Yo~Yo Land.

It is being one of those years ~ you know the ones: too much happening; too many changes; up & down, round & round like a yo~yo.

Raising 5 kids was chaotic.  I must have been mad a lot of the time.  Having 5 adults is insane.  They are multiplying like rabbits.

We did our first wedding a couple of years ago & our first grandchild shortly after ~ & we are sort of managing that.  Sort of.  We live where we do & have the lives that we have so grandparenting is not always easy, though I am lucky.  My son wishes I could be round more, which is heaps better than being the unwanted meddling grandparent.

Now baby number 2 is on its way & should be here come October. They may even land on my birthday.  What am I supposed to think about that?

My lot are not only late bloomers; none of them were ever all that interested in the whole marriage, kids, family thing & they all have occupations the Lord has called them into that have taken priority.  Now, suddenly, OT has announced his engagement & a wedding date & Chile Girl is agitating to be home for it only she is on the mission field & had her long furlough last year.  Her time in Chile may be drawing to an end.  She has found the last year really, really hard ~ not because the work has grown more difficult or burnout but quite simply because much has happened in the family in the interim & she has not been here for it.  Skyping with mummy or getting the FB message update is not the same as being here, being involved, being able to help.

I call CG my B&W child.  There are no shades of grey, no nuances.  A thing is, or it isn't. And so not being able to say goodbye to her grandfather, not being here for the funeral, not being around for her Gran, Ma's reiterated wish for her to come home, new babies arriving that it will be months [or even years] before she meets, have taken their toll & no reminders that she spent quality time with all her grandparents while she was here makes up for that.

And so we are planning for CG's return [temporary, or otherwise]. A new baby.  A new DIL. A house upgrade. New neighbours ~ because Gran's house is now on the Market. The cats are in meltdown.  They do not like change either.

It has begun.

When the Postal Vote returned a yes majority & our gutless government abandoned morality for popularity &, quite frankly, the peer pressure of other western nations, some of us knew that wasn't the end of it.  It was only the thin edge of the wedge. Seriously?  All your friends are jumping off the Harbour Bridge so you gotta go join them too? Adults are supposed to be beyond the schoolyard stuff, but apparently not.

I was appalled @ the vitriol Margaret Court coped for stating the conservative Christian position on everything LGBT. The woman is a tennis legend & a Rhema Pastor. As a pastor not only is she entitled to state the Church's position, she is required to! Now it is a man named Folau, who is, apparently, a Christian first & Rugby legend after that. Ok, so I wouldn't go on Twitter & say something along the lines of  *All homosexuals are going to HELL unless they repent & turn to God* ~ but that is certainly the conclusion I would draw from the scriptures. However... he is  entitled to state his beliefs without condemnation.  You don't have to agree with him.  That is your right, but you are required, in a civilised & egalitarian society, to tolerate his beliefs in the same way he is forced to tolerate others beliefs. And please, learn the meaning of homophobic before you use it to slander someone!  Homo = man; Phobia=fear ~ fear of man. *sigh* Not fear of homosexuals. And yes, these are journalists, who should certainly know better & how to use their mother tongue properly!

I know there is a quite large segment of Christianity who disagree with the traditional Conservative Christian viewpoint but I think they have misunderstood the scriptures & are now misrepresenting them to others ~ which would not matter except the wages of sin is death, homosexuality is a sin [yes, you can help it; it is a choice] & it will result in spiritual death. God doesn't want to see anyone in hell, so warning people is actually an act of love, not hate.

I am tired of hearing people justify their sin with excuses like: God made me this way. No, God did not!  When God created the world He declared everything *good*.  The Hebrew word is *tov* & it means *functioning in the way it was meant to.* Male/female is *tov* because the first command was to *Go forth & multiply*.  Anything else is dysfunctional & part of satan's great deception & man's rebellion.

What's more, There is no scientific or biological evidence to support the *I was born this way* belief but there is both scientific & biblical evidence to suggest that we train our brains in certain ways & they can be retrained.  I hear California has now made it illegal to help someone retrain their brain. *sigh*  So now even homosexuals don't get to choose either?

We have lost the art of civilised debate, of being able to state a philosophical position without reverting to slander or vilification. Robust debate is necessary to a healthy society.  When one segment of society seeks to shut down dissent in the name of *tolerance* [whereby it justifies intolerance in the name of tolerance], we are much sicker than we think we are ~ & baby, we are a very, very sick nation.  Gender Bender philosophy for kids who are still learning girl bits & boy bits are different; unisex toilets; men who think they are women & women who want to be men; gender neutral parenting; gender neutral language... This is relativism gone mad. May God forgive us; we know not what we do.

Another One Bites the Dust.

My children like giving me plenty of prior warning ~ not. So it was no surprise that OT should ring as the MOTH & I were headed to the mainland on Friday to ask if we were free for Saturday lunch @ Sirromet.

Sirromet is the local winery, & like most wineries in Australia also hosts a restaurant ~ in Sirromet's case 3! What Sirromet is notorious  for in this house is being the very first venue ODD performed at on a rock concert sized stage as the opening act for the Ten Tenors, a performance I never saw as I refused to pay $80 to sit on the grass without food or water amongst a crowd that was rock concert size! So I had never done more than drive round the circuit to abandon & collect my child.

I had looked @ the Lurleen restaurant menu several times but it never had something I was prepared to eat @ a time I wanted, so being shouted for lunch @ any of the alternatives was certainly going to be novel.

We ended up @ the Cellar Door, not really sure why we were there but not adverse to a free feed either.  Ostensibly we were there to spend time getting to know OT's fiance ~ but we have meet her several times & like her very much indeed. However we are becoming a bit of a licorice all sorts family.  T1 is married to a Zimbabwean, The Chile Girl has a Chile Boy & now OT has an AngloIndian ~ not that we care about her ancestry but, as she pointed out, we do have to deal with her culture & honouring parents [yes, her husband's as well as her own] is very important & she wanted to make absolutely sure we were happy to have her in the family & saw no impediment to a successful union.  We don't & are wildly happy!

We had a lovely lunch & as a bonus saw heaps of the small fawn wallabies that graze between the grape vines.

Walking's the Thing.

They grow so fast @ this age!  Each time I visit our Little Man has a new skill, is achieving different milestones, has grown up just that little bit more. 

Despite not being either particularly energetic or sporting myself, what the Little Man & I do together is walk to the park.  The Little Man knows I'm good for the swing & the  peddle see~saw ~ & no, his little legs can't reach.  I hold him & run till I'm out of puff. And we do the slide.  I used to climb up & sit him in my lap to go down.  Then I lifted him up & we did the whole *sit & slide* thing but last time he was determined to haul himself up the ladder all by himself but of course he is tiny & it was exhausting. Now mummy is suffering from morning sickness we have extended the walk bit by going from park to park ~ only I exhausted the Little Man @ the first one so we just walked.

 The shire is weird in that there are still farms interspersed amongst the neat suburban lawns & where there are farms there is bush & where there is bush there is wildlife. Just before our regular park is a rather scraggly farm with a dirty bit of swampy creek & horses, chickens running amok, & either egrets or ibis perched on the rails & up the trees.  These are ibis, world renowned scavengers!

The other way is even stranger. Beside the scraggy farm is the best park with loads of different things for the kiddies to do, including a half court with a hoop, but the area is full of rentals & tradies ~ not upper crust.  The other way is definitely upper class. Every back yard has a pool. The front yards are immaculate grass oasis & the cars are posh ~ so posh I have no idea what they are but obviously new, undinted & gleaming bright.  Here the park is hidden between 2 cul de sacs ~ but what a sad dreary little park, all uncut grass with a lone swing & a sad little slide.  Even the seat sits forlorn in sweltering sunlight rather than under the dappled shade of a gum tree.

However...

If you walk to the end of the park by the right~of~way & through to the back streets it is a different world again.  Here lie the big houses & the old gardens.

 I know they are old established gardens because  even  the elkhorn in the tree has some size about it.  We have an absolutely enormous one but it has taken 30 years to grow it to the size it is. This isn't quite so big but it is a lovely garden.

At the end of the street someone else has gone all tropical, which must be lovely in the summer heat but there is always that one neighbour who doesn't seem to know which country & period they are in...

 Elizabethan England with pines & palms???

Oh, & the Golden Pendas are flowering just now.  Aren't they super?!

Of Old Ink Pots.

 Beautiful things have often come into my life by default.  Such is the case with my ink bottles.

They are neither very old nor particularly rare & I only own a handful ~ exactly 5.  However...

When we first moved to the island we were the only house on our side of the point & I am an inveterate beachcomber, so naturally the first thing I did was clamber down our hill & scramble through the mangroves to poke & pry amongst the piles of sea grass & driftwood to see what had been caste upon the shore.

The clear glass ink bottles were discovered @ different times.  Wedged into the mud they have actually survived the ravages of time quite well & cleaned up nicely but in all honesty probably only date back to the 50's or early 60's because the ballpoint was invented in the 30's & by 1966, when I entered the 3rd grade, we phased from pen & ink to ballpoints by the end of 2nd term. Pity.  I loved working with the old pens.  They weren't pretty.  The nibs rusted & bent & the holders were ugly red plastic but when you wrote with them the ink did lovely things going thick & thin, dark to faint.  I know.  Small things...

For ages 3 clear ink bottles is what I had. Then when Jossie entered school I bought an old school desk ~ you know the ones: they had a sloping lid, hinged at the top so you could lift the lid & shove your belongings inside, a long groove cut above the hinges for pens or pencils & a hole in the exact middle of the groove.  I'm sure later generations wonder about that hole.  I didn't.  I wondered what had happened to the tin or enamel ink pot that had once rested there.

So I asked, as you do, the friends you know who are always @ the garage sales or the thrift shops, or the 2nd hand places if they would keep an eye out for an ink well ~ one that had once belonged in an old school desk.  And my friends, being my friends, arrived with ink bottles, teal & old & bottle green & though quite charming, useless as regarded the desk. I think they are pretty & not quite useless.  They hold feathers rather nicely.

Doing the Ginger Cake Again.

Kitchen window sills are for beautiful things.

At the moment the MOTH has brought his flowering orchids inside so that we can enjoy the blooms.  The sprays are a little long for comfort but the flowers are gorgeous.  Besides the mauve & white there is an unknown 3rd just starting to bud.

It has been some years since I had a fully working kitchen but our renovations mean I have a new oven & that means baking!  What else would I use it for?  Even more years since I had *helpers* & these days there is no~one to eat the goodies bar us ~ which means they should last, yes?

Perish the thought!  My MIL passed along, @ one time, the most scrumptious ginger bread cake ever.  Just ask my children.  I know there are some families who are *chocolate only* people.  We aren't that fussy.  We're more the licorice allsorts types. Carrot cake, coconut cake, orange cake, cheese cake ~ & definitely ginger cake!

I had to buy a new pan ~ drama, drama, drama ~ because these days everything is metric & very rarely do you get the old imperial as well.  I have never converted.  I am a feet & inches, pounds & ounces girl so there I stood in the IGA cooking section surveying their array of pans hoping that my rather unreliable memory for sizes was good enough because an 8" pan is what I needed & when I nabbed a ruler from the school section to help me out it was all in cm's & mm's too.  Useless!  Sad to say my girls cook in pounds & ounces too but I must say, after years of my battered & dinged & rusty old things new ones are very nice indeed.

Hot out of the oven with real butter melting into each slice ~ nothing yummier!

The recipe can be found here ~ which is my older, older blog [for which I have lost the password] so you need to know this recipe requires a cup of milk as well as all the other things. I do like me some ginger cake!