This is it...

The anomaly is snow.  No~one gets snow ~ well, Tassie did one year but even that close to the pole that's more than a little odd.  What we get is heat, lots & lots of heat.  And humidity.  We get lots of humidity.

Out on the island the nor'easters have been blowing steadily all summer, so though it is hot we don't swelter & stew.  Sadly we weren't staying on the island.  We were on the 5 past 8 boat heading to Birkdale where there is no breeze & sweltering is the order of the day.  Mind you, the other lot of in~laws are up from South Australia & were really suffering.

As temperatures go 84/5 F isn't too bad until you factor in 100% humidity, no rain.  The Little Man did the sensible thing.  He went to bed  in the only room with functioning air con & slept through the whole thing.  Smart lad.

The rest of us chattered & sweltered ~ & ate.  So much food ~ all of it wonderful!  And yes, we had a nice time though it is always a little weird doing somebody else's thing rather than your own.  The sad thing was getting the boat home.  All I can say is that I think every islander who left the island spasmodically throughout the morning decided the first boat of the afternoon was the one to be on!  They did a headcount to ensure they could safely get everyone on board ~ & it's been a while since that's happened, then all the standers ~ & there were lots of them were constantly being moved forward or back to balance the boat & get up speed because, predictably, the air con wasn't coping.  It was like being in a steaming sardine can.

So nice to get home to the cool before the massive thunderstorms started cracking over our heads & the cats were pleased to see us because hardly ever does everyone leave home @ once!

Being Good.

So I was back again: finger painting, story~telling, fun in the park ~ & several baths because I managed to get the kid filthy~ twice!  Not a grizzle to be heard & I am not the most accommodating grandmother.  Sure, I'll do stuff but when enough is enough, I'm done.

Meanwhile, as anyone who knows us knows, we moved away from celebrating Christmas several years ago for lots of reasons:

• we came out of serving the homeless with a very jaded view of how most *Christians* celebrate Christmas
• I can be pedantic & knowing the date is wrong just bugged me
• there is a huge increase in domestic violence, abuse, alcohol related problems & loneliness
• Very few people can even be bothered to attend a service
• And last, but not least, it has become a very secular, greedy holiday  ~ which I find offensive. This year Coles or Woolies [not sure which] is so totally focused on all the non~essentials they are calling it *Santa Day*.  Uh~huh.  Pretty much sums it up. Jesus has well & truly departed the building!

We do celebrate Hanukkah ~ not because we think it's the Jewish equivalent of Christmas, but because we can focus on the prophetic elements of the Messiah & it becomes totally about Jesus rather than totally about food & presents ~ & yes, I do know what it is all about from the Jewish perspective!

However... *sigh* My DILY comes from a family who celebrate Christmas BIG TIME. Her tree touches the roof.  There are wreathes & baubles [which I am so good @ shattering!] all over the house.  The tree has been up for a month surrounded by a playpen stuffed with presents.  I was slightly appalled. Even when we did Christmas we did it low key & fairly restrained & read the gospel account on Christmas eve when we broke out the first of the goodies.  Their family, their traditions....Only we are expected there as they are hosting Christmas this year. I do not want to go.  My anti~socialism can be fairy extreme... people.  Lots & lots of people.  All her family,  Us...As CG used to say: I might cry...

Dear Reader: I am being good. I have girded my loins for the fray.  I have agreed to make my speciality breakfast pancakes to feed the hordes. I have agreed to stay till after lunch.  I will refrain from regretting a peaceful day spent contemplating my navel on our lovely cool verandah enjoying a sultry sea breeze ~ & I will pretend I am enjoying myself.  I will not scream: Get me out of here...!!! I promise.  But just between me & thee ~ I can't wait till it's all over!  Gosh, but I hate hoo~ha!

They're not normal...

I think I first realised this when ODD's chorus mistress announced her toilet flushed in F Major. Seriously? Who thinks like that?

In point of fact, according to Google, most toilets flush in Eb, though anything in D is also a strong contender. I have no idea.  My ear is nowhere good enough for that even if I could be bothered. There are, however, whole forums dedicated to discussing this esoteric fact.

What it did highlight for me is that musicians hear the world differently to the rest of us. I hear noise.  They hear keys & scales.

Perhaps I should have twigged earlier, only I didn't because we weren't doing music & the rest of my bombastic lot made noise, not music, by anyone's standard. I didn't know any musicians, not real musicians, only people who learnt music & that is not necessarily the same thing.

That changed with ODD. When she was quite little, but had started schooling with me, she would occasionally, spend a morning in the local grade 1 classroom while I taught the big kids in grades 5,6 & 7 how to read. I would collect her @ break & we would go home together. She never wanted to stay for the afternoon session, even though, for the first few times we did this, she thought it was super exciting & very grown up & it was all so novel she was on her best behaviour & the teacher adored her, she was so well behaved.  I wasn't sure, @ first, we were discussing the same child...

Then it happened.  I went to pick up my child & found her sitting all alone, pale & wan, totally ignored by staff & pupils alike.  She hadn't touched her snack.  She didn't want to play. I thought she was unwell.

Now my ODD is a talker.  She can talk the moon down from the sky & she has been like that from about 5 months, when she first began talking, & not only did she talk all day, she talked all night as well because she talked in her sleep. She was, perhaps, my noisiest child.  It is so deceptive.  I had completely absorbed my mother's maxim that given her drathers she would have opted for quiet, musical children. Oh, dear. If only she'd realised.  Her one really musical child was also her super noisy one!

So I took my very quiet child home & she put herself to bed & slept for hours. Even when she got up she was still quiet & pale.  Eventually I asked about her morning.

Oh, mummy! They were noisy & naughty!

I have since learnt that many musicians have very sensitive hearing that is easily damaged by excessive noise & that a rowdy classroom had literally made my child sick.  Even before I knew anything, before we began the years & years of music that were to become my life as well as my child's, the Lord was ensuring her hearing was protected.  Years of your Average Australian Public school classroom would have damaged her hearing.  Our house was normally very quiet because I don't do well in chaos & mayhem.  And we pottered through our days doing the sort of things that us arty~farty types like: art, craft, drama, music ~ lots & lots of music because, as homeschoolers, we had time to practise more than one thing & I learnt that musicians know which key their toilet flushes in.  I'm sure that's not normal.

A Little Problem

I am, by inclination, a night owl.  I like the dark & the quiet & the emptiness, not being a people person.  I like to read & potter & think in the quiet & the dark.  When the kiddies were little I always did my housework @ night because my days were so busy with little people & when you have little people nothing done ever stays done & I am academic enough that  I really like to complete a task, know it's completed & receive my *mark* ~ something not possible with housework in general & most definitely not with small children.

However, a number of those small children were very early risers.  Four a.m was not uncommon, especially in summer, & so I learnt to rise early & muddle through my days half asleep because my body clock did not change.  It still informed me that it was time to rage once the clock ticked past 10pm.

Over the years the body has just got muddled.  It wakes @ 3 or 4 am & I get several lovely early morning hours before crashing to finish the sleep I should have had last night.  Of course that leaves me raging into the wee sma's ~ & so the cycle continues...with brief pauses for normality.

The nice part of this circus is that I am usually up early enough to be blessed by our wildlife.  This morning, as I opened the verandah door for my cats, I heard a loud sloshing through the mangroves & very shortly a small, dark wallaby hopped through the shallows to glean the mangrove seeds from the low growing grey mangroves.

Too early to get a really good shot but he wasn't fazed by both cats & me lined up along the verandah staring @ him intently & eventually moved off unhurriedly.

 A little later there was a commotion on the verandah.  A family of Butcher Birds had arrived for their morning bath ~ & then there was Kirby, trying so hard to be good but wanting very badly to hunt.

And then there is this:

Hmmm. I was alerted to this teaching on a FB group I am a part of. My spirit immediately quickened to the concept because my understanding is very much that Heaven operates in legalities.  That is the big picture: Fall = breaking a covenant; Cross=restoring a workable covenant: Epistles=walking out the covenant.

Now my O.T understanding could be a whole lot better.  I am not, by any means, the sort of scholarly academic who can nit~pick theology & word meanings & break down entire concepts BUT I do well with big picture concepts where you can see the whole picture @ a glance so I do think Henderson is on to something here.  I am less sure about some of how he gets there.

Why I think he is onto something is the very simple fact that satan is the accuser of the brethren [Revelation 12:12] & he accuses us day & night before God.  So he can ~ because we were born into sin as the sparks fly upward. Now, Jesus has dealt with our legal standing with His blood but as so often I find there is something God does & then there is stuff he wants us to do & together He works out the details of our salvation. That the bible is, in many ways, a legal document just makes common sense to me.  It is other things as well but one of the things it is is a legal document.

Now satan accuses us ~ so we must not agree with him either for ourselves or for those we are praying for. That gives him legal ground for his accusations. We must agree with what God says. That is what I believe.  That is what I teach.  Guard your mouth for out of it flow the issues of life ~ because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. [Luke6:45]

Where it gets dodgy is between revelation & literal interpretation ~ mind you I'm not even a third of the way into this book yet! Are there literal courts in heaven? I believe so. There is a judgement seat; there are judgements rendered & that is a legal process & there are books: the Book of Remembrance [Malachai]; the Book of Life[Revelation]; the Book of Truth [Daniel] ~ & numerous scrolls... Are there legal processes for dealing with stuff on earth?  I suspect so ~ hence why I picked up this book.  Does that invalidate our standing with Christ?  Our authority in Christ? Our salvation?  Grace?  I don't think so.  It's just another aspect of the jig~saw & once you understand that you can put it in it's proper place & access it if you need it.

Now, having said that, without having read anything @ all, before I got the book, I worked with what little understanding I did have interceding for a friend in a matter that was causing her difficulties because there is no point in any of it if it is ineffective.  I did point out to Abba I was operating in a lot of ignorance & to forgive me if I was being presumptuous, but as I prayed the entire atmosphere around us changed!  It was really, really quick. It was a massive change ~ one my friend immediately noticed & she is not normally the most spiritually discerning of people. So I am proceeding with caution because there are some really big, really difficult things that we have been praying for & as they haven't shifted it is time to reassess what we are doing & how we are praying because Einstein nailed it: Insanity is doing the same thing over & over & expecting different results. Yeppity~yep.

Two differnt things.

I have been doing some babysitting again ~ which eats up huge goblets of my time, what with the travelling to & fro & the super tiredness that comes with looking after a small child again when you have not done that for a looong time!

 Our Little Man is growing up but still non~verbal.  I know this is not unusual, especially with boys, but as all ours were talking by 12 months, & ODD managed her first complete sentence @ just 5 months, I do find it rather peculiar & prone to making life difficult.  The Little Man cannot express his frustration adequately & consequentially grizzles.  It is very wearing.

For Purim I had made some noisemakers ~ just really simple ones out of milk bottles & coffee cans filled with a few garden pebbles ~ so I took one along for the Little Man, who has a house full of toys he never plays with.  Yep.  It amused him for ages.  Take the lid off.  Pour out the stones.  Put he stones in, one by one. Try & screw the lid on.  Shake it all about a bit.  Take the lid off.  Pour out the stones... Seriously scary how something so cheap & simple beats all the toys in the world.

Still, what the Little Man really likes is to be out & about.  He's not real keen on doing any exercise himself but he is very happy to be pushed along in his stroller for hours @ a time.  I like to walk but I do not like to walk in a Queensland summer.  Far too hot & sticky! Still, in the end, it was just too much not to.  There are some lovely old estates in the area with the biggest, greenest trees & acres of land. 

I have gone in new directions the last few times.  The Little Man & I generally disagree on the best direction.  He likes the highway with lots of rushing trucks & cars & motorbikes, where the train hoots & hurtles past & he can wave @ all the passing traffic.  Not my idea of fun & as I am steering we go into the quieter backwaters & the green spaces council has so thoughtfully provided ~ though what else does one do with the undrained swamps? Last time we found some glorious old gardens & I was perfectly happy gazing @ the lovely, established gardens but the Little Man thought this seriously dull.  He enjoyed the swing ~ but as he insisted on letting go & half upending himself for the joy of seeing me rush to grab his feet before he tipped out completely I told him we weren't going to do that any more.  He wasn't happy but I don't want to be responsible for his cracked head!

 We had a most lovely church service on Sunday ~ paddling through the Hanukkah covenants & sorting ourselves out for the holiday break but that is enough peopling for me for one day so when the MOTH decided he was going to keep the P&W music going afterwards I took myself off for a nice long walk where @ least the noise was different.  It has been so windy here & the waves were crashing noisily onto the rocks but God knows what soothes my soul & as I climbed the hill onto the point the first thing I saw was a large messy nest & both birds were in residence.

This is a whistling kite, one of our medium sized raptors.  Glad neither of the cats was with me as they are obviously breeding & a cat snack would be just the thing for a hungry brood.

The nests are always huge & get added to year after year.  I often see either the birds or the nests but getting decent pictures is never easy. So happy I got these.

No, thank you.

ODD is to blame for Sherlock because I have zero tolerance for bad t.v ~ meaning almost all of it. The rare exceptions are few & far between & far too often screened way past my bedtime.

You'll like this, mum, ODD assured me.  Trust me.

She was right.  I watched the 1st 3 seasons in a marathon, delighted the BBC once again had produced a witty, intelligent, well written crime drama.  I even liked the modern take on Sherlock.  It was sharp & clever & it didn't matter I had read all the stories.  There was enough originality to keep me engaged.

So along with a lot of others I waited eagerly for season 4 ~ which we get later in Australia than everywhere else.  I manfully refrained from pirating... Finally channel 9 aired season 4 on Sunday nights, when I am cranky & overtired & critical but it didn't matter.  The simple fact of the matter was, I was bored.

Why I liked this series to begin with was, it didn't bore me.  The dialogue was clever. The plots were just intricate enough.  There was just enough tension between characters, between plot & sub~plots, that lovely balance that is so hard to achieve between not taking itself too seriously & not taking itself seriously enough.  All gone.  In all honesty, season 4 is just silly.

I watched the final episode on my computer because I was baby sitting on Sunday night & that house is as cricket mad as this one [not me, the MOTH] & it's the Ashes & we're winning, so I chose a time when I was alert & focused & I gave the show my full attention ~ but it's still silly.  Plot holes big enough to drive a truck through, inconsistencies, illogical, poor link~ups between scenes in some arty~farty let's be super cleverness & it's just bad t.v.  The ending was just pathetic & I hate it like poison when I pick the outcome of a major plot line within the first 5 or so minutes!  I like to be kept guessing! Plus, I really, really hate being lied to, & the whole Redbeard thing had way more impact when Redbeard was a dog.  Should have left well enough alone!

Pinged off. Much.

What is worse than doing the tax...?

My children are notorious for borrowing my things & not returning them: pots, pans, knives & forks, pillows & blankets. They are so notorious that my mother once gave me a set of old forks for Christmas for my children to garden with.  Too sad making.

I know where they got it.  See the kiddos are grown & have flown the nest but my things are still disappearing.  The MOTH blames Kirby & Marlow but as Kirby & Marlow have no use for sticky tape, staplers, scissors & tweezers they can hardly be to blame.  The MOTH, however, uses all these things regularly.  In fact he uses them so regularly I bought him his own so that mine weren't constantly disappearing.  Nothing makes me so fraught as going to use something & finding it's not where I left it!

So we are doing the taxes.  This does not make me a happy woman.  I do not like numbers.  I do not do numbers.  Numbers make me fraught.  In point of fact, @ one point I took one look @ a worksheet of ODD's & declared she was on her own, to do or not as she chose, as all those numbers & graphs & what~nots made me feel physically ill.  Oddest sensation...so, no, tax time does not bring me joy. However it is mainly straight up addition using a calculator.  The MOTH does the hard yards.  However I do have to organise all the receipts etc by month & staple them together in order ~ which should be a simple enough task, yes...? No. 

When the man moved from selling stamps to selling plants I could never find my stapler, so I went out & bought myself a new one so he could have the old one & all would be well because he would have his own & I would have mine & there would be no conflict of interest. I keep my stapler with my sticky tape & my scissors, ruler, pens etc & though I am not the tidiest or most organised person ever  do keep them all together as it saves so much angst in the long run.  Imagine my ire to have organised piles & piles of paper all ready to be stapled & no stapler to be found!!!  Irate hardly expresses my feelings!  In high dungeon I went out & bought a new one, one with bright lime green inserts in the hope it will always be spottable!  The man now has 2 & he can't find either one!!!

This morning he borrowed my sticky tape.  If he hasn't put it back where it belongs murder will be done!

Thinking Thinks.

Our Little Man is getting big.  He understands heaps; when I suggested a walk he rushed to the door with great expectancy but he is still mostly non~verbal. 

His mum is teaching him to sign.  This seems to be a catch~22.  He doesn't need to speak if he can sign.  I don't sign so we make do with words. And he is something of a grizzler.  I thought, seeing as the whole house was down with some sort of tummy bug, that his grizzles were due to not feeling 100% well but, no.  His mum says he is always like that when they are home.  What he likes is to be out ~ which is why we have no trouble when I take him out!

I thought about that & the fact is, he doesn't usually grizzle for me because I won't put up with it.  Plus I am used to working with a child hanging off me one way or another so I tend to include him in what I'm doing ~ as really only experienced parents can because we have abandoned a *get it done as quick as possible* mentality in order to keep a little one happy & engaged ~ & this really only does come with experience.

The other thing, of course, is they have a urban house & a urban yard & it is dull beyond belief for a curious small child. I can't remember any of mine being grizzlers.  They were lots of things: noisy, destructive, competitive, busy but they weren't grizzlers.  Grizzlers got put outside & told to entertain themselves but of course we weren't urban & though outside was occasionally hair~raising it was never boring!

So I am thinking what one does @ home to keep a 1yr old busy & occupied.  I know I always cooked a lot with mine from as soon as they could stand on a chair & *help* but I don't remember ever struggling to keep mine busy & occupied.  Even Jossie, as the 1st & only as firsts tend to be, could occupy himself from early on & that is a skill well worth learning.  One is, of course, too young for most art activities & even play~doh needs to be supervised before it goes everywhere.  Going armed next time! 😜😜 Have one or 2 things in mind but as they are noisy no~one bar the Little Man is likely to love me!