Dances to the beet of her own drum

As if being invaded my giant red cockroaches and numerous spiders of all colours, sizes and descriptions wasn’t enough to completely creep this creepy crawley phobic blogger out, now we have a mouse hiding behind the stove.

It’s only been here since they put the new floor down in the kitchen last week.  Doesn’t my new floor look pretty? And my new benchtop, and appliances? Remember my the great kitchen fire of 07?  hmmm……… wonder if the floor guys left the mouse here?

The mouse must like the new stove and while I’m not happy about having a rodent live in it, at least it’s getting some use. I hate the damn thing. It has the grill inside the main oven with the knobs above the door (as you can see). You are apparently meant to leave the oven door closed to use the grill and everything from the grill tray, the door, the handle to the knobs gets hot. When you open the door to check what you are cooking you get that rush of hot vapours just like using the main oven. My kids like to help to cook but I can’t let my kids use this. They would get burnt. Stupidest bloody idea I’ve ever seen in a kitchen if you ask me.

Makes a good mouse house though………… now where is that damn cat?………..

yeah I didn’t get to it yesterday……. thats why its menu plan monday on tuesday.

Yes I am too tired to bother with most punctuation, I’m talking if I stay still for 5 minutes I’m in danger of falling asleep where I sit/stand/lean

tuesday - take away - we had chips and scallops and I zapped some cocktail frankfurters in the microwave healthy aye?

wednesday - rissoles and veges

thursday - sausages, chips and salad

friday - chicken, fritters, salad

saturday - steak, pasta, salad

sunday - fish and chips

only 9 1/2 hours till my brats angels hop on the school bus……….. tomorrow I can rest and sleep and find where the hell I left my sanity the past couple of weeks.  And eat chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate!

My husband came home from the station tonight with smoke coming out his ears. When I finally got him to stop sputtering and ranting, it turned out that he felt like he had been had a go at by the captain for giving out orders when it wasn’t his place to do so. He felt that he hadn’t been doing any such thing, but had been merely trying to step up as a senior member to support the captain in getting things running smoothly again.

I rang the president to get an independent opinion on what happened. She tells me that the Captain was trying to explain to hubby that he needs to ask people to do tasks not tell them.

I know exactly what she meant.  And when he calmed down I told him a hard truth.

He is a bossy boots.

He doesn’t mean to be. He doesn’t try to be. He just gets caught up in what he’s doing and if you aren’t sure what you should be doing, he’ll tell you. Or just do it for you without explaining what/how/why he is doing.  He forgets to phrase his instructions as requests. He doesn’t say “please”. He forgets that not everyone  has his knowledge or experience and might need some coaxing, encouragement or some kind of explanation.

This is something that can be off-putting to others, even a little intimidating to newer members.

He’s not like that when he’s instructing though. When he’s instructing he asks questions, provides explanations, remembers to hang back and let people work things out for themselves. He still doesn’t say “please” but he phrases himself much better.

He needs to flick that switch in his head and put himself in instructor mode every time he goes near the station.

He didn’t like hearing that. Nobody likes hearing hard truths about themselves though. And he’s a bit mystified cos he genuinely doesn’t think he is a bossy boots.

So just to prove my point, when he started bossing me in the kitchen, I just stood still and gave him “a look”. He said “please”. I smiled and did as he asked. He then said “Oh shit! Now you’re going to make me say please all the time aren’t you?”. I smiled and nodded again. Damn straight I am!!

I found an idea in Handmade magazine last month for a card kit as a children’s gift. I quite liked the tins they used and wanted to make one for myself to store my handmade cards in and another for Miss Lou to fill with cards for her use through the year. She isn’t terribly great at remembering other people’s special days. I’m hoping that if she has a tin of ready made cards at hand that she’ll use them.

When I was out of town shopping last week, I managed to squeeze in 15 minutes at my favourite craft supply store and found the tins used in the project so purchased two.

Today I decorated them.

This is what I started with -

This is my finished card tin -

This is Miss Lou’s finished card tin (I did it in her favourite colours - blue!) -

I’m quite pleased with how they have turned out. I should have got one for Miss Moo too. I’ll have to give the store a call and get them to put one away for me. I should be able to get a friend to pick it up in the next week or two.

Now to just fill Miss Lou’s with cards and send it down to her.

Well it’s that time of the week again………. time to head over to Lightenings to sign on for Smiley Saturday.

So what does this stressed and frustrated mum have to smile about today?

Well, I’m smiling cos there are only a few days to go till school goes back.

I’m smiling cos I found a whole block of Eden Dark Chocolate in hubby’s bedside cupboard.

I’m smiling cos after doing my block this morning, my bratlings darling children are behaving and being helpful.

I’m smiling cos right now tea is being cooked. Hubby has peeled the potatoes, TJ & CJ helped make the zucchini slice and everyone is taking turns checking on the snags.

I’m smiling cos the bratlings kids finally started to clean their rooms and their floors are mostly visible.

Life is good.

And there are only 86 hours to go………………..

Well it is Australia Day.

A day to honour Aussies who show great community spirit, who have made great achievements in their lifetimes or in their career/sport/music/etc or are just plain ol’ good mates to all. A day to show pride in our nation and it’s people.

So today I want to direct you to take a look around at some of our people. Some of our Aussie bloggers.

You can find them at www.aussiebloggers.com.au

Check out the blogroll on the right hand side bar. Yup, that’s them.

You can find even more of them in our Aussie Bloggers Forums

Go have a look. Check them out. Give them a cooee in their comments and celebrate Australia by supporting your Aussie Blogging mates!

PS. While you’re out and about checking out our Aussie mates, you may want to enter Lightening’s Austraila Day Giveaway too!  

I have the end of holiday grumps.

I’m tired. This holiday period has been so full on. I need some down time. I need some quiet time. I need some no one-asking-me-for-stuff-or-making-  noise-when-I’m-on-the-phone/pc/in the shower or wanting-to-go-places- and-asking-me-for-stuff or needing-mum-to-organise-us-while-we-ask-for- stuff time.

Did I mention they keep asking me for stuff? Like food and shit. Or arty crafty stuff and shit. Or more food and shit. Or toys! 3 days after Christmas my not so tiny terrorist TJ is asking me for toys and throwing mini tanties at me. And it has escalated every week. We will be having an argument this coming shopping day methinks!

Miss Moo seems to think that she needs a continual parade of friends, family and cousins through the house to amuse her princessy self with.  How dare she expect me to be nice and friendly and patient and slave motherly that many days in a row!! Rudeness! Sheer rudeness I tells ya!

And oh I am such a horrid mother for asking them to help around the house! Even when they are getting paid for it. Miss Moo wants extra money, I give her a list of jobs. Apparently we are not meant to wash every day so that there is only one load each day when she has to hang the washing out. We were meant to let most of it pile up until it wasn’t her job anymore so she only had to hang maybe two loads a week out!  And TJ wants extra jobs to earn extra money but won’t even do his regular jobs without stomping his feet.
And let us not even go near the pig styes their rooms!  I don’t expect them to be spotless, but just being able to see the floor occasionally would be nice, but only bad mummies expect clean rooms.

I’m ready to pull my hair out in frustration or at the very least join Kelley rocking in the corner. If I could just get that bit of down time I’d be right. I could recharge, refocus, and be ready to tackle them when they get antsy, feral or just plain naughty, but right now I’m tired, I’m grumpy, there are 105 hours to go till they go back to school and one of the little bastards them stole my last damn chocolate bar!

This afternoon Miss Moo was looking at the door stickybeaking at what my TJT (TJ the Terrorist) was doing and in the process of dobbing on him for watering on a non watering day when she noticed a rather strange fat man (SFM) walking up our driveway.

“Mum there’s some weird guy in our driveway” she yells out then stands there with the front door open watching him. TJT meantime is completely oblivious to any persons in his vincinity and is busily spraying water every where possible around our front patio and inadvertantly keeps the SFM from making it to our front door.

I go to the front door, growl at TJT to turn the hose off and am spied by the SFM who happens to be wearing a World Vision t-shirt.

He starts his spiel (from the path not the front door step lol) about how he’s with World Vision and is not looking for donations, as I can see he does not have a yellow donation bucket on his person, but instead he is looking for just a few big hearted people to give some poor children in third world countries a better life. He tells me that “they” (the mythical they people) said that there are no big hearted people in your town, but he knows that “they” are wrong and would just like 5 minutes of my time to explain and he is sure that I will want to help prove “them” wrong. At which point I cut him off and politely explain that we are not in a position to help at this point in time before shutting the door so he can’t continue the dialogue.

I loathe those kind of spiels. The “if you really had a big heart you’d help” or “if you are good friend you’d do this” or ” prove you are a christian by doing this” type of spiels really tick me off!! You want to appeal to me, appeal to my sense of compassion, appeal to my intelligence, appeal to my logic, appeal to my mothering instincts or my sense of justice.

Don’t guilt me.

I’m not an idiot. I know what you are doing and your little guilt inducing shtick does nothing but make me want to push you over, kick your arse, call you a dipshit and roll you through the dust that is my driveway onto the road, hopefully into the path of on oncoming vehicle.

Not wanting to sponsor a third world child through World Vision does not mean that I do not have a big heart, it means that I prefer not to sponsor children through World Vision. It means that I prefer to spend the majority of my charitable money locally. It means that I prefer to send my money to non local charities through my local church or other organisations of my choice. Personally I prefer to sponsor a child in a developing country through  The Salvation Army.  You could sponsor two children for less than what it costs to sponsor one through World Vision (and that idea should appeal to some of my thrifty readers! lol).

Having someone from World Vision show up on my doorstep doing a canvas raised some questions for me though. How much are they paying these people to canvas for them? Where does that money come from? Does it come from the sponsorship money that other people donate to the organisation? Would they think that was an appropriate use? Makes me wonder if World Vision has gotten so big that they have lost sight of their vision.

Over the past few weeks we have talked to Miss Lou about the idea of getting some counselling. We want her to have some skills based counselling to (hopefully) help fill in some of her social skill gaps, teach her to manage her emotions and to learn how to relate to the world a bit better.

She didn’t want a bar of it.

She told us that they were strangers and she wasn’t allowed to talk to strangers. She told us that they can’t help and are useless and never helped her before. I told her that she needed to stop parroting the freaks paranoid rantings and think for a minute. I reminded her that she’s always had counselling through the school when she lived with us. She didn’t really remember so I explained how the counsellor helped her to figure out ways to fit in with the other girls, and listened to her if she needed to talk if she was upset.  I asked her to consider that she would never know if they could help or not if she didn’t try it.

So on Tuesday, Miss Lou was dragged kicking and screaming by her hair went to see the counsellor that we wanted her to see.

Yesterdays session was just a “get to know you and see if we like each other” one. She liked the counsellor. She’s happy to go back.

Another hurdle down!!

Another of my stalkers commenters, Nikki, has started her own blog too

Widdleshamrock

So I want everyone to go give her a “hello” and a cheer too.

Yes and you, and you, even you. Yes, yes you too. Ok not you cos people who tell other people how to write on their own blogs are creepy. But everyone else. Go. Now.