My sister and I have been volunteering for a couple of years now at a local food parcel charity run out of a school/church group in my area.  We pack boxes with food items for struggling families, we do this in a tiny room with no air-conditioning and believe it or not – no windows!  We can’t even open the door because the room is like a small storage area attached to a classroom.  It’s not so bad in Winter but on a hot day it’s like a bloody sauna.  So last year we asked if we could have a fan in there and the church purchased two fans for us but no one assembled them until after Summer.  Now that it’s getting hot and we have fans I went to plug them in the other day but guess what?  There were no sockets for me to plug them in!  So I guess it’s going to be another hot summer in that tiny room while the rest of the church building and attached school enjoy air-conditioning.  I guess that’s why the job we do is voluntary… no one would put up with those kind of work conditions!

Well this is blog post number 365… it’s been a year of blogging and I’d like to say thanks for reading.  I only started blogging because my husband was doing it and like the saying goes “anything you can do I can do better.”  I have really enjoyed sharing my tales of life as a mother and on more than one occasion a pet peev or a gripe about life in general.  Of course this blog wouldn’t even be here if not for my I.T man and subject of quite a few posts himself…my husband of 12 years… Luke.  So thanks Luke and thanks to my two kids, Claire and Natalie for providing some great blogging material… where would I be without you?  Working  most probably but let’s not go there.  Last of all I’d like to say thanks to my sister for providing such a fantastic blog subject… her son!  Without him I would not have experienced the vast difference between raising girls and raising boys, I truly don’t remember getting this many bruises from my girls!  Well this is it folks, my year is over and that’s all I ever set out to do… a year of blogging.  But wait there’s more… for a limited time only you can get a fantastic set of steak knives that will cut through dry wall as if it were butter.  No of course you won’t get any steak knives but what I am going to give you is two blog posts a week from this point on.  I love it too much to quit completely so every Tuesday and Thursday until the day my heart stops beating I’m going to ramble on and on and on and on…

Recently my husband completed some course that now makes him a qualified Workplace Occupational Health & Safety Officer, good for him… another qualification.  However I have now discovered the downside to living with an OH&S freak, they are constantly seeing the danger in every situation.  Just last night we were watching TV and Luke said “oh that’s not safe, according to (blah blah blah) you should only ever go past the third rung on the ladder.”  He will quote legislation about every little violation he sees, whether it’s in a real life situation or in the land of TV.  On the up side I guess he does have interesting stories about unfortunate deaths in the workplace… morbid I know but what can I say… I’m a big fan of The Darwin Awards.

One of the kids teddy bears is an interactive toy.  It will say to you “can you find my belly” and the child is supposed to squeeze the belly.  If the belly is squeezed it will say “very good, this is my belly.  Can you find my (other body part)”  If the wrong area is squeezed it will say “No silly that’s my (body part child squeezed), can you find my belly”.  My three year old nephew was playing with this toy when all of a sudden he came running down the hallway saying “the bear wants me to find his arse!”  Somehow he had misunderstood the bears request to find his arm… although I did squeeze it’s arse just to make sure!

Ever wondered what you would look like in a different era?  I did and there’s the answer up above, an Afro for me and a slicked down Richie Cunningham look for my husband.  I did those photos on a free to use website www.yearbookyourself.com It’s a lot of fun so give it a go!

Yesterday morning while my sister and nephew were over we decided to make a joint birthday phone call… saves money that way.  So using my sister’s mobile I carefully and slowly keyed in the phone number, all the while my husband and sister were making fun of me with such things as “watching her texting must be painful” and the like.  The phone started ringing and ringing and ringing, it was 7:20am after all.  Then the artificial voice cut in with ‘please leave a message after the beep’ so I gave the word and we all yelled out “happy birthday Linda.”  Unfortunately just as I was voicing my birthday wishes I had a frog in my throat (though my sister would say it was more like a giant cane toad) and my voice was certainly far from pleasant.  I went on to excuse myself and to further wish Linda a fantastic day blah blah blah.   After hanging up something didn’t sit right with me, I honestly thought she would be awake and ready to answer the phone.  So my sister checked the number I dialed and sure enough I had pressed a 2 instead of a 3 and we had just wished a complete stranger happy birthday…oooppps!  So I dialed the correct number and got my father on the phone instead of the birthday girl…. she was off at the beach with a trainer exercising.  At least I was right about one thing, 7:20am was not too early for the birthday girl… now to work on dialing a phone number correctly!

Well we sure have had a few strong storms lately complete with roofs being torn off, floods, trees falling down, houses distroyed and even a couple of deaths.  All this destruction I would expect during the actual storm but what I’ve discovered is that trees will drop branches for some time to come.   They have now been weakened and at any moment a branch may simply drop off.  This is exactly what happened to us yesterday after school.  The kids and I were just leaving the school grounds when I turned around to tell Natalie to hurry up.  At the precise moment she looked up at me a branch from the tree above her started to fall.  It happened so quickly I didn’t even get a chance to tell her to move…SMACK… the branch hit her on the left side of her head and caught her left arm as it toppled to the ground.  I rushed back to her and after a thorough inspection I decided she was OK.  Thank God it wasn’t a large branch but at the same time there is no way I could have snapped it over my knee or cut it with seceteurs… it was big enough to require a saw to break it.  So after that little incident we won’t be walking under any big trees for a while, just in case the next branch that falls is big enough to require a chainsaw!

My youngest goes to school with a boy who has autism and my oldest also had an autistic boy in her class a few years back.   These children have carers to help them so it’s no big deal… or so I thought.  Today after school one of the mothers asked me to sign a petition requesting that this boy be removed from the school.  I couldn’t believe it but then again I didn’t know what was going on.  Apparently this boy is quite violent and has bitten and attacked the other kids without provocation.  He has made some of the children bleed and apparently the kids are scared of him.  The teachers have a book in which they document all the incidences and there have been quite a lot.  The children exclude him because of this behaviour and I think this simply makes the situation worse.  It’s a sticky situation because on one hand I understand his parents just want their boy to be “mainstream” but his agression and violence are causing distractions in the class as well as fear in the children.  I have not signed the petition yet because my daughter is not scared of him and he hasn’t hurt her… yet. I’m just not sure how I would feel if it were MY child everyone wanted to boot out. This is not a black and white situation and I’m not sure what to do… is there a right and wrong here?

My girls are turning 8 and 6 this year and I have managed to avoid birthday parties… until now!  I have always flat out said “no” to parties and I have no idea why I’m crumbling like a cookie now.  However, I’m not buying into the whole “wonderland” party scene where parents fork out big bucks to have pony rides and jumping castles… no way Jose.  Not when kids are perfectly happy just laughing and playing amongst themselves.  Sure I’ll have a few party games but not this crappy everyone wins bull plop… there’s only ever one winner and the sooner the kids learn that the better.  Go on call me harsh, call me a meanie, I don’t mind.  My oldest will have high sugar party foods and drinks crammed into an hour and a half of games and fun at the local park.  Surely that’s enough, isn’t it? As for my youngest, I offered her the same deal but she turned it down.  Her celebration request is a party for one with her boyfriend… isn’t that cute?  So it’s a playdate and dinner with my possible future son-in-law, that should be easy enough.  Next year though…. NO PARTIES!  Ahhhh who am I kidding?  If all the Kings horses and all the Kings men couldn’t put Humpty together again… a crumbled cookie is going to stay crumbled!

Two nights ago we had quite a wild storm and the next day at school all us mums and dads were comparing damages and telling tales of woe.  The lollypop lady told me of a tree that was down around the corner so I drove past out of interest and my curiosity was surely satisfied.  As I slowly went by I saw a huge gum tree lying on it’s side just inches from someones home and a large chunk of the footpath was simply gone… torn apart as the roots were pulled from the soil.  This was just one tree but all through Brisbane trees were knocked over, cars and homes damaged and unfortunatly even a young man drowned in a stormwater drain.  If this was the damage from a storm I’d hate to see the damage from a cyclone! The only good news I heard was of a woman who now has beautiful sweeping city views thanks to the storm bringing down the big tree in her neighbours yard.  As soon as the tree fell the value of her house jumped dramaticlly… now that’s a blessing if ever I have heard one!