Call me an ungrateful cow but.....

So, the guy who lives at my place just got a message from his fabulous English cousins saying they are toying with the idea of coming out here at Christmas. Fantastic. I love them and wish they would migrate and its been a few years since their last trip and we miss them heaps. I have no problem at all with them 'potentially' coming out for a visit. Hell, we can even accommodate them in a real bed this time as opposed to the air mattress shoved in the salon.

The issue I have with them 'potentially' coming out is that it sends the guy who lives at my place into a 'retired-tour-guide-camping-holiday-planning' frenzy.

The phrase 'where would YOU like to go on our next camping trip?' sends me into different kind of frenzy. The kind that involves the sharpest knife in the kitchen and my wrists. You're probably thinking 'whinging cow, he's asking YOU where YOU want to go'!! But no people, he's really asking me to start organising the menu and prepping the kit for a trip to a location I really have very little say on (I've been suggesting any beach location for years and he keeps taking me further and further inland and Australia has a fucking lot of inland!) that will involve me entertaining 2 small children, 1 of which is autistic and 1 large one without electricity, high speed internet, a proper hot water service, a working microwave, innerspring mattresses, a seemingly endless supply of clean clothes and fencing to stop them DROWNING IN A CREEK. 

Think about that for just a moment.

Then add to the fact it takes us approximately 3 hours to set up our kit and 4 to pack it up and he wants to do 2 or 3 locations on this 'potential' trip with 500-600km between camps.

He's lost his freakin' mind. 


I'm praying to the sanity gods that the poms just wanna hang out in our little house. 

I needed printer ink. So I fished out the business card I had been given by a client ions ago and rang them to place an order. They are one of those businesses who take used cartridges and refill them with top quality ink at a fraction of the price of a new one and gave me the spiel about how cartridge companies are going out of business (really not sure how, it's the most expensive liquid known to man) and most of the new Chinese cartridges can't be refilled and just end up in landfill so we need to hang on to our old ones and together we'll save the planet blah blah blah. That's ok, I like to feel like I'm doing the right thing by the planet while I sit here on my laptop in my centrally heated house with my daughter watching a DVD on a plasma TV whilst creating one massive mother of a carbon footprint. Then the lady on the phone asked for my address. No problem, I reel it off. 'We pay the postage and you'll have them tomorrow' she says and I'm thinking "what? What business covers postage costs? That's great, I won't complain, $10 is better in my pocket that theirs"

Then I say 'hang on, let me grab my purse' thinking that I'll need to hand over a credit card number but (here's the clincher) she says 'No, it's ok, we send you an invoice and you have a few payment options and you can just choose which ever suits you'

WTF?

Did I just hear correctly? You're going to send me the full set of printer cartridges I want, YOU'RE going to pay for it to get to me AND you're happy for me to pay for them how I like AFTER I get them with no more surety than my postal address?

I'm guessing I must have just slipped into some kind of time travel portal when I walked through my kitchen doorway cos this so does not sound like something that could happen in 2011.

Ok, so I'm a baaaaaaaad blogger.

I just had a look at the 'edit posts' section of my blog and it seems that for every post I have done, there are 4 more that I have started, never finished or published. I think I have turned into one of 'those' people. You know, those people who hop from one new hobby to another and never really finish anything. I still remember my 18 year old cousin coming over to my house about 15 years ago and upon spotting my dinning table covered in rubber stamps, ink and glitter, said 'Tell me you haven't taken up another hobby?'

It seems I have become a 'gonna' person.

You know the type, I'm gonna de-clutter my house, I'm gonna stop buying shoes I don't absolutely need, I'm gonna go to the gym at least 3 times a week, I'm gonna write in my blog regularly and maybe one day write that book I've been dreaming about writing since year 9 English when I wrote a short story and actually got some praise from Miss Whateverhernamewas.

So tell me bloggers, what is the secret? How am I gonna the habit of hitting the 'publish' button?

For those of you curious, this post also ended up in the 'edit posts' file for 24 hours!

'Been so long I forgot I had a blog

I just checked, I haven't blogged in 9 months. Bad blogger. Oh well, it's not like anyone missed me. Since I last blogged so much and yet so little has changed. The guy who lives at my house is still working like mad and forgetting where he put all of his possessions. (except his mobile phone which fell into the cement pit at work yesterday, he definitely knows where that is now)

Magoo is now getting close to 14 and will go to great lengths to avoid going to school. He hates school but expels so much energy coming up with excuses not to go that if he could just harness his powers for good and not evil he'd be accepted into some sort of accelerated learning program. (well not quite but you get my drift) The only thing he shows any interest in is his Xbox 360 and you can't earn a living playing that unfortunately. Hockey season started 3 weeks ago and as yet he hasn't made it to training. If he plays this year he will make it to his 100th game.

Fletch is just being his usual beautiful self. It is starting to look like we will need to send him to a special school next year. He hasn't been properly tested yet but we think there is an intellectual disability thrown in with the autism because someone thought autism alone wasn't enough for us to deal with. He has now conquered the tv, Wii, PS2, my ipod, my iphone, his Nintedo ds, the dvd player, the tivo and the computers. If only he could brush his own teeth or poo in the toilet. His echo is now so strong that he can repeat just about any word you fire at him which is fun for his speech therapist. His new speech therapist is just fabulous. Her name is Tanya and she also has a child with autism. So she gets it. Fletch uses the word 'no' when he means 'no' and the 'no' when he means 'yes' so it was going to be one of the first things she tackled when we started with her. After one session she knew Fletch well enough to figure out that if she got him saying 'yes' or 'no' she'd never get him saying anything else. So we have thrown ourselves back into PECS to try and help him structure sentences and then we will go back to the yes/no thing later. I have also 'bought' the Boardmaker addendum's disk with out FAHCSIA funding and am now printing madly. Some of the pictures are just hilarious. If you have Boardmaker, try typing in the word 'homely'.

Baybee is no longer a baby. 'Kenzie is now 2 and looking for a career that involves little or no clothing. I dress her, she undresses herself. I redress her, she undresses herself. I give up. She dresses herself in her brother's clothing. I throw my arms up in the air. She can drive me up with wall but she is soooooooooo normal. I had forgotten what normal is.

I still have my Facebook addiction and have set my self a photo challenge this year to attempt to take at least one photo every single day and upload it onto fb. I have been a bit slack the last week and tend to take them each day but only upload once a week, the intention is there. If I can figure out how, I may upload some of the pics up on here. I'm pretty proud of myself. I am using Creative Memories's storybook plus program to tweak them a bit. he album is looking cool.

So should be vacuuming.

Toodles.

What do you do on a long weekend?

So, its Sunday, it's a long weekend, and I'm incredibly bored. I have at least 14,385 things I could or should be doing but none of them interest me enough to bother an attempt. I have just put Baybee to bed for her afternoon nap, which means my mum will probably walk in the front door any minute. She always calls in to see the kids right after I put Baybee to bed. Fletcher is playing Wii (surprise, surprise) and is yet to notice that I have turned off all the other gadgets he had going. The guy who lives at my place is playing golf with his brother for the first time in about 18 months, well how ever long ago his clubs got knocked off from the garage. He will no doubt come home and start talking about how he wants to play more often and perhaps he will start playing 9 holes on the way home from work a couple of times a week blah blah blah. Magoo is off with his dad, who is avoiding the nut job girlfriend who claims to be giving birth any moment to a baby she has already claimed to have given birth to 3 times since Christmas. Oh and did I mention that we are at 'dial up speed' until the 10th of the month thanks to Magoo downloading new games and updates for games, oblivious to the fact he is not the only person in the house that might want to use the internet.

I am feeling a 'little' unfocused at the moment. I have a chronic case of mushy brain. Everything goes in there and falls straight out again, usually onto my freshly mopped floors. I honestly can't retain a thing. I have always been a person who lives by the creed 'don't start a new task till you finish the last one' but now it's more a case of 'try to remember the task you were doing so you can one day complete it or get someone else to complete it for you.' I even try making lists and forget where I have put them. As a prime example, I sat down to write a specific post and now don't remember it. I even went to our homeopath and told him of my woes. He gave me 2 remedies to take, once once a day, the other twice a day. DO YOU THINK I CAN REMEMBER TO TAKE THEM? I do think a small part of my problem is my Facebook addiction. I struggle to complete a task without just doing a quick check to see if anyone has left me a message or a comment. I even try to not turn the computer on till I am finished doing 'such and such' but all too often I need something on the computer in order to finish 'such and such'. But damn, Facebook is good isn't it?

So, it's now about 5 hours since I wrote the beginning of this post and what have I done? Virtually nothing. Big Ed just rang and asked if I'd mind if he stayed at his brother's place and had a few drinks with him tonight? Not the slightest bit was my reply. Gives me the tv and the computer to myself to do as I please. But then Magoo started complaining that he feels sick, Fletch has had a temp on and off for 5 days now, so the last thing I feel like is playing nurse tonight but it just might have to be the case. Baybee is helping herself to the 'lite n easy' meal I had heated up for Magoo before he decided he was feeling a bit off. This is after the meal of spaghetti she had just consumed. Clearly, she isn't feeling sick. Ya know what, I think I feel a bit off.

What a fun filled long weekend.

Wilbarger brushing update

Just thought while I have a spare second I would update you on Fletch's brushing therapy. We are now at day 6 and I think I saw my first sign of improvement yesterday. We went to kinder and for the first time ever he allowed me to sing with his teachers during circle time, YAY! And before you say anything, my singing isn't THAT bad that he wouldn't allow me to sing before, it was purely a sensory issue. Unfortunately I accidently leaned on the car horn later in the afternoon and he flipped out like he normally would but baby steps, baby steps.

He is also at the point where he doesn't resist the brushing. He seems to enjoy it. Now if I can just figure out how I can enjoy the next 49 days and 392 sessions.....

So, today we are off to swimming for a make up session and then Kate the wonder naturopath.

A few holiday pics.

I thought I might upload a few photos from our trip.

This is Ayer's Rock (Ularu)

Fletcher, the party boy, has clearly inherited daddy's 'sleep anywhere' gene

Daddy and his girl having their first wedding dance.

Baybee loved having the dance floor to herself but ran a mile each time someone tried to join her.

Baybee enjoying the rice at the wedding.

Magoo and Baybee at the ceremony, (she had been playing with the sand at Simpson's Gap)