would take me to a musical at the Theatre Royal. It would make up part of my birthday present and frequently we would get front row seats, which was very exciting.

    One year, the musical was Les Miserables and it was a HUGE performance at the Derwent Entertainment Centre. It was even more exciting because Nan was part of the cast, singing in the choir. I spent weeks down at her house before hand, listening to her sing while she learned all of the songs.

    After it finished its run, Nan gave me CD’s with the entire performance recording on them. Somewhere in a couple of house moves and a very active destructive toddler (Amy) I lost two of the CD’s.

    But, for a long time, Les Miserables was my go-to music when I was stressed.

    Screaming baby at 3am? Play Les Mis.

    Angry at Nathan for working all night and then needing to sleep during the day (the cheek!) Play Les Mis.

    Sing the songs, listen to the words and calm back down.

    +++

    I hadn’t listened to any of the songs from Les Miserables for years now.

    Nan is dead and some things just don’t need poking.

    But, I was talking to Nathan the other day and I mentioned “Lovely Ladies” as a song to make you smile, in a warped sort of way. And so I found it on Youtube, along with the entire musical score, care of someone uploading it.

    And you know what?

    It still works on stress. Of course, it makes me sadder now, but there is nothing like a good musical for making you feel ever so slightly better.

    In a warped sort of way, anyway.

    *I should be able to announce the Big Thing early next week. I’m just waiting for some things to fall into place.

  • Showcase Tasmania: Natures Path

    I could smell the Natures Path stall from metres away while walking towards it. That was the first thing I noticed, the amazing smell.

    The second thing was that of course, the smell was coming from the gorgeous soaps on display.

    Natures Path make a range of different soaps, all made from pure olive oil and scented with only essential oils. That isn’t the best thing however. While they smell amazing, they feel even better. Silky smooth and luxurious, I am really loving how my skin feels after a shower.

    I was lucky that Frogpondsrock found Natures Path at the Salamanca Markets and then in turn, pointed me towards them, because as well as soap, they make and sell tea.

    What could be better? Two of my luxury items found at the same stall!

    Now, I’ve only tried their Pure Olive Oil Soap (which is meant to assist with dermatitis, eczema and healing – and Isaac’s eczema behind his knees has quite improved), but I have plans to get to the Markets again sometime soon, and buy some pretty smelling ones as well. The apple, mint and green clay soap sounds interesting, as does the grapefruit, lime and calendula soap.

    I also got to try some of their tea, a nice stomach soothing blend, because of the EDS and nausea issues.

    I’m not entirely sure it helped, but I can tell you that I didn’t throw it back up again, so that is a bonus. While I’m uncertain about it’s nausea fighting abilities, it was a really nice mint based tea to sip of an evening, while I bothered twitter with inane updates.

    You can find Natures Path online here, or at Salamanca Market each week – OR, here is a list of where their products can be found across the country.

  • Sunday. Holy crap, it’s Sunday?!

    I’m having a little trouble with the fact that it is SUNDAY already, which effectively means that I have only thirteen days until our wedding. Time slips away, like water, it feels.

    This was my photo for the ABC Open 11.11.11 11.11 project. I was a little short on snapping time, but there you go.

    Spitfire caterpillars.

    Lady bird sex!

    Tasmanian Sunset

    And finally, this from Google that I screenshotted yesterday. It appears the Internet truly DOES know everything about me. Thanks Google, it made me smile.

    More photos at Frogpondsrock.