An ongoing saga.

She gardened all the morning & read all afternoon ~ Shirley Cane

Like many churches we run our music through a computer.  Thursday the computer crashed ~ &  Yeah, it was old. Important things like the enter key hadn't worked in months.  I'd made *we need a new computer* noises for some time but computers cost money & we don't spend the Lord's money if we don't need too so I had worked with it.

Crashes ~ well they're a whole 'nother thing.  I don't do crashes.  My computer skills are pretty limited so I was spinning because everything is on the computer!

Anyway we decided to head overseas for a new one & having arranged a car & missed 2 boats we finally left the island.

Amongst other things I have 2 white wisteria sitting in pots beside one of the bird baths.  The wisteria are one of those dramas in my life.  I like wisteria.  I would happily swathe the house in garlands of pink & purple & white but the MOTH is a horticulturists & my love of wisteria horrifies him.  I have heard, ad nauseam, how destructive it is, how invasive it is & how it's not a native. *sigh*  I know.  I know.  I still love wisteria. Anyway, I have had a purple one in a pot beside the other birdbaths for years & years though it has never flowered & the MOTH agreed that if they could be confined to pots I could have my wisteria.  He has bought the tubs: big wooden whisky tubs.  They are to sit on poles & weep.  He has begun the process of bending the longest twigs.  They immediately dropped all their leaves & the MOTH was cross thinking I had managed to kill them but they are deciduous & now, in spring, the flush of new growth is richly green.  It is time to get a move on.  So we stopped in at Bunnings & I picked up some butter beans & an azalea because after 20 odd years waiting on our canopy becoming a canopy we can finally think about our understory.

In all the hoopla we also had to help finance CG with a new computer ~ which we knew was on the cards because her old one has been at death's door for more than 12 months & without Skype we go months without speaking & that doesn't make either of us happy.  Besides she needs it for the work she does.

It was a long & fraught day. I mean, I don't like the mainland at any time. I particularly dislike shopping.  We were all tired by the time we got home again but as we bundled out of the car & began unloading, CG said: What is that bird doing?

I looked where she was looking.  I swear, even the wildlife round here is mad as hatters!  There was the chick I had rescued standing in the shallow bowl of water I had put out for the curlews.  What's with that bird & water?

A Near Disaster.

The daily existence of every bird is a remote and bewitching mystery. ~Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Down the south side of our house we have run a bush house. From the laundry door there runs a brick path that spreads under the clothes line & at the end of the path are the trees: malaluka & a big widow~maker, a bush apple that occasionally gets small bitter fruit & the small iron barks.  It is here, in the open spaces, our curlews can often be found.

Down the sides of the bush house are  the rows of hanging orchids, the tubs of water &  large white buckets the MOTH uses to propagate his lotus & water lilies. Occasionally we find the curlews drinking from the tubs but now, in September, it is getting hot.  The usual ground puddles have all dried up & the curlews have chicks.  I hadn't yet got around to putting out a low shallow bowl of water & this morning CG began screaming for me to come quick. One of the chicks had managed to fall into a tub of water but was completely incapable of getting out again though it had managed to hook its wings over the rim.

Meanwhile dad was hissing & spitting , wings spread aggressively wide while CG dithered. *sigh* They make a lot of noise on occasion but they aren't really aggressive so I ignored dad's shenanigans, scooped bubs up & popped him down on the ground to peep for mum. A very relieved little family gathered round the sodden one & they headed back to their spot under the trees to hiss & spit some more at CG.

I have put out water for them & a disaster has been neatly averted.

“Just about the time a woman thinks her work is done, she becomes a grandmother.” Edward H. Dreschnack

The thing about Toowoomba is that it's pretty. It was designed & built before electricity so no~one worried about overhead wires.  It was planted before someone decided camphor laurels were a noxious weed & lined both sides of many of its streets with trees.  Now they are huge, old, beautiful, hacked to pieces because of the overheads but still producing these glorious green avenues.  It's about the only thing I miss about Toowoomba. 

 I went to uni out here so I know what a cold old hole it can be. The prettiness & tidiness makes me claustrophobic.  There is no wild & I do like me some wild. What there is, in September, is the Flower Festival. Queen's Park is a riot of coloured blooms.

Even the knot garden...

I wasn't there for the flowers though.  Even when I lived there I avoided the festival.  You know, people, crowds...

I was there for something much more interesting...

 It's funny.  Your first you fuss & worry but after 5 you realise that given enough time they will actually go to sleep & they do it fast because you have learnt how to be really boring!

 So I changed nappies, hung out washing, drove the other car & cuddled a baby so his parents could get stuff done & now the other Grandies are having their turn. I reckon I made a super call.  His other Grandmother actually wants to be called *Grannie* ...[shudders delicately]...so  Móraí is all mine.

Now for the Son of my Son.

The reason grandchildren and grandparents get along so well is that they have a common enemy. ~Sam Levenson

My sons seem to think I am besotted by babies.  My girls are a little more realistic ~ or just know me waaay better.  I like babies.  I adore the new baby smell & the softness of a newborn's hair but truth to be told I found it hard to get overly excited about the arrival of our first grandchild.  It had not bothered me that our mob was getting older with no sign of anyone at all settling down to produce the next generation. I adored my own babies because they were mine but while reality is not normally my strong suit I'm enough of a realist to know I'm probably not the grandmother you want in an emergency. Not practical.

At times like these a girl wants her mother ~ not her M~I~L ~ & while they are not out of state they are far enough away that getting there from here is not the easiest thing to do. Not being the overly practical sort & knowing perfectly well what sort of mother I was [erratic, mostly easy~going, but prone to bouts of depression & being overly fraught] all my strengths as a parent were in less tangible things.  I was super great at bedtime stories. My minor at uni was drama.  I do all the voices. I do the actions. Seriously, I am good enough that I am the only parent who did storytelling at Under~8s day at school & had the kids begging to be allowed to participate.  Yep. If you actually want to eat I'm not your girl.

 However my ET is a super excited dad so when he asked would I come help out till his m~i~l arrives I said yes. I am just a tad worried.  I mean, the kid is gorgeous.  What's not to like?

 He was bright eyed & bushy tailed nearly all morning when we visited for the day then crashed into this super relaxed, utterly adorable bundle of gorgeousness but he is hardly old enough to be taught how to build a fire, pitch a tent, sail a boat, or participate in story~telling ~ things I can actually do. I'm great at paint activities too.  As for singing ~ we're good at this size when they can't tell one note from another.

In all honesty, seeing my son hold his son, terrifies me.  How did he ever get that big?  Where did all those years go? So on Sunday I am going to play grown ups.  CG is going to run me up the range & I am going to try & be helpful: do the dishes, cook some meals, wash little jumpsuits, hang things on the line, fold them & put them away again, walk the dog....maybe cuddle a baby.  Sometimes.  Just a little bit. And convince my son, who seems to want to call me Granny, that I absolutely hate that moniker & he can break his jaws on Móraí ~ which is much easier to say than it looks.

Down in Denemarra.

No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. ~Bill Cosby

I used to dream, the way you do, of the day the last child left this house & all those hours & hours when I could do all those things that had been on hold for 30 odd years. It never works out quite that way, does it?

Now, when I hear young parents rhapsodize about their children starting school I giggle because I know, & you know, those hours that seem so endless & beckoning do not exist in the real world. I had far more time when we homeschooled.

So it has not surprised me to find that yes, I went back to school, but no, it wasn't to study archaeology.  I so, so badly want to go & dig up Skara Brae though what The MOTH would have thought if I suddenly announced I was pulling up roots for a cold, damp hole off Scotland's wild & windy coast I cannot think. To say nothing of the children who already think I'm more than a little peculiar.

Besides, they left ~ but they have not taken all their goods & chattels because if something of theirs is here, well they have to come & get it, don't they? So last week we had 3/5s of them wandering about: the home from Chile girl because this is her home base & this is her long furlough ~ oh, & her computer is done & dusted for after 7 years on the mission field so she likes to snavel mine; ODD [other dear daughter] because she uses our internet for her other job & the music for her island students is here & because she forgets to make lunch & has to use our kitchen; the YOB [youngest of boys] because he left this morning for PNG for 10 days teaching & evangelism only he doesn't have internet or a printer & basically borrowed my computer [his doesn't have Word], my internet, the couch, the printer & most of a ream of paper & while it was lovely & they all get along they are BIG. Adults. I found myself running for a series of boats because they never seem able to co~ordinate everyone arriving or leaving on the same one.

Then ET [eldest Twin] had invited us to meet His newly arrived son & for the 2 hour drive each way add another hour to deal with boats & car parks.

What I am, is a mother & mothers run around after their kids ~ even their big kids.  What I do is Pastor a church & this week I'm preaching. My penchant for procrastination occasionally has my co~pastor freaking out but as I tell her, I spent uni writing last minute essays & I am blessed to be able to do most of my pre~planning in my head. This means by the time I actually sit down to pull it all together it flows pretty quickly.

Knowing I had lost Wednesday to the YOB & Thursday to ET, Mondays are our day off from Church stuff when we do the business stuff that actually supports us & Tuesdays start early with prayer group followed by our study, I planned to pull my sermon together Friday.

By 9am I hoped all boats would be dealt with, my computer would be mine again, the MOTH would be on the mainland & the cats doing what cats do. Dream on!

First I had to take my computer of CG [Chile Girl]. Then, as I opened windows because one needs an inter~lineal bible & Google, & both Biblegateway & Biblehub & pottered about CG popped her head through the open window wanting Google Translate because she can think & write in either English or Spanish but translate from one to the other seems impossible to do.  I suggested she use her father's computer as he wasn't here but, no.  So much more fun to drive mummy crazy.

So here I sit like birds in the wilderness, my brain completely fried, wondering how I ever managed to survive all those years with so many people in one house.

The Baby of my Baby.

We waited with patience this weekend for the arrival of our very first grandchild ~ the firstfruits of the next generation.

Welcome, Little One...

“Hear, O Lord, the voice of Judah, and bring him in to his people. With your hands contend for him, and be a help against his adversaries.” 
Deut. 33:7

Last but Not least.

It does not amuse the child concerned but this is the one most like me.

 That's not me.

It is not an obvious or outward thing; outwardly we are nothing alike.  The girl has curves. When she was little I called her my little Brunhilda & said she should grace the prow of a Viking Longboat ~ then she discovered what I meant & that was the end of that!

When she was 6 she told people to shut up in Gaelic ~ because she could~ & watched Inspector Rex in German ~ because she could, which meant that at 9 she understood her singing teacher's questionable comments in German ~ & laughed. It comes of being the youngest in a verbally diverse house where she learnt to defend her opinions early & found wit a sauce to her liking.

I miss how she seriously considered purple & pink stilettos for her first grown up shoes. I was buying so, No.  I miss the way her eyes would slid surreptitiously across an audience  looking for us & the sight of her playing soccer with Issi tucked firmly under one arm. I miss the sound of scales late at night when everyone else was sleeping & the way she laughs when her voice cracks.

The woman is warm & wonderful but I miss the girl.