Can I Interest You In Some Earl Grey or Darjeeling, Maam?

There’s nothing quite like a hot scone dripping with jam and cream. Dieting folks, look away now.

Down here scones can be savoury (made with vegetables such as pumpkin, or combinations like ham and cheese) sweet (fruit scones) or plain - a good basic scone recipe tends to go down a treat for afternoon tea along with a cup of tea. They’re perfect winter fare, conjuring up images of comfort food, aprons and Grandmas. Of course, it’s summer down here, but we’ve just been through a particularly wintery rain spell so a batch of these were very much welcomed by my testers, Talented Hubby, Master J and Moo. Oh, and for the record, we pronouce them ’sconn’, not ’sc-own’, LOL.

Basic Scones
Makes 20

Ingredients:

4 cups (600g/1.3 lbs) self-raising flour
2 tablespoons icing (confectioners) sugar
60g (a little over 2 oz) butter
1 ½ cups (375ml/12.5 oz) milk
¾ cup (180ml/6 oz) water
* thickened/whipping cream to serve
* jam to serve

Method:

Preheat oven to 200ºC (430ºF/very hot). Line a shallow 20cm x 30cm (8″x11″) pan with non-stick baking paper.

Sift flour and sugar into a large bowl; rub in butter with fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture, add milk and almost all of the water. Use a knife to ‘cut’ the milk and water through the flour mixture, mixing to a soft, sticky dough (begin by adding the milk and then add the water only as needed to form the right consistency - the last time I made these, I didn’t need any water at all and they still turned out lovely). Knead dough on floured surface until smooth.

Press dough out to 2cm (¾ inch) thickness (no need for a rolling pin, just use your hands). Dip a 4.5cm (1 ¾ inch) round cutter in flour, cut rounds from dough. Knead together the dough scraps and repeat until all used up. Place scones, side by side, just touching, in pan.

Brush tops with a little extra milk; bake about 15 minutes or until scones are just browned and sound hollow when tapped.

While the scones are baking, pour some cream into a small bowl and attack it with a stick blender to make it lovely and thick. Serve these mounds of deliciousness with jam and cream.

Note: Scones are best served the day they are made, fresh and hot out of the oven. You can freeze them but they never really compare to fresh-baked so for best results, keep the batches small (and just bake them more often!)

Lizzie's Homemade Pizza Recipe

Are you all turkey-ed out? Can’t stuff another morsel in? Have a fridge full of wilting salad and leftover meats?

Pizza might not be traditional holiday fare, but if you’re anything like me, sometimes a complete 180º on the cuisine front sounds FANTASTIC after so many platefuls of ham and roast potatoes. Plus it’s a great way to use up leftovers!

The secret is in the dough. I tried making homemade pizza dough for YEARS, failing miserably each time, until I stumbled across a recipe on Mrs Catherine’s Making It Home Xanga site (now unavailable, unfortunately) for the lightest, fluffiest, failproof crust ever. I have never had a soggy crust since using this recipe. I puffy heart it so much it made it into my continually-evolving Family Cookbook (keep an eye out for that post in a few weeks!)

Lizzie’s Homemade Pizza (with props to Mrs Catherine!)
Dough makes 3 large/8 small/16 mini pizzas

Ingredients

2 tablespoons dry yeast
2 cups warm water
¼ teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
5-7 cups baker’s flour (if you have it: higher protein content) or plain/all purpose flour

Suggested toppings: tomato paste, pizza herbs (basil, oregano), shredded mozzarella, ham, pepperoni, semi-dried tomatoes, red and green capsicum (bell peppers), pineapple pieces, leftover cooked chicken or turkey, leftover cooked vegetables.

Method

Run a large mixing bowl under hot water to warm it. Add sugar and yeast to bowl and pour in warm water. Mix thoroughly and set aside for a few minutes until bubbles appear on the surface.

Add salt, oil and flour and mix to a firm dough. Knead on a lightly-floured benchtop for a few minutes. Roll into a ball shape.

Lightly grease the large bowl and return the dough ball. Cover and set aside in a warm place to rise (we’ve used the car and outside on the trampolene in the sun before! Whatever works!). Rising time can vary depending on the warmth of the spot you choose (as little as 25 mins in a warm car or as long as 60 mins just sitting on the benchtop). You want it doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 200ºC (395ºF).

Punch the dough down and knead on a lightly floured benchtop for a further 5 minutes. Divide the dough into whatever portions are needed and roll out to desired thickness (the dough will rise a bit during cooking).

Place on an oven tray lined with non-stick baking paper and add whatever toppings you like. Bake 15-20 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Drool when you catch a whiff of it fresh out of the oven. Enjoy!

Personally, I could have leftover roast ham and turkey along with the usual repeat of Christmas day side dishes for a clear week after the celebrations end but even I have my limits eventually! Kids seem to really enjoy their very own individual pizza made with their own choice of toppings and the dough recipe translates well to foccacia as well - just roll out thicker and make depressions in the dough at regular intervals. Yummo!

Guitar Hero Hilarity

Because we’ll be travelling this silly season, we gave the kids one of their major Christmas presents early. Have you seen the size of the Guitar Hero World Tour Complete Band Set box? Gi-gan-ta-nor-mous. As it was we were going to struggle fitting all the children and the luggage in so we had to make a decision. Leave a child and take the game, or open the game now and squeeze the child in. Hmmm - tough choice, LOL.

All three Piglets had put this on their list. Normally we would not go for something as expensive - and never for an individual’s gift - but with the amount of time Talented Hubby devotes to this particular game franchise we knew we’d get our money’s worth as a family.

As predicted, they have all become totally engrossed. We’ve had Guitar Hero II, and then III in the past but with the addition of a set of drums and a microphone with World Tour, everyone can have a turn at once. See what we did there? Purchased a game where nobody has to wait? That’s some good parenting right there folks!

But man, it is HILARIOUS to watch our children bang away on those instruments.

The guitar bit they can handle. The drums are taking a bit longer to master but that’s to be expected - they are my children after all, and I’m famously unco-ordinated (actually, I’m surprised any of them can work the guitar either, but I guess the influence of my DNA is overriden by Talented Hubby’s prominent “I am man, see me game!” genes, LOL). But its the effort at the microphone that makes TH and I continously snigger.

Oh, I shouldn’t say that, should I? LOL. No, my kids are awesome singers (giggle).

Master J works the ‘phone like he’s a contestant on Don’t Forget The Lyrics (one of his favourite shows), Boof’s just happy if he can get all the words out and Moo has taken one look at her brother’s efforts and dissolved into a puddle of shyness. I can’t blame her really. I’m waiting until school starts and TH’s back at work again and only then will I pick up the mic myself. Don’t laugh. You know you’d be dying to as well!

The thing with Guitar Hero is, it’s addictive. I sat down for one song (guitar only…did you not read the above paragraph? LOL) and walked away an hour later. It’s very hard not to get caught up when Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On A Prayer comes up on the playlist.

At $270 AUD it’s definitely NOT a cheap option. But we had a little extra this Christmas and instead of lots of smaller presents that have ‘big bang’ value for a couple of days but get overlooked thereafter, Guitar Hero has staying power.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a jammin’ date with Mr Bon Jovi to attend.

I Think I'll Go Rock In That Corner Right Over There

I just happened to glance up at the calendar and GOOD LORD IT IS NEARLY THE WEEK OF CHRISTMAS AND I HAVE DONE ALMOST NO CHRISTMAS SHOPPING AND HELLO, WE’RE TRAVELLING OVER THE SILLY SEASON WHICH LEAVES ME WITHOUT THOSE EXTRA COUPLE OF DAYS SHOPPING AND…

That wasn’t me shouting. That was my brain exploding with nuclear force.

This is the VERY last year I say to myself, “Oh wow, how lovely is this ‘no shopping, no stress’ Christmas thing? I love not beating down the other shoppers! I enjoy the complete absence of a ‘to buy’ list. Oh joy!” The absolute last time I say that because it is COMPLETE AND UTTER BUNKUM.

I will be shopping for Christmas ‘09 with my back-to-school gear in mid-January, thankyouverymuch.

We are in a state of chaos. We have perhaps a fifth of our list done. We’ve never left it this late to shop before. I don’t know WHAT I was thinking.

Over the course of six days I have to:

Shop for FIFTEEN PEOPLE.

Buy two additional presents, one of which is our daughter’s seventh birthday gift and the other my MIL’s birthday gift for January.

Post a last minute parcel.

Wash every scrap of clothing we own.

Pack five suitcases.

Clean the entire house.

Auto-post a ridiculous amount of content for Lizzie’s Home.

Buy this year’s ’special ornaments’ for the kids (they each get a new one every year)

Finish a handmade Christmas present (at least two night’s worth, maybe more).

Empty and scrub the fridge.

Book a restaurant for Moo’s birthday on Friday.

Bake a dog cake for said child’s birthday. I may get away with a dog-themed icing transfer and a bakery cake if I’m lucky. Poor Moo.

Take the kids out for breakfast on Moo’s day.

Spend at least a portion of Friday on a ‘Family Fun Trip’ for Moo’s day (we do special things in lieu of a party).

Make several phone calls relating to the puppy the kids are getting - or rather, the promise of the puppy they’re getting - for Christmas.

Fit in a trip to the cinema. And yes, I realise how silly this sounds given what I have to do but I try to carve out a little ‘me’ time each year to go see whatever holiday film is on and I’ll be doing that this year too, even if I have to sell the children to manage it.

School is out for the year, and Talented Hubby is on annual leave for the next several weeks (phew) but we literally only have until Sunday night to shop for EVERYTHING. I promised the kids we would try to fit in a day where each of them would come out with me alone but I’m going to have to start sucking down those Red Bulls if I’m going to pull this one off. TH also has to go back into work Saturday (long story), so that’s one less day for shopping, unless I bribe them all with sugar and drag them all with me. I love my little people to pieces but their patience (and my own) only goes so far and we’re talking INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH Christmas shopping here - and everything will take six times as long because there’s a bazillion more people out there panicking in the exact same way. Compounding matters is the fact that the Australian government just gave most parents and carer’s $1000 per eligible child with instructions to ’spend up big for the economy’s sake’. Personally, ours will go toward our trip and the cost of set up for the puppy, but there are enough people in the shopping centres carrying PlayStation and Wii boxes for me to know where at least SOME of the government’s money is going.

Godspeed Lizzie. Godspeed.

Sigh.

I'd Like To Introduce You To Miss Gappy McGapperton

A week from today, my baby, my Little Miss Moo/Princess Moo/Schmiggie/Miggie will turn seven years old. SEVEN. I mean, being the mother of a recently-turned-ten-year-old made me feel old enough, but somehow, illogically, being the mother of a seven year old and knowing she’s our youngest…my heart crept one step closer to pacemaker status, I’m sure of it.

When she was born, I was just barely 22 years old. And I already had three years of parenting experience under my belt. Good golly I was young! In Moo’s first year, we went through an autism diagnosis (Master J), a MAJOR career reconfiguration (Talented Hubby), a six month training stint living away from home during the week, home on weekends only (TH), therapy playgroups, speech assessments, medical appointments - the list goes on. At one point we had a special needs preschooler, a toddler and a newborn and I didn’t drive, requiring me to walk/bus it to all these various things. Thank God Moo was breastfed and therefore highly portable!

A lot has changed since Moo was born. I went from being the sole feminine influence in three boys’ everyday lives to being the mother of a honest-to-goodness Little Girl. The day the ultrasound technician pointed out the ‘two lines’ indicating her ‘girly bits’, I was beyond thrilled. My boys are healthy and happy and for that I am supremely grateful but a little girl to shadow me in the kitchen, to teach how to (badly) knit, to snuggle up watching Anne of Green Gables with? I do believe I cried, goop-covered belly and all. Later, at her birth (with the camera rolling) I was heard to say, repeatedly, “Is she still a girl?” like I expected her gender to have changed in the five seconds since I last looked (and as an aside, my GOODNESS ‘down there’ really DOES stretch like a turtleneck, huh? I’d never seen it from the southern perspective before! LOL)

Afterward, when I’d showered - and it was a great birth, the best of the lot - and returned to my room, I lay on my hospital bed. I savoured the sheer bliss of lying directly on my back, something I’d not been able to do with any degree of an open airway since around my fifth month, and proceeded to unwrap my ‘Christmas Present’. I laid a cloth nappy on my bare belly - just enough to cover me in case of an, uh, ‘meconium explosion’ on her part - and stripped my new baby down. I held her, vertical monkey-style, her raven head resting between The Milk Bar, the bare skin of her touching my skin, and I covered the both of us up with a blanket. We rested.

She smelled so good, that new baby scent. I kept stroking her deliciously curly hair - we’re all ruler-straight around here - and shaking my head in disbelief. We were warm and cozy and soon fell asleep. Talented Hubby must have returned from whatever part of the hospital he’d escaped to at some point because I woke to find Moo suitably diapered, dressed and fast asleep in her hospital crib and I’d had my pyjamas re-buttoned, LOL. I honestly can’t remember a time where I’d felt so content.

But my little girl, who has now officially passed the age my sister was when I - the ’surprise’ baby - was born, is so big and tall and, well, grown-up. It’s sad! With each passing year we mourn the loss of another childhood icon. No more Little People. No more buying baby dolls (not that she has fully outgrown them yet - just that she already has plenty!), and no more gorgeous little toddler/preschool/kindergarten aged clothing. Soon we’ll be saying goodbye to My Little Ponys and Cabbage Patch Kids. Never again will I buy a 000 sleeper. Never again will we have to install a baby carseat. Never again will The Milk Bar be open for business!

To make matters worse, tonight Moo lost her third tooth in two weeks and the second of her two front teeth. Even her baby teeth are dropping like flies! The sight of her in all her gappy glory, grinning from ear to ear, made me realise that she has well and truly entered into a brand new phase of childhood.

I am so not prepared for this!

School's Out!

I love having a laptop. I’m sitting in my loungeroom, by my front window, while typing this - I’m waiting for Master J to arrive home in his taxi. Our neighbours probably wonder about this - a taxi picking up a school kid morning and afternoon - but our closest neighbours are not the sort of people you want to share personal information with. Certainly nothing quite as personal as a child’s disability and transport arrangements. As it is, the father of the ‘across the street’ household feels it necessary to leerily acknowledge me every time I walk out of the house. And as I’m clicking away at my keyboard, I can hear the same man and his wife YELLING at each other from what appears to be opposite ends of their house. I am sitting at least thirty metres (90 or so feet) away inside my own house and I can hear them clear as day. Yeah. Not giving out personal details to those folk!

Talented Hubby has me a bit worried at the moment. He’s about the busiest he’s ever been at work and people keep giving him more work without allowing him the time to finish the old stuff. His job is one where ‘urgent’ matters must be dealt with straight away but this leaves him in a pretty pickle. He goes on a 3 week stint of annual leave in one week but we both suspect he’ll be working a couple of extra days - unpaid - just to catch up. There are certain things that cannot wait until he returns from leave so he’s forced to work the extra. It’s frustrating for me because I can’t in any way help him with his workload. The only thing I can do is minimise craziness here at home (yeah, good luck with that Lizzie - school’s out!) so that when he does walk through the door, he can ’switch off’ more readily. The more he relaxes at home, the better he is able to deal with the horrendous amount of work stuff he’s got on his plate at the moment. Still, I wish I could take some of the burden from him.

Boof and Moo have officially finished school for the year - bye bye Grades 3 and 1! Moo also managed to lose another tooth today, making it a total of three falling out over about a three week period (the third one is just baaaaarely hanging on). Two of those teeth are her top front ones. Christmas pictures this year are going to be just de-light-ful, LOL.

Oh, what kerfuffle for the last day of term/the school year though! Total insanity! But all the kids had a good last day - Boof managed to score a classroom pizza party and a Kris Kringle with the other students in his class today (not to mention a nearly 700 strong school excursion to a fun park on Monday!) and Moo has pretty much been celebrating all week, with a student representative council (of which she’s been a part of this semester) party on Tuesday, her class party on Wednesday and nothing but crafts today. Everyone is exhausted. We gave our teacher gifts out yesterday and Boof’s teacher, upon hearing about Talented Hubby’s photography, asked if we had any spare calendars of his work at home. We did, so she bought one to use as a Christmas present (I don’t know how the man does it. I can’t get a magazine to pick up my work and he keeps selling the same shots over and over with great success! LOL). Master J doesn’t officially finish school for the year until tomorrow but his last day will also prove to be a pretty cushy arrangement, I’m sure. As we have an unexpected extra day off for Boof and Moo, I’m taking them to the movies tomorrow morning while J is still in school - frugal, as it was a free double movie pass given to TH through his work.

And that’s about the time that I’ll get home, collapse, eat some chocolate and alternatively rejoice/sink into a pit of despair over the fact we have 6 weeks of summer holidays stretching out in front of us - probably in that order too. I love my children a ridiculous amount but by golly, they can be NOISE-EEE.

I really hope January bucks the trend and remains in the moderate temps. We’ve had barely a decent ’summery warm’ day so far this late spring/early summer which is a bit unusual and usually means a later start to summer proper, and hotter, dryer temperatures. Last year our city secured a new record - the longest metro 35ºC (95ºF) plus heatwave since they began keeping records back in the dark ages. I thought I was going to DIE.

You Florida and Arizona folk must be made of galvanized steel (for toughness) fashioned with portable cooling systems because that kind of heat on a regular basis would make me want to shrivel up in a little ball and cry. A LOT.

Does Switching BACK To Blogger Mean Returning To The Dark Ages?

I’ve got a bit of a conundrum. My domain registration, and therefore my web hosting, is up for renewal in late February - I got a reminder notice this week.

When Lizzie’s Home first started, it was on Blogger, and I was with them for about a year. I began to get frustrated with the lack of features compared to what I was hearing about Wordpress. Bloggy friends urged me to make the leap, and I did. Talented Hubby (who couldn’t then, and still doesn’t now, fully understand the lure of blogging, LOL) and I made a deal - we would pay for one year of registration and hosting and when the time came to renew, I would work out how to make the blog itself pay for an additional year.

You might already know that Lizzie’s Home does not accept paid advertising. This was a decision I made in the beginning due to personal conviction and honestly? My stats were poor (still are compared to most bloggers I read) and wouldn’t have garnered me much in cash anyway - and so weren’t likely to get me the $85 (AUD) or so needed to renew everything (and for the record, this isn’t for expensive hosting either. It’s the cheapest one I could find - without resorting to the ad-filled free host providers - at $4 US per month). In typical Lizzie fashion, I’ve put off thinking about it again until I needed to. That would be now.

In the time that I’ve been with Wordpress, Blogger has improved its features markedly. There are far more gadgets to choose from now and you can schedule posts, the lack of which, as silly as this sounds, was a big bug-bear for me before. And I’m not Miss Uber Blogger. Not likely to be either. I natter away here and I’m happy with that. It’s perhaps not so important for me, who doesn’t have much of a desire to make blogging a ‘business’, to have the very high customisation level that Wordpress gives.

So. Here’s where I’m at, and I’d like your opinions. These are random thoughts and questions. Decipher at will :P

I can re-examine my ‘no ads’ policy now that the blog is ever-so-slightly more popular than in the first couple of months. It may not help me in time for my 2009 renewal but perhaps the year after that. Not sure how I feel about that. If there was a way I could make the blog self-sustaining without resorting to ads, then I’d do that, but I can’t work out how that could be possible. Ideas?

I could finish that ebook I’ve had on the go for donkey’s years and sell a few copies.

I have a second blog, Binder Basics, which has always been on Blogger. The difference in ease-of-editing between that one and here is HUGE. If I want to change the size of a font in the sidebar on Lizzie’s Home I have to go through a convoluted process of copying the CSS file, altering it, reuploading it through ftp (FileZilla), hoping it works, then viewing the site live. If it didn’t work or just looks wrong, I have to repeat the process. It takes forever. Binder Basics on the other hand, requires just a simple tweak in the ‘Edit HTML’ box, and you can preview it before it goes live. No extra file transfer stuff at all. And HTML just seems easier to me somehow. There’s one file - as opposed to perhaps a dozen with Lizzie’s Home. If I want to change the header on Blogger, its dead easy. If I want to change the font of the main posts on Lizzie’s Home, that’s one file. If I want to change the pictures in the boxes you see to your right, that’s an entirely different file. Plus like ten more. Each requiring the FileZilla treatment. Tedious. Which is probably why you’ve been staring at the same blank boxes for weeks and weeks. Sometimes you just want to get in and get out. Some die-hard Wordpress users will have developed shortcuts or know how to better edit and preview their pages using a specialist web browser (tried that) but if I’m honest with myself, blogging will never be my ‘business’ and every hour spent tweaking along at a snail’s pace is an hour I’m not concentrating on family.

There have been some concerns in Bloggityville in the past about Blogger controlling your content - if Blogger goes belly-up for whatever reason, then your blog (and all your hard work) is toast. Can someone give me some facts about that? It was one of the reasons I switched but even before I did, I had never had a problem with Blogger freezing me out of my blog unless it was for routine maintenance (and so was common to all Blogger blogs, and only for a couple of hours at a time).

The big question - how important is a ’dot com’ to me? It’s nice to have a nice short URL, but if I am otherwise satisfied with the features and ease-of-use of Blogger, is it worth paying $85 (probably more now the Aussie dollar has dropped against the US buck) for what essentially amounts to blog branding? If I’m not actually selling anything here (and so don’t have to make it super-dooper easy for customers to get to me via the shortest possible URL), and most of my readers do so through Google Reader or Bloglines (ie, not typing in the address each time), then how much does a longer URL matter? Is it possible to have a successful blog at Blogger? Are all the big name folk with Wordpress or Typepad and is that what differentiates them as ‘big name’ (because they can customise to the minute detail and create something totally unique)? I’ve seen some awesome Blogger blogs that have been wonderfully set up. To be honest, this is the biggest sticking poing for me - is it worth paying this money simply for a dot com?

Another biggie: How many readers will I lose switching back? I was disheartened to see a 30+ subscriber drop in the last day or two and I’m hoping its a glitch like that one that saw me excited to see the flip side of 100 not too long ago. How many more will leave if I go back to the harder to remember ….blogspot.com?

AND… is it even POSSIBLE to import old posts TO Blogger? I know you can (obviously) import TO Wordpress, but is it possible to reverse it? If I found out it couldn’t be done, then game over, I’m sticking with Wordpress.

As I said, I’ve seen some really beautiful Blogger designs and there’s always the option of hiring a designer down the track a bit if I can’t come up with something cool on my own. In the meantime, as I work my way through the editing process for Binder Basics, I can’t help feeling a bit annoyed that it isn’t that easy for both blogs. Then I look at Lizzie’s Home and LOVE the idea of pages, which you can’t get in Blogger. Clearly, I need someone to rationally discuss the pros and cons with me.

Fire away folks! Thoughts are much appreciated. If a blogger switched URLs on you, how much hassle (re-subscribing to new URL etc) would you go through to keep reading? If its a blog you enjoy, would it bother you much if the URL got longer or wasn’t quite so ‘brand-y’?

* This post originally uploaded to lizzieshome.com. I've since made the plunge back to Blogger and haven't regretted it at all! Well, except when it came to manually transferring alllll my posts from my 'Wordpress year' over, LOL.

The One Where Every Coffee Becomes "Irish"

Well would you look at that. NaBloPoMo ends and the well of creativity dries up. Not that all my NaBlo posts were particularly enlightening (”Smiling’s my favourite!” tee hee, it still cracks me up) but it did at least force me to keep the blog afloat.

Isn’t December the most insane month EVER? We are bucking our usual trend this year and haven’t yet begun our proper Christmas shopping. Normally we’d be about 90% done by now. Normally I’d be obsessing over lists and budgets and what I’m going to bake for such-and-such’s holiday get-together. Weirdly enough, that hasn’t happened so much this year. Probably because we’re doing a couple of bigger family presents this year instead of racing around like mad chickens buying this or that cool toy on sale. We’re not terribly big spenders anyway, but just not having to be ‘on the hunt’ so much over November and December has been refreshing.

Oh, but the end-of-school-year events are killing me. In Australia, we finish up our school year right before Christmas and have a 6 week break over what is meant to be the bulk of our summer (although the way the season is shaping up this year, we’ll still be sweltering into March…sigh). We return for the new school year generally in the last week of January, give or take a little for individual schools and states. Today marked the beginning of the Last Week. Traditionally, the Last Week is hyperactive to the core. I honestly don’t know how working parents manage - I stay at home and I’ve been struggling to get to all the school events and assemblies and morning teas these last couple of weeks.

I both love and hate this last week of school. I love it because Christmas looms and that means relaxation, good food, good company, no dawn o’clock wake up calls to get going on the school prep, lots of lazy days. I hate it because I’ve grown far too used to not having the kids underfoot during the day when school’s in and 6 weeks of living in each other’s pockets can take it’s toll. Usually Talented Hubby is able to schedule part of his annual leave during the summer holidays which again, has its good and bad points - he’s here (yay!) but he’s also HERE if you get my drift, LOL. Weekends are already like this (whether Daddy is working or not) but the holidays seem to revolve around a continual rhythm of food preparation to satisfy the other members of Chez Liz. I spend most of the time fantasizing about personal chefs and TH with a palm frond and grapes, LOL.

And I’m always kind of sad to see another year finish for the kids. They are shooting up like weeds (TH and I both think Master J will eclipse my height of 5′3″ in another 18 months or so…at age ELEVEN AND A HALF) and some of their friends will move on to new classrooms. Next year new friendships will form and old ones will move to ‘mere acquaintances’. The teachers do make an effort to retain one or two good friends for the kids as they move up to the next year level (in our school each year has at least 3 classes of the same grade) but it’s not the same. Next year will also see a new dynamic of Classroom Mums. There are always the core faithful, LOL - the Mum who’s always doing the readers, the one who always organizes the teacher gifts, the ones that kiss and drop faster than lightning, the one who’s not a Mum but a Dad and so stands out like a sore thumb - but there are new faces too. You get used to a particular group of parents the same way the kids probably get used to their peers - and then it all changes. Life is fleeting.

We’ve had a big year and an especially stressful six weeks. We’re looking forward to the break!

I'm Not The Only One, Right?

I’m sitting here with a hot cup of tea and two one no more cinnamon donuts. I shouldn’t have eaten the donuts. Especially considering today.

My friends…today I went clothes shopping.

I think I have a defective female gene somewhere. I’m not into clothes (much), shoes, purses, jewellery or makeup. Which, apart from the fact my hoo-ha has thrice been a tunnel-o-baby, pretty much makes me a man, right? I am uber-casual. All the time. I’m more happy kickin’ back with a cup of tea and a good book, or perhaps going out to a movie and some takeout, than I am dressed to the nines, sitting in a fancy-schmancey restaurant obsessing over the expense of the evening. I want to toss my shoes in a corner (smells and all), and just be. The only ‘heels’ I own are massive and chunky and attached to boots I never wear. I have never owned a pair of stilettos, never felt in control of all my limbs in them. Never learned to walk in them properly and now I’m doomed to a life of flat-footedness. I wear a ‘Mum uniform’ and you know what? I don’t even care most of the time. I am not my accessories! Except when the horror-of-horrors rolls around:

The Spousal Unit’s Work Christmas Party.

Let’s just say my husband works in a very community-minded field of expertise. And lets just say that ‘wives are invited’ social situations come up rarely during the year - once for a team’s Christmas mostly informal get-together, once for a larger organizational family day (where I can mercifully busy myself with the affairs of the Piglets rather than butcher my way through multitudes of small talk) and perhaps one barbecue at another time during the year. During these occasions (and for a hefty period of time leading up to them), my relaxed happy-go-lucky-no-airs-here personality kind of goes KAPOOF and I turn into the Crazy Insecure Wife Lady.

I seriously LOVE what Talented Hubby does for a living. LOVE. IT. It makes me feel warm and cozy and proud like 364 days of the year (I take one day off to let the air out of his already-too-inflated head…routine maintenence, you see). And the people he works with are (according to my limited face-to-face time and many, many cool stories via TH himself) seriously cool people. The work they do is HARD. These last few weeks I have never seen TH as stressed as he is now. It’s a bit of a worry actually. But I know TH appreciates the challenge and I hope he knows I appreciate him for doing it.

However.

My heart always clenches up when I’m in social situations with his workmates. Which is weird, because I’m totally awesome and I know if the contact was more regular, the nervousness would totally go. There’s just not all that many opportunities to foster that extra involvement. So then you throw in a rare social interaction and all its associated rabid butterflies, a few too many pounds, a serious case of foot-in-mouth disease AND the fact that everyone else knows what all the inside jokes are, and I’m pretty much lost. I literally have to excuse myself to go to the ladies room and physically pull my cheeks down because the smile has been plastered on so long my facial muscles have completely frozen in place. It’s not that I don’t like the people. It’s more that I really do like them but the nature of TH’s work situation is that teams rotate members fairly frequently and by the time the next social event comes around, you might only know or remember one face. Makes it pretty hard to throw down common friendship roots.

Anyhoo, so I’d decided I needed to be the best example of wifely devotion and representation I could be, and apparently that needed to occur wearing new clothes.

Another thing I can put down to genetics - I have a butt. And thighs. Enough for three or four people I reckon. Except for there’s just one of me, and I’m not sharin’. Clothes shopping is right up there on a list of things I avoid until the Last Possible Second - along with shopping specifically for jeans (and yes, that deserves special mention because, um, its JEANS people!), doing my dishes, sorting laundry and leaving for the school run in the morning. It’s brutal, painful, disheartening, expensive and, ultimately, disappointing. Mostly because I love pretty things like the next girl but I won’t torment myself like I see so many other girls doing by pouring myself into unflattering and too-small garments just for fashion trends. Just won’t do it. I guess this is what bore my Jeans Philosophy. I wear jeans year-round, even in summer, because with the eleventy-billion different types out there, I figure there has to be ONE PAIR with my name on it. The nirvana of denim. The Holy Bootcut. Buying jeans for me is like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Did you know they paint that thing continuously? Takes ‘em something like seven years to get from one end of the other and by that time, its due for another spruce-up so they begin again. Same deal with jeans. I finally find a decent pair - you know, the one that doesn’t expose either muffin top or coin-slottage, a rare find indeed! - and then immediately begin the search for the next. I live in my jeans.

So there I was today, trying on skirt after skirt, dress after dress, trying to find something that is the perfect cross between Dutiful Wife and We’re Having Hot Married S*x, Neener Neener Neener! - and do you think I could find anything? Skirts don’t hide my butt, they massively enlarge my hips. No kidding. And I’m SHORT. When did women’s legs get so darn long! I try on a pair of regular length, regular bootcut, non-stretch jeans and the end of the pant leg has formed a wierd malformed flipper over one foot. Well, today the moon wasn’t aligned with the sun or Target or something because no luck on the jeans front either. Finally bought several plain-ish tees and then, under the insistence from a pal who I’d conned into coming with me, tried on some shoes (ran out of time to buy any…sigh) and bought a $25 piece of costume jewellery that might go with one of the tees I bought. Like I said - depressing.

Well, I did try.

Super Dooper Top Secret Stuff

Tomorrow is Talented Hubby’s birthday. Having reached the Big Three-Oh last year, this year sees him hitting the downward slide to forty, LOL - 31.

Ten years ago, I gave him a 4 week old son as a 21st birthday present. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get that immaculate conception thing going this time around to recreate the magic that was spawning his child at the tender age of just-past-nineteen. He’ll live. And will probably give me the candy and chocolates for not giving him a repeat heart attack.

Tonight I have working on part of his present. I won’t say what it is, so don’t ask. And not because I’m worried he’ll work it out by reading my blog because hello? He’s vastly unimpressed with the whole blogging wife scenario to be honest. Actually, even when he knows what it is, I don’t think I can mention it here on the blog. Get your mind out of the gutter! It’s not that! No, this thing has to do with his profession (which we like to keep under wraps in Bloggityville for security reasons) and involves an inside joke. So really, it wouldn’t have made a lick of sense to any of you anyway. You’re welcome.

Tomorrow is a seriously massive day actually. Of course TH’s birthday shines front and centre but then there’s an excursion for First Heart Attack (aka, Master J) during the day and Boof and Moo’s school’s Christmas concert in the evening. J is going to a Christmas lunch/party put on by the Variety Club, a children’s charity. This particular party is held every year for special needs kids and is just wonderful (Aussies: Donate to the Variety Club. My son thanks you).

This week sees us launch into the busiest two weeks of the entire school year by far. We’re in the last of our school year before a 6 week break (school resumes in the last week of January for the new school year). EVERY SINGLE DAY has four or five tasks or events going on specific to this time of the year - it is utter chaos Next week, I have to bring a plate of morning tea to two separate class events Moo is involved with - on consecutive days. Guess what I’ll be doing on the weekend? And I just worked out I have just TWENTY shopping days left (we’re travelling). EEEK!

On a pleasant note - I have two new shows to watch this summer. We get all sorts of US television programs in weird convoluted timeframes - and summer, when the ratings season has ended and the networks are looking to fill spots or to try out shows they’re not sure will take off down here, usually sees an influx. Last night I watched Army Wives and tonight it was Eli Stone. Can see myself getting right into the last one although the opening story about the MMR vaccine causing a little boy’s autism kiiiind of grated just a little. Just a little bug bear of mine. Apart from that, a good show. Although, I do have George Michael’s “Faith” running through my head on a loop…grrr…

And on that note, I’m off to throw together a batch of brownies. I am SO looking foward to the slower days of summer!

Blue, Blue...Old Blue Jeans (Uh-huh)

I have worn blue jeans for almost a bajillion years. True story. As the ’south side’ of me expanded sometime between Thing 1 and Thing 2 (and thereafter totally gave up the ghost after Thing 3), I’ve outgrown many a pair. Depressing. But because I have always worn my jeans all the way through the year - yep, even in summer - they have always been a staple item in my wardrobe and thus I was never really concerned with spending up to $80 per pair, as I knew I’d get tons of wear out of them.

However.

Now I can’t bear to throw those stacks of old jeans out. I must have at least ten full size adult pairs and a few children’s pairs to boot. Some I could donate (and still might) but other pairs have minor holes and are unsuitable for that, so I was thinking about recycling them into something in the new year, but I don’t know what. All the tutorials I can find online centre around the very, uh, trendy ‘back pocket change purse’ or ’seat of pants handbag (purse)‘ trains of thought. That might be fun under normal circumstances but I’m also completely useless with installing zippers. And I doubt I’m going to need more than one each of those.

So, I’m relying on you, oh fountains of knowledge, to help me come up with some ideas. I’ve considered a jean quilt but I know if I go to all the trouble of cutting out millions of squares of denim I’ll probably lose interest when I could have used all that fabric in one bigger piece to make something unique. So before I cut anything, I’m gathering the info. The only stipulation is that the project be relatively easy. I can normally fudge my way through the basic level tutorials but essentially, the easier the better :)

Help!

Something To Believe In (iPod Shuffle Meme)

Thanks to Rachel at Musings Of A Future Pastor’s Wife for this one!

The Rules:

1. Put your iTunes on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
4. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the meme as well as the person you got the meme from.


IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?
Learning To Breathe- Switchfoot

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Bring Me Back To Life - Evanescence
What’s this supposed to mean? That I’m dead? The film clip freaks me out anyhow.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
I Need You Tonight- Backstreet Boys
Don’t judge me for having a little of the Boys on my iPod!

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
The Space In Between Us - Building 429
There are elements of hitting the nail on the head with this one.

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
Hold Me - Savage Garden
To be held? To sing in an unnaturally high voice?

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
The Woman With You- Kenny Chesney
Um? I think the YouTube poster meant ‘woman’, as in singular, not ‘women’ as in plural. That would make it an entirely different kind of song. Nice lyrics though.

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Not A Day Goes By- Lonestar
The rest of the chorus continues with “When I don’t think of you.” Of course my friends would think like this. I’d totally expect them to!

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
What If- Nichole Nordeman
Oh, snap! Snappity-snap-snap-SNAP!

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Be With You- Enrique Iglesias
Now technically Talented Hubby is my best friend so the title does seem very appropriate. Except the lyrics actually go “Now that you’re gone, I just wanna be with you.” Um, I’d kind of like to keep him please.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR SPOUSE?
I Miss You - Darren Hayes
In light of the last song, I’m starting to get a bit scared…

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Crazy - Simple Plan
LOL - great title for my life, and actually decent lyrics.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
I’m Already There- Lonestar
I first heard this song a few years after 9-11 (was it written specifically for that? I’m not sure) so in my mind it’s a song about a father dying. The chorus is just beautiful though so I guess if I projected myself into the song I’d like to think I could influence and affect my children and husband in the same way - minus the death part though. Or something like that! (Did that make any sense?)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE YOUR SPOUSE?
Your Grace Is Enough - Chris Tomlin
Sweet lyrics.

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Only Hope - Mandy Moore
What? I’m their only hope? LOL.

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
I Love The Way You Love Me- Boyzone
This is one of the appropriate songs, LOL. I always adored these lyrics (in reality, I walked down the aisle to Bryan Adams’ I’ll Always Be Right There. It has to be the live version from his Unplugged album though, LOL).

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Time Stands Still - All American Rejects
Why yes - yes it will!

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
So Long Jimmy - James Blunt
Um, okay? My hobby is to find random men on the street named Jimmy (or James?) and then tell them goodbye?

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Mr Mom- Lonestar
My biggest secret dream (that counts, right?) is to see Talented Hubby live out this song. For even a week. That would be awesome! Seriously though, this is one of my favourite ‘housework songs’, LOL.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Almost Here - Delta Goodrem & Brian McFadden
Apparently I have absentee friends. Well, there is the case of the unanswered text messages Chrissy! Not that I’m dwelling on that or anything. Nooooo… (LOL)

WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
In Another’s Eyes - Trisha Yearwood & Garth Brooks
I both like and hate this song because of its subject. Which makes it an appropriate choice for this question. It really would be nearly the worst thing that could happen.

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
The Wonder - Alex Lloyd
People are going to wonder what happened? People will be amazed at my passing?

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Gotta Be Somebody- Nickelback
This is a song about searching for true love. Since I got mine, no regrets!

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
The Day You Went Away - Wendy Matthews
Oh, this one should have been for the next question! It’s soooo sad! It’s a bit older but one of those songs that seems to stand the test of time.

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Bop Bop Baby- Westlife
I’m told Westlife has that effect on some people. Namely Talented Hubby. Except in his case, the crying would be because his ears were bleeding. Pffft! Though I’ve more or less moved on from the ‘Life, I’ve still got a dedicated folder of the boys somewhere on the iPod.

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Cinderella - Steven Curtis Chapman
Oh, a stab to my heart, on two levels. First, because my daughter growing up scares me witless, and because of the subsequent events SCC went through which really would be soul-destroying. Losing a child is a paralysing thought.

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Something About You - Five For Fighting
I’m an enigma so hard to understand it’s not ultimately clear whether I have any friends or not?

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
How You Live - Point Of Grace
Isn’t this a great little song? It’s like a list of things to do to enrich your life. So if I haven’t done some, then I’d go back and tackle them. Reminds me of I Hope You Dance by Le Ann Womack.

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Right Here Waiting - Richard Marx
This is the first song I can ever remember loving with my whole being. Don’t mock me. You know you loved it too, LOL (and Oh My Gosh folks - THE HAIR!)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Something To Believe In- Bon Jovi
Not exactly the nicest song around despite the title.

That was fun! Plenty are not-so-accurate (just listen to the opening lyrics of that last one!) but there are enough totally apt ones to make this a cool exercise!

Oh, and what is up with all the country songs coming up? Out of 700+ songs on my iPod I managed to score three by Lonestar. The universe is trying to tell me something perhaps?

I tag everyone!

They've Got Jam In Them, Thanks For Asking

I’m not the only mother who has ever put a batch of muffins into the oven at 11:30 at night, am I? Anyone?

Time management issues strike again!

I’m so going to bed. No, really.

Lemme just read these here blogs for an hour twenty five minutes…

In other news…has anyone noticed that there’s a MERE MONTH UNTIL CHRISTMAS DAY? I have not shopped. At all. This is terribly unlike me. But this year I just realised buying stuff simply for the sake of ’tallying up’ over the holiday period is a complete and utter waste of money. I know. I’m a slow learner. This year, the only things on my ideas list for the Piglets were bikes, desks for their rooms (one each) and a puppy - and even then, the bike idea will probably be passed on as an idea for the grandparents. This puppy will cost a bomb, some of which will of course have come out of our usual Christmas budget, but it’s more about the simplifying this year. I must admit, it’s rather liberating not to have a ‘wish list’ from each kid in my purse at all times (in case I see ‘the’ present while I’m out and about), or to be rushing around getting to this or that sale. I’m not completely off the hook - there are still extended family presents and stocking stuffers to get, but we take it pretty laid back in that department around here :)

Raindrops And Respite

I have a confession to make. I’m no martyr. In fact, there are days when the absolute last thing I want to do is to be a parent - shhh, don’t tell anyone!

Whilst I love my kids to bits, the reality of having a special needs child is that it’s exhausting work. You have to think ten steps ahead at all times. You can’t do as many things together as a family. Cinemas are out, restaurants that don’t include cookies on the menu or plastic play equipment are a no-go and a ‘real’ holiday, one where you go a bit further afield than Grandma’s, seems impossible.

Before long, the wonderful ‘challenged-but-enjoying-it’ attitude you’ve worked so hard to show the world begins to crack. Suddenly you’re raising your voice to the kids. You’re hard-pressed to find the enthusiasm to eat a sandwich, let along prepare meals for the family. Housework is a distant memory.

My husband once mentioned to me a fantastic analogy for stress which I’ll share with you now: Imagine your life as a bucket, and the everyday stresses as the raindrops which fill it.

Every day, even if you don’t realise it, the raindrops add up. Some days a lot - perhaps Junior had one of his world-famous meltdowns in the middle of the supermarket - and some days hardly anything at all. Suddenly you come to the realisation that your bucket is almost full. You’re almost at your limit. Even just one extra drop and you’re going to overflow.

This is where respite care is worth its weight in gold.

Initially I was quite apprehensive about the whole idea of respite care. I didn’t much like the idea that I would be handing over my children into the care of a relative stranger. I was used to our son’s unique personality and worried about the poor respite worker being lumped with his difficult behaviour.

I needn’t have worried. Our respite worker Rose came for a ‘meet-and-greet’ before our first real respite night and she and the kids hit it off immediately. A huge plus for us was also that all workers contracted to our respite program carry a senior first aid certificate and other qualifications such as a manual handling certificate. Not to mention having specific special needs care experience in spades.

Some folks choose to use their allocated respite hours to run errands which they might not otherwise be able to fit in around caring for a loved one twenty-four hours a day. My husband and I have been quite lucky in that regard - we’ve always had various combinations of childcare, kindergarten and now school to give us that break during the day to get the basics done. What we were lacking, however, was time alone in the evenings. So we use our time on ourselves, often going out to dinner and a movie. It’s a wonderful time. Without the use of this respite service, we would have to give most of this up - it’s a rare thing indeed to find a regular babysitter who is both trustworthy and infinitely patient and we live too far from relatives to impose on them very often.

I once read a statistic that said parents of a special needs child have a much greater risk of divorce than the national average of about one in two marriages. Technically speaking, the odds are stacked against us. Having the ability to spend time together, without the added pressure of having our brains on auto-pilot, has been a godsend.

We think of it as ‘emptying our bucket’.

* This is the second in a series I’m calling The Mama Bear Files. Originally written 2005.

Postscript ~ Clearly, a lot has changed since this was originally written. We are still accessing respite care but a lot of the issues that were once prevalent concerning what we could do as a family no longer stand (thank goodness!) J was only 6½ when this was first written and now, at age 10, we’re blessed to have a lovely - and mostly agreeable! - child :)

Miracles In The Flaws

When I was nineteen years old, I found myself taking a front-row seat in an honest-to-God, wish-I-could-bottle-that-feeling miracle.

After a twenty-eight hour labour, an ugly, red, scrawny mess of arms and legs was twisted from my body, four weeks before his due date. The conehead my son sported from his prolonged journey down the birth canal was very pronounced and truly awesome to behold. His Apgar scores were low. He was whisked away for some oxygen.

At that point, I didn’t care where he went, as long as he was being cared for appropriately and I could cover up the bits of my person that in any other circumstance would never be displayed. It is amazing how the most prudish of women can become the most liberal when in the throes of childbirth. There were bits of me that were irreversibly altered by the birthing process but in the end those particular battle scars would fade, and new ones would take their place.

On the second day after his birth, J turned an alarming shade of buttercup yellow which had the doctors scrambling for the big scary humidicrib with fancy lights and cords. You know, the type with holes in the side where distraught parents are permitted to insert only their hands to stroke babies they should, by rights, be cradling in their arms.

My little six-pound-nothing imp modelled a hastily cut blindfold of black vinyl almost every moment of the first week of his life. We were allowed to remove him from the phototherapy unit for feedings and changes only. The rest of the time he was to lay naked and sunbathing, save for his Zorro mask, under special lights designed to speed up the expulsion of the bilirubin from his blood. There’s a reason why babies are meant to be covered up. Meconium poops are legendary, and more so for babies undergoing phototherapy. We didn’t even have the luxury of a nappy to contain it. Every time J wet or soiled, his entire bedding arrangement had to be changed and sometimes, there needed to be a thorough disinfecting of his crib. But this was a good sign – the more explosive the soilings, the less yellow he appeared and the faster he got better.

My then-fiancé and I finally took this tiny creature home one week after the birth. To say we were unprepared for life as parents was strikingly apparent about four hours into our first night at home. J did not sleep. Breastfeeding was difficult. We had borne this child smack dab into the middle of a heat wave in a South Australian town noted for its perpetual red hue and blisteringly hot summers. Sleep deprived, emotionally exhausted and just plain stupid, I managed to convince myself that bottle feeding was the far better option and so J was slurping down artificial sustenance even before his official due date rolled around.

The next two years were surprisingly ordinary. We conceived another son, ran away to Bali to get married, saw Kuta in all its muddy wet season glory – not what wedding dreams are made of! - and consequently came home unmarried. Our second son was born in due time and the wedding eventually occurred on home soil, much to the delight of the parents. Later that same year we had a daughter, rounding out the scorecard to three children in three years.

I was barely 22 years old.

Autism snuck into our lives quietly, set up shop without us realising it, and eventually manifested itself in physical symptoms in our son, whom we had diagnosed by a child assessment team at age 3½.

Those first few years were excruciating. We agonised over every small decision concerning our J’s welfare. Every single behaviour, word spoken, instruction performed, everything. At diagnosis, J was developmentally on par with fourteen month old children. Essentially, his two year old brother had overtaken him months beforehand.

But we got through it.

When the Department of Education psychologically assessed him during his kindergarten year at age four, his report was prefaced by the following ‘encouraging’ information:

Half of all students will score in the Average range. Thirty percent of children will either fall in the Low Average or High Average range. Eight percent will score in the Well Below Average or Extremely Low range. We also calculate a child’s percentile rank – if your child scores in the 24th percentile, it means that if we tested 100 children of the same age 24 would test lower than your child.

Our son had an overall score on the first percentile.

When he started primary school several months later and a government grant had to be secured in order to buy the hydraulic ‘doctor’s bed’ needed to create a changing area in a female staff toilet, I swung wildly between despair and indifference. In public, I was a hardened special needs advocate, but in private, I sobbed at the thought of my five year old son still needing nappies in the playground. He would be six years old before we were finally rid of that particular curse.

But we got through it.

Also at the age of five, a speech assessment saw J score between just the first and the fifth percentile for communication – and that was after two years of extensive speech therapy.

But we got through it.

We waded through all the NEP meetings and the special ed classroom tours and the birthday parties comprised solely of children who by no fault of their own, have problems being social. We dealt with the misunderstandings of the condition, the stares, the meltdowns, the accusations, the generalisations. We learned not to take to heart the sixth party or event in a row that we hadn’t been invited to. We dabbled in dietary intervention but forewent medications or strict behaviour programs. We cried and cried until no more tears came.

And then something miraculous happened.

One day, many years into our journey, it suddenly occurred to me that autism was not the first thought that popped into my head when I woke up each morning. I no longer introduced my son to strangers and then, when he was out of earshot, hastily added the “he’s autistic” explanation because I felt as though I should apologize for his indifferent gaze or funny hand flapping. I no longer saw the autism before I saw him.

People are a bit hesitant to talk about miracles these days. We only have to look around us to find all evidence in the world that miracles don’t exist. Children die from cancer. Others are abused. Still others are stricken by horrible disfigurements and left in orphanages to suffer out the rest of their days. Yes, life is unfair.

Most of us prefer logic over faith. If we can’t prove it, they don’t want to know about it. It is no miracle that my son was born. Millions came before him and millions are yet to be created. People endure far, far worse illnesses, conditions, or situations than we have ever had to cope with. There are no miracles in my son’s frustrated howls or in his catch-it-when-you-can affections. People often ask me how, after all the struggles we’ve been through and are yet to face with J, how I can still consider this flawed child, his wonderful yet slightly altered existence, miraculous.

But the miracle doesn’t reside in him.

It’s that I am proud to have been the vessel that bore him.

And the miracle is in that pride.

* This is the first in a series I’m calling The Mama Bear Files. Originally written January 2008.

Lizzie's Link Love ~ November 22

I’m procrastinating about cleaning my kitchen. And because I love my readers so much, here are some distractions so you can procrastinate too!

Summer Sit-Upons: Placemats For Your Rear - Plum Pudding (this is one of those occasions where you think to yourself “Now why didn’t I think of that?”)

Dishtowel Aprons - Skip To My Lou (aren’t these just the cutest things you’ve ever seen?)

Mint Printables - free printable lists, recipe cards, greeting cards, stationery and tags.

Hanging Bed Organizer - Sew Mama Sew (if you could see the various toys and books clipped to my kids’ beds, or stashed under their pillows (ouch!), you’ll understand why I’m so excited to see this tutorial, LOL)

Domestically Challenged - Harriet Archer: Girl Reporter (hands up - who’s felt like this before?)

The Princess And The Pea - June Cleaver After A Six-Pack (this made me laugh so hard I snorted Coke - the cola beverage folks! - clear across the kitchen table!)

Rinse And Repeat - This Is My Life (I have an obsession with other people’s laundry methods. All those nearly-empty laundry baskets are making me swoon)

Charting Our Chores - Daring Young Mom (I am so going to do this…)

Sigh. The kitchen awaits. Where’s my iPod?

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks...And Mr Pink Whistle

As expected, The Teachers’ Strike That Wasn’t created mass chaos. Parents were turning up to drop their kids off to school this morning and finding the place virtually deserted of children, despite school being officially ‘on’. I think - and I personally hold this opinion myself - a lot of parents just thought, why bother? There were also lots of parents who, having heard the strike was going to happen earlier in the week (via notes from the teachers themselves) had arranged emergency childcare or to take the day off themselves. Even hearing that school was back on late yesterday evening, many couldn’t re-change their plans - especially in regards to childcare centres, who generally require a couple of weeks notice for cancellations. Like I said, chaos.

Tonight, I have puppies on the brain. After seeing Moo’s classmate’s Maltese/Poodle cross pups (just can’t bring myself to call them Maltipoos, LOL) yesterday and doing a bit of research, I’m back thinking the original plan of a purebred Cavalier King Charles Spaniel might be better. So off I troddled to a breeder’s directory website and fired off 3 or 4 emails and copied down 3 more numbers to call next week. Those EYES folks. The eyes do me in every time :)

But I’m finding it really interesting - the couple of responses I got back to initial inquiries about a week and a half ago are making me think breeders are a class all of their own. I was basically told in one response that puppies only went to other breeders or to those intending them to be show dogs and were most definitely NOT pet stock. Well, lah-di-dah! Those that did “occasionally” offer pups for sale as family pets did so because they were show-dog rejects. One reason given (on a website) for not being of show material was because a couple of the dog’s teeth were out of alignment.

Okaaaaay.

I’m hoping I get some bites though. I’ve loved Cavaliers for ages and secretly coveted them all the years we were unable to have a pet. Whether a pup becomes available through a breeder is a bit hit and miss in my state. I have only come up with a list of 6 registered breeders and of the websites I’ve seen, they seem not to breed more than once, or at best twice, per year (most kennels appear to have multiple breeding females). But you never know. We could get lucky :)

Tomorrow I have set myself some housekeeping tasks that I’m hoping desperately to get completed. Namely, Mt Washmore. I am almost tempted to cull everyone to four outfits and be done with the whole blasted enterprise.

One of my favourite childhood authors, Enid Blyton, created a magical character called Mr Pink Whistle and I remember one of his stories being about family with four children who had one set of clothing each. One day they get invited to a class party but they don’t have any nice clothes so Mum sends them all to bed in the early afternoon (no other clothes you see) and drags out the washtub to brighten things up a bit. The clothes fall in the mud, then some dogs run over them, then the fireplace hacks up some soot onto them. Mum gives up. Mr Pink Whistle, who by all accounts seems to be a rather decent and obliging fellow, comes along, decides to pull a bit of an Extreme Makeover on the little cherubs, and goes shopping. Bibbity-bobbity-boo, the kids get to go to the party after all.

One set of clothes huh?

Do you think Talented Hubby and the Piglets would go for it?

You’d always match, you’d be able to wash your entire wardrobe - and everyone else’s in the family - in one load, you could get dressed in ten seconds flat and you’d never need to store any clothing because you’d be wearing it. Surely I’m not the only mother drowing in laundry who can understand the allure of this idea!

If They Mark My Kids Absent Tomorrow, I Think I'll Scream

Technically speaking, my state’s Education Department never officially signed off on the planned teachers’ strike tomorrow. In fact, they’re ordering the teachers to go to work. The teachers, in turn, are thumbing their noses at the Dept. But for the last few days they’ve had daily meetings to resolve the issue, including a last minute effort this evening, and now the news tonight is saying school IS on tomorrow. Two days ago both of the kids’ schools sent home notices saying they were striking and therefore closed. What the?

It would be positively delightful if they’d work it all out before they sent home notices! Or better yet, Government People - give them their money!

So even though the Ed. Dept. is saying school is on, our kids won’t be going. Instead - but only if they can manage to behave themselves for an hour straight at the very least, please! - we’re probably going to go for a ‘Mum and Kids Day Out’. Boof desperately wants to go to the games arcade. Is it mean that I said they had to pay for it themselves? LOL.

In other news, Moo’s classmate brought a set of three Maltese/Poodle cross puppies for show and tell this morning. Good golly, they were only four weeks old and perfect little puffballs of joy. As we are considering a puppy for the kids I cornered the mother of the child and gave her my phone number. Then I came home and researched those particular breeds - good with kids, small, relatively easy to train, short hair that doesn’t (or at least minimally) sheds and the Poodle part in particular is meant to be highly intelligent. Still thinking hard about it though. A ‘fluffball’ isn’t what I really had in mind, but there are plus points to this arrangement - namely, we know where the puppy is coming from (and it has been raised in a family environment with children around) and even though this isn’t a deciding factor, we would be able to purchase it for much cheaper than what we were looking at for a purebreed. Even these types of cross-breeds go for hundreds of dollars in pet stores in my area. Not that it matters. I suspect we’ll need a second mortgage in order to purchase the equipment it needs and get all its shots done, regardless :P

We were planning a January timeline, as we are travelling over the Christmas break (new pup in car = not a smart move), and the family is fine with leaving the pup with its mother for a couple of weeks longer than usual to accommodate us. Still…big step. Funny to see Moo with one of the pups - who are all boys - this morning in the classroom though. She fell in love instantly (she’s 6, so of course she did) and would positively DIE if we got to take one home. One of them is a gorgeous apricot colour.

Sigh. I am such a sucker for The Cute.

Where Teachers And The Government Need A Big Ol' Group Hug

So apparently teachers in my state are amongst the lowest paid in Australia. And they’re not that happy about it.

Their union has been dueling with the government over a pay increase for the last couple of months. End result? Strike action. I love my kids’ teachers - every stinkin’ one any of them have ever had (well minus earlier this year in Moo’s classroom…she was horrible) - but geez. Strikes throw a seriously large, rusty spanner in the works for us parents. And I’ve got it easy - I’m a stay at home mum. I don’t have to rearrange childcare or scramble with other arrangements!

This will be the fourth strike in recent months, with the last three being half day stoppages and this Friday’s being the first full-day one. I don’t know why our state government can’t just give the teachers the money they deserve and be done with it already - we all know they’ve earned it!

This time of the year is really the worst for strike action, what with all the end-of-school-year (we break mid-December and restart after summer holidays in the last week of January) and Christmas activities. Lots of classrooms have planned excursions as treats to cap off the year, Master J’s class included, which happened to be scheduled for this Friday, strike day. I still don’t know what’s going to happen with that.

P.S. Even though the kids know Mummy blogs, they don’t know the URL, so I think I’m pretty safe to mention the fact that we picked up Guitar Hero World Tour this week for their Christmas present (also combined with Dad’s). We are totally going to kick some serious fake-concert booty! Although what I’m DYING to hear is any one of my children trying to hit the right pitch with the microphone thingy. Not a single soul in my family can sing - on any level. I fear the poor children will have inherited this awesome family gene, LOL.

The Perils Of Living In Australia

Some schools send home chicken pox notices. Sometimes lice notes if you’re really unlucky.

Today, my kids’ school sent home a SNAKE NOTICE.

Apparently, one of the parents noticed a baby brown snake in the grounds while supervising at a school disco on Friday night. They informed the staff this morning, and the ’snake people’ (Moo’s words) came to do what they do (spray poison? beat the bushes with sticks? wave live mice around?). There was a second sighting at some point and they were concerned the warmer weather may have brought the snakes out of hibernation and into a breeding pattern, meaning a nest could be somewhere on the school grounds. The note assured parents the whole school had been drenched with Snake Be-Gone (or whatever snake poison is called).

Interesting to note: The nearest classroom to the garden bed where the snakes were spotted? Moo’s.

*SHUDDER*

Seriously, I’m in a cold sweat just thinking about it.

God….snakes….geez….

Credit Cards - Not Always Evil If You Know What You're Doing

Cash is King. Frugal circles are absolutely 100% right in celebrating this fact because - hello? - it’s totally true. Paying with cash at the register lends a very real and finite quality to the act of spending money.

We’ve all heard the horror stories about folk who, through one set of circumstances or another, have ended up with multiple (and large!) credit card debt. Once you’re in that hole, it’s a long, hard slog until you can claw your way out. But here in the Lizzie’s Home family, we’ve never viewed credit cards as completely evil either. Let me explain why.

Talented Hubby and I have only ever had ONE credit card. I’ve never applied for one in my own name, and I was only added to TH’s account as a second cardholder two full years after we were married. Before that, there was no point to having a credit card under my own steam - everything we couldn’t pay cash for was either discussed between the two of us anyway (in which case if it was deemed a necessary purhase, TH would go ahead and organize payment with his card) or not bought at all.

Over the years, we’ve been offered credit limit increases - and refused. It can be fantastically tempting to see those ‘extra’ dollars down on paper, but it’s the road to destruction my friend. Rip up the bank’s letter. You won’t explode, I promise.

We cycle a lot of our household expenditure through our credit card each month, but only because our mortgage - our only major debt - is attached to our savings/offset account. Every day our dollars are kept in this account, the less interest (calculated daily and based on our total mortgage debt LESS whatever our savings/offset balance may be - for example, if we had a $100,000 home loan (we don’t) and our savings/offset account stood at $16,000 (it doesn’t) we effectively only pay interest on the remaining $84,000) we pay on our home loan overall. Even though our savings balance takes a large-ish hit at the end of the month when we pay our credit card bill, you can see why keeping the savings account average as high as we can, for as long as we can (ie, not using the ATM to withdraw small amounts of cash throughout the month, which lowers our overall balance), works for us.

We pay our card off in full every single month. Sometimes it is painful to see such a large bill at the end of the month, but we console ourselves with the fact that we never carry a balance over into the next month. I can’t stress this point enough - never, ever pay just the minimum monthly payment. You’re digging that hole deeper every single day you don’t throw an extra few bucks at the debt.

TH and I don’t have extravagant tastes. I am one of those people who own four pairs of shoes at any given time and only generally wear two pair with any regularity. Neither TH or I have expensive hobbies (although TH is a wonderful photographer and owns a few key pieces of equipment, they were bought smartly - see below). A couple of years ago I went through a phase where I seriously considered ’big time’ scrapbooking - I bought all sorts of little gadgets and papers and stickers only to discover the ongoing expense to create each album was going to be more than I was comfortable paying. Those extra items formed the basis for my last two Bloggy Giveaways. I shudder to think of the money I wasted buying those items, most of which I never used. We get takeout every third Sunday as a family and make it special (eating in at family restaurants rather than zooming through the drive-thru). Every few months when we get itchy feet we’ll spend a few days at Nana and Poppa’s house - the kids have a riot, we get to relax, and apart from the petrol and a few groceries, we’re ahead financially when comparing those same few days break to a holiday resort stay. We rent movies. I don’t own a lot of jewellery or purses. I am more than cool with that :)

We save for new household appliances and other luxury items just as though we were working from a ‘zero balance’, even if we’re not. We treat the money in our savings/offset account like a mirage - there, but not really there. Within that money we have several ‘layers’ - an emergency fund (like if we suddenly needed a brand new hot water system), kids fund, true savings, an amount equal to our expenses for a few months (including bills, food, mortgage and so on) and then a healthy buffer on top of that ‘just in case’ (there’s little point in us holding several different accounts for all of this stuff, given the above example regarding our mortgage interest). We hate to see the figure drop, though sometimes it has to. When this happens, we pare back our discretionary spending until it’s back up to the figure we deem appropriate. And we’ve not done without - we’ve bought some bigger-ticket items in the past 12 months (a big screen TV, a new gaming system, a new computer) but each time we applied the ‘zero balance’ principle and didn’t purchase the item until our savings account had increased by at least that same amount, usually more. We had the money for all of this, even to pay cash and not incur any debt, but we chose not to. And we’ve said no to just as many things as we’ve said yes to. We have a rotating list of household items to replace and tackle them in order of importance. If it can wait, it generally does. We’re so used to this way of budgeting now that before we drag out the plastic - even for the necessary stuff - we imagine that same amount being shaved off our savings account and cringe it pain. It helps to keep things in perspective folks, LOL.

We either retained, or learned from, the financial grounding our parents gave us. It helps if you got good money advice growing up. Me? I didn’t get that. We never had a lot of money around, so there wasn’t all that much to waste, but it still influenced my attitude to money in a negative way. As a teen and young adult, if I had money, I spent money. Thank goodness I met and subsequently married TH young otherwise I’d probably be up to my eyeballs in debt by now! But we’ve watched family members mismanage their finances to the point where they will never, ever be rid of credit card debt, and it’s heartbreaking. What saddens me even more is to witness their attitude of ’so what?’ To them, a $4000 credit card limit is like money in the bank, and they’ll spend right up to the limit, pay off the bare minimum, and generally live month to month without ever gaining ground.

After watching them go through all this, TH and I both agree we never want to end up in that situation. We are careful in all of the ways described above, in order that our kids can go on that school camp, can wear new school uniforms (purchased on sale of course!), can get the occasional canteen lunch as a treat, and never have to worry about whether we can afford to buy this or that (that’s our job as the parents). Whether we actually DO buy something is another matter entirely, and we’ve had many, many conversations with the kids detailing how Mummy and Daddy take care of our family’s money. I think most of it has sufficiently sunk in with them, LOL.

But here’s the point I’m trying to make:

In the right hands and used correctly, a credit card (singular!) can be made to work for you, not against.

TH and I both have very clear ideas about what’s okay and what’s not in terms of credit card spending. A general financial rule we hold - true of cash or credit - is to always, always discuss purchases before shelling out. As the homemaker I do tend to have more money filtering through my hands than TH - not only the grocery money but also money for clothing, shoes, bills etc as they crop up. Certain things would be impractical to discuss with TH beforehand, such as the $2 I sometimes have to spend replacing Moo’s school hair clips, LOL. But I would say we talk about 95% of our expenses before they occur, and it works really well for us.

And I’m blessed to have the kind of husband who leaves the nitty gritty of the household up to me and trusts that I’ll come to him - which I do - with the important stuff.

Sandwiches? Schmamwiches!

After the third day in a row where my daughter’s peanut butter sandwich has been returned home uneaten, I finally got the message.

I make boring lunches.

Actually, I was the Fun Mummy this week because (at considerable expense, sigh, but I promised Moo, so…) I bought the ingredients and made my own Munchables. Mind you, the money I spent on a sliver of cheese could have paid off a small country’s foreign debt, but hey. I threw something together using water crackers, thiiiiiiinly sliced cheese, Fruity Bites (shredded wheat pillowy cereal things with fruit paste inside…they’re actually really nice to snack on) and a fun pack of Smarties (with, like, 9 Smarties in it). The next day the Smarties were replaced with a piece (very small) of homemade Rocky Road, made because Talented Hubby needed something to take to his shift to impress his work team and - hello? - my Rocky Road is legendary. And super-ridiculously-embarrassingly-easy, but lemme bask a while, ‘kay?

But I’m sticking to my ‘no commercial snackfood‘ rule. Oh hang on, darn it - I bought the water crackers yesterday and I said I was going to try to make my own, didn’t I? No matter, I’m still doing okay. I haven’t succumbed to the (very strong) temptation to just pick up a stack of boxed snacks and be done with it. I baked. One day it was Ham and Corn Mini Muffins (meh), another day some homemade Snack Bars (muesli bars/granola bars). Kind of got put off by that recipe when the honeyed bowl containing the leftover batter attracted the ants. And the ingredients for those were fairly expensive. I’m sure I can work at the recipe and make it cheaper though. Then of course the Rocky Road. Onward!

I’m really glad it’s Friday. It’s been a long week. So I really need your suggestions on the lunch front. Here are the parametres:

none of the kids’ classrooms have access to a microwave
no access to fridge either, although I can substitute ice bricks (would prefer not to send yoghurt etc though. As we’re heading into the hot Aussie summer, nothing that is going to spoil or wilt very easily. Even though we have our end of school year break coming up in a few weeks, I’ll need these ideas for the new school year in late January).
need ’sandwich alternatives’ ideas (I have many, many Tupperware-type containers that are good for ‘bits’. I also have mini ‘dressing’ and ‘dip’ containers. Some of my containers even have purdy forks and everything!)
made-from-scratch-ability (see above challenge)
kid friendly
extra points for freezer-friendly meals (or anything I can prepare the night before, refrigerate and just toss in their lunchboxes during the rush the next morning).
So, any ideas? About the only thing I can come up with is ’smorgasbord’ style, or what we call Kids Bits. We do this pretty often at home on the weekends - just cut up a whole bunch of stuff - deli meat, crackers, fruit, dips, vegetables etc. After that, I run out of ideas.

I need you!

So This Oscar Winners Thing? Totally A Walk Through My Adolescence

Today I researched and then compiled my list of films in order to tackle No. 15 on my Thirty By Thirty list - Watch all of the Best Picture Oscar winners, 1979-2009. Silly me assumed 1979-2009 meant exactly what it seems to mean but no, an award ceremony covers films released in the year prior (I know…seems obvious to me now too, LOL). So my 1979 to 2009 film list has become my 1978 to 2008 winners list. Which means I now have to watch The Deer Hunter. My Dad (a Vietnam veteran) is totally laughing at his very ‘Jane Austen-y taste in movies’ daughter right about now. Especially considering Platoon comes into play as the 1986 winner, LOL.

Clearly, this little challenge isn’t for everyone. Some of the films aren’t exactly of the ‘roses and chocolates’ variety. But I’m genuinely interested in this task - there are some movies I’ve grown up hearing (by name) but have never seen - although I have seen the majority from the last twenty years. Some of the earlier films might be a bit harder to get my hands on when the time comes but I have a few contacts I can lean on if necessary.

In case you were wondering, here’s the full list of 31 films:

BEST PICTURE OSCAR WINNERS
1978 (ceremony 1979) to 2008 (ceremony 2009)

2008 – Slumdog Millionaire (watched 24-Feb-09)
2007 – No Country For Old Men
2006 – The Departed (watched 19-Nov-08)
2005 – Crash
2004 – Million Dollar Baby
2003 – The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
2002 – Chicago
2001 – A Beautiful Mind
2000 – Gladiator
1999 – American Beauty
1998 – Shakespeare In Love
1997 – Titanic
1996 – The English Patient
1995 – Braveheart
1994 – Forrest Gump
1993 – Schindler’s List
1992 – Unforgiven
1991 – The Silence Of The Lambs
1990 – Dances With Wolves (watched 22-Nov-08)
1989 – Driving Miss Daisy
1988 – Rain Man
1987 – The Last Emperor
1986 – Platoon (watched 26-Nov-09)
1985 – Out Of Africa
1984 – Amadeus
1983 – Terms Of Endearment
1982 – Gandhi
1981 – Chariots Of Fire
1980 – Ordinary People
1979 – Kramer vs Kramer
1978 – The Deer Hunter

I totally find it interesting that many of the titles hit a bit close to home. Obviously the Vietnam thing with my Dad, but also Rain Man, Forrest Gump and A Beautiful Mind with J. I loved Forrest Gump for years and then once J was diagnosed I couldn’t bring myself to watch it for the longest time (eventually came to my senses but cried most of the way through). Come to think of it….Forrest goes to Vietnam too, LOL.

Okay, game face on. The DVD player awaits… :P

Snore. Or In Other Words, Snarfle Snarfle Snort Snort

I can’t sleep.

Not just tonight. I mean in general. And the irony? My body tells me I desperately need to.

This week I managed to hit the sheets at 3:30 am and 4:15 am on two separate nights. In my defence, this latter one was because I was taking myself off to bed at 1:30 - late, but reasonably so for me - and noticed a few ants on the kitchen bench. Then few more. Then a goshdarn avalanche. Let’s just say the kitchen wasn’t in a pristine state to begin with, so everything had to be moved, de-ant-ed, and set aside on the dining room table before sweeping sponge-fuls of Satan’s Little Minions to their deaths under the running kitchen tap. I thought about fumigating them with surface spray but didn’t fancy the thought of having to disinfect the benchtops as well, so it was the ‘au naturel’ method of drowning and Finger of Death (squishing) until the stream finally stopped. The whole debacle took me TWO AND A HALF HOURS. The object of their desire? An unwashed bowl I’d used earlier in the evening to make homemade muesli (granola) bars. The bars were held together with honey. Lesson learned. ‘Nuff said.

So I’m not sleeping properly. And because I’m tired all the time I’m relying on artificial (yet curiously delicious) sustenance to get me through the day. Today, I had half an hour to spare before walking up to the school to pick up the kids so I sat down on the couch with a magazine to read. I was tired but I didn’t think that tired. Next thing I know the phone is ringing.

“Um, hello?”

“Hello Mrs Lizzie’s Home. Your children are waiting in the front office. They’re sobbing and petrified you’ve abandoned them. You’re a horrible mother.”

Well, okay, she didn’t say that, and they weren’t. I’m sure she was thinking it though. But I swear, I’ve never had my heart jump into my throat with as much force as it did today (even that time the doctor took one look (well, okay, feel) at my newly-nineteen year old cervix and promptly told me to “get up to the hospital immediately because that baby of yours will fall out any minute - but be prepared, because our hospital doesn’t have the facillities to handle premature births.” Phooey on him - I lasted another two weeks and J was born at 36 weeks). Complicating matters today was the fact that J, who normally travels home via taxi each day, was still en route home - with no-one else at home to greet him - so I had to call up the taxi driver (thank God for mobile phones) to ask him to drop him in front of the local school (where Boof and Moo go) instead. J was none too pleased at the last minute schedule change and as for the younger two - well let’s just say I won’t be winning Mother of the Year anytime soon for being 20 minutes late.

Now if you’d done something horrible like this you’d totally bribe them too, right? Mama’s poison-de-jour was a chocolate Paddle Pop (like a big Popsicle/Fudgsicle? - again, thank God for a morning grocery run earlier in the day) Totally worth it.

It was while they were eating them that I noticed another ant infestation.

Did I also mention that it was like 36ºC (close to 100ºF) today? I am NOT a warm-weather kind of girl. In fact, I’d rather slowly poke my eyeball with a rusty fork. I was just about sobbing by the time Talented Hubby arrived home to find me de-ant-ing OUR FURNITURE. Now, credit to the man for taking one look at me and keeping his mouth shut about the missed school pickup - ignoring my failings is one of the reasons why I love him so much :)

But this heat? I want to move to Canada. Seriously. Laura will put up with a crazy Australian gal, right? Laura? Hello? LOL.

* written in the late evening and scheduled for the next day. I heart scheduled posting…

The Mama Bear Files

In the first few months of Lizzie’s Home, way back in Autumn (Spring for you Northern Hemispherians!) 2007, I would post occasionally about the challenges we faced as special needs parents. As the blog took off, it continued to include a cacophony of random tidbits about the Lizzie’s Home family, but it’s focus morphed mainly toward my horrible ineffectiveness at homemaking (*smile*).

Without realising it, over time I began phasing out references to autism in my new posts. Master J is, of course, mentioned frequently and with much frustration and hilarity by his mother - but as for the emotional side of being an ‘autism mama’? I’ve kept things pretty close to my chest. It’s a coping mechanism, sure, but I think I stopped including the more obvious references because I didn’t want to be ‘the autism blogger’. As you will see, my attitude towards autism over the years has matured and now I do not necessarily believe I’d have been pigeon-holed back then, but subconciously, this was a real concern for me at the time.

Some of you may have noticed posts from 2007 referencing a four year advanced diploma writing course I was involved in. As brow-furrowing and downright hellish as that experience was at times, I learned an awful lot. In January of this year, I submitted my final assignment - a portfolio of pieces I’d written on the subject of autism, special needs and our experiences and challenges with J.

With much exhalation of breath and warranted celebration, that assignment was returned with the highest mark possible.

I have often thought about including some of those pieces here on Lizzie’s Home. This teeny blog of mine may be a drop in the ocean in Bloggityville but it represents most parts of who I am, what I’m interested in, what frustrates me, who I love - and yet somehow, with the omission of some of the more emotional pieces I’ve written, it feels slightly false somehow, like a half-truth. This boy of ours (who turned ten last Saturday, November 8th - good golly!) is as much as focus of our lives as all the other ‘trivial’ stuff - clearly more so. I am not the best writer in the world. In fact, as the Greats go, I’m like the speck of dirt on Dickens’ boot. Just adding that as a disclaimer in case you’re expecting literary brilliance, LOL.

I keep it light here for a reason. This will sound all dramatic (it’s really not, LOL) but one day this blog will be read by my children, as a record of our days in different seasons of life. I would never want it thought by J - or anyone for that matter - that an absence of ‘autism talk’ meant we were ashamed. Truthfully, it has more to do with autism remaining in the background these days, rather than the “front and centre” spot it occupied in the early years after diagnosis. I used to spell autism with a capital “A”. I stopped doing that years ago :) Life can still be incredibly frustrating and I have regular moments where I’m heartsore for J’s future, but I adore this bundle of firecrackers I was given and no, I don’t think I would change things if given the chance.
So, if you will indulge me, I thought I would set up a new page here on Lizzie’s Home. You can access it in the navbar above and it will be eventually filled with our experiences with special needs, as time and inspiration allows. It’s called The Mama Bear Files because quite frankly, I’ve had to get all Scary Advocate Mama on more occasions than I could count. I cannot guarantee it will remain a permanent fixture, but I do hope that it helps others in some way while it is up. I also can’t say how often it will be updated, LOL. I go with my heart on these pieces and if things are going along sort of ‘vanilla’, then life is grand and I see no need to stress about the “what ifs” :)

Where Would We Be Without The Humble Crockpot?

God bless the man - are we sure it was a man? A crockpot seems like such a womanly appliance - who invented these wonderful machines.

It’s nearly 11:00 am and I have some Corned Beef (Americans = brisket?) simmering away with a hastily chopped onion, a couple teaspoons of minced garlic (the recipe I found on allrecipes.com used a whole bulb of garlic, but we only ever have the minced stuff on hand) and a couple of bay leaves. Sometime several hours from now (yay) I’ll toss some potatoes and carrots into the pot and steam some broccoli in the microwave. It smells like Ireland in here.

Or does Ireland smell like Guiness and ‘green, green grass’? I’ve never been to Ireland so I’m guesstimating, LOL.

I haven’t had the greatest track record with slow cooker recipes. After a few disasterous attempts at cooking pieces of chicken when I first bought it a few years back, I kind of gave up on the ’solid food’ concept of crock-pottery and stuck with the soups. Then on a whim one day I threw in an old piece of corned beef (well not OLD, as in decomposed and flyblown - old as in ‘two more days and the freezer burn will ruin it’) and it turned out surprisingly well. I mean, it looked like a hunk of grey, lifeless flesh when it was done (which technically it was), but once carved and taste-tested, melted into deliciousness.

We don’t have corned beef all that often around here. Talented Hubby’s mother served this up to him often as a child but to hear TH talk about it now, she served it up with Arsenic-Laden Poison Sauce, otherwise known as ‘gravy’. I must admit, I shook my head at the thought of corned beef with gravy too. It’s just wrong when the sauce is brown instead of the traditional white. These days, as long as I don’t go The Way of the Stirfry (a very common meal in our house - so common TH eventually shouted ‘UNCLE!’ and begged me not to make it more than once a month, and even then, he grumbles), he’s fine with corned beef.

But if I so much as glance at the gravy powder (yes, I use powder. I’ll hand in my Wife Badge and Icing Gun as soon as the corned beef is about done, ‘kay?) he shoots his Eyes of Death at me and I realise he means business on the corned-beef-and-gravy issue. It’s fun to play with him though :P

Since I’m so horribly inept at crockpotting, I thought I’d open up the comments for recipes, suggestions etc. Fire away folks! What do you cook in the crock that tastes amazing and is foolproof? Special bonus points to anyone whose recipe sounds so appealing it makes it on to my menu for next week :)