Internet Switch

I want something like this centrally located in my house so that I can, with great bravado, threaten the kids that I am going to switch off the internet.  This is my fantasy, that when I say "dinner is ready and it's time to get off the computer/laptop/other device, I mean now!  Don't make me have to use the switch."

I'd have the modem wired through it and then have it located in a nice visible area where I can make a big show of going over to the switch. Then I could put my hand on it and threaten, "I'm gonna do it".
I could then drag out the action of wrenching the switch from the on to the off position.

I would also like to imagine, the sounds of whirring industry slowly winding down, as all the devices and computers grind to a halt.  Silence would descend for a split second before the indignant voices of protest rise up to complain about the unfairness of it all.  I could stand there smugly saying "I warned you".

Ahhh to be never ignored again when I tell the kids to come to dinner, go to bed, have a shower..... or whatever other requests I may make of them that would require them to physically extract themselves from the magnetic pull of their chosen technology.

Someone should market this idea and give me a chance to live out my dream.  Imagine a ceremonial shutting down of the wifi at bedtime, it would give me such pleasure.  I know I can achieve the same ends with the itty bitty button on the back of the modem, but somehow it lacks the drama and theatre that the big wall mounted switch would have.

Dementia

I remember when mum was in the early stages of her Dementia and I dropped her off at a senior’s activity group at my old primary school. It was like day care for oldies, and was held in my old Kindergarten room.  The school was no longer being used as a primary school due to dropping enrolments. Being in an older suburb with an aging population the school buildings had been re-birthed as a community service provider.

It was an interesting juxtaposition to be dropping my nervous and clingy mum off to my old kindergarten room, some 30 years after she had probably done the same thing to me on my first day at big school. The kindergarten room still looked almost exactly the same with the big coloured circle on the ground.  The furniture had changed to suit its new inhabitants, but it still had the same old feel and look about it.  I could almost still see the toys and maths equipment arranged on the low shelves around the edges of the room.

 

Mum was feeling nervous because she was in the first stages of dementia and was not really sure what was happening to her. Things that she had always done, like walking to the shops, started to pose real difficulties for her.  She really liked to walk and to get out around the neighbourhood, but she kept getting lost. Luckily nothing bad had ever happened to her and she always seemed to be found by someone who knew the family well enough to get into contact with us. She was no longer able to form attachments with new people, her world was narrowing drastically to the immediate family and a very few friends and neighbours who kept in contact with her.  She was reasonably well known, but she didn’t know many others, apart from those who formed a significant part of her life.

So being dropped off into a room of strangers was, at first, an uncomfortable experience for her. She no longer possessed the social skills to build a rapport with strangers.  I assume many of the others in the room were in the same situation.  It was the role of the group facilitator to get the group to gel. I imagine it would not be an easy task.  At least the oldies would have been better behaved and had a better developed sense of social appropriateness than the newly arrived kindergarteners who had populated the room in years past.

For me the experience was bizarre, that all these years later finding our roles had reversed.

oil pulling

I have been researching oil pulling today.

I heard about oil pulling for the first time a couple of mouths ago. I'm not sure if it's a relatively new thing to gain a following in western circles or whether I have just never come across it before.

I have a sore back tooth and am pretty worried it might be a candidate for root canal, or some other horribly expensive dental procedure. I haven't been to the dentist about it yet, but am considering whether I should just have it pulled, rather than spend stacks of money on it.  Oh how I now wish I still had my wisdom teeth.

I decided to do an internet search on oil pulling as it related to oral health.

From my reading  it seems the basic premise is to swish a teaspoon- a tablespoon of oil (sesame, sunflower and coconut seem to be the most popular choices) for about 20 minutes every morning.
Spit out the gunk -DO NOT SWALLOW, then clean your mouth and sink thoroughly because they will be swarming with harmful bacteria.

I am currently swishing a teaspoon of coconut oil around my mouth as I write this. I happened to have coconut oil in my cupboard based on a recommendation from a naturopath.  It seems that coconut oil is new 'next thing' in health circles and there are countless website dedicated to its virtues. As so many health nuts swear by the coconut oil for everything from cooking to rubbing on your body, to oil pulling, I thought I'd use it.

It was with trepidation I took my first spoonful. I'm not a big fan of oil.  I was having it in my morning smoothie, but couldn't get over the way it made me feel nauseous about 2 hours post breakfast.  I still have nightmares about the time I consumed an entire glass of olive oil, neat, in a gall bladder cleansing regime.  It was probably the most disgusting thing I have ever done to myself.  I still gag a bit when ever I taste olive oil.

So a mouthful of oil is definitely not my favourite thing, but at least coconut oil feels a little less oil like and has a more pleasant flavour than other oils do when they are taken straight.  As I swish it around my mouth it quickly becomes liquid.  The plaqueing feeling stuff on my teeth still feels fairly firmly stuck there after my twenty minutes of swishing.  The other thing I notice is that I can't talk while I have my mouth full of oil.  That could be a problem on busy mornings when the kids need a bit of a rev up to get them ready for school.

Well I have just spat out my oil and as promised it was very white.  I rinsed out my mouth well and then went on and brushed my teeth to try and remove as much of the residue as possible.  My teeth still felt furry, before I brushed them and I seemed to need to spit out a bit of gunk from the back of my throat too.  I can still taste coconut oil in my mouth and the ache from my sore tooth has gone for now.

The basin got a good clean too.  A daily clean of the basin will be a surprising side effect of this technique. Usually, it's lucky to have a once a week clean.

Will I go on and make it part of my daily ritual? Like many of these alternative techniques there seems to be a process whereby you get sicker at first before you reap the wonders of wellness.  Maybe I need to read more to convince myself that it is worth the trouble to go ahead and embark on an oil pulling regime.

Watch this space and I'll report back on how I went.

More travels around Oz

I thought it was time to post another piece of writing about our round Australia trip in 2007.  This email follows on from the last one......

27/07/07

We sent our last e-mail from Katherine library and had no intention of returning to Katherine again in this trip.  Well we are back and will explain why a little later.  First, we will describe what has been happening in the intervening period.

We left Katherine with no firm plan in mind.  Just that heading west sounded like a good idea, as the night time temperatures seemed far too cold for us to venture south yet.

 

First stop was Flora River Nature Reserve where we intended to camp, but didn’t really like it there so continued further down the Victoria Hwy.  As we approached Gregory River National park the scenery became quite spectacular.  The mountain ranges are amazing.  It never ceases to amaze us just how many spectacular, and different landscapes Australia has to offer.

 

We opted to camp over night in the first section of Gregory River NP at Sullivan’s creek.  It was quite a nice camp, but a bit too close to the highway.

The next day we visited Victoria River Road House and did a few interesting walks in the area, again catching stunning views of the landscape of the East Kimberley’s.  We wanted to go on a ranger guided tour of Bullita Homestead in the second section of Gregory and perhaps checkout some 4wd tracks.  We made it as far as the turn off when upon investigating a nasty banging and clanking noise from under the car we discovered a broken bit of suspension.  Not good for tackling dirt roads, so we turned around and headed onto Timber Creek in the hope that they could fix it.

 

Not normally a place we’d stay, the wild west looking town of Timber Creek played host to us that night.  The people in the tent next to us got flooded by the park’s sprinkler, turned out they were from Grafton.  They were loaded up with beautiful home grown oranges and mandarines, but as they were heading west they gave them all to us.  Already with a large bag of fruit of our own to eat and now a whole lot more we set ourselves the task of eating all of this fruit in the three days it was going to take us to reach the border.

 

Our car got fixed the next day and we moved onto Keep River NP, still in NT but only just.  We visited  Grergory’s camp on the banks of the Victoria River where you can still see the carved incriptions dated 1855 on the boab trees around the camp. Keep River treated us to views of Bungle Bungle type sandstone formations, very impressive.  We spent a few nights there doing the walks and eating fruit, and eating fruit.  No wonder they had to pump out the pit toilets while we were there.

 

Fueled by scary stories about border checkposts with surly customs officials, sniffer dogs and fine tooth combs we tentatively made our way to the NT/WA border.  With three kids in the back of our car our back seat and carpet were a quarantine breach just waiting to be discovered.  (We were secretly hoping that they would vacuum out our car for us).  But the border crossing was a non event with barely a look at us as we sailed through with mouldy apple cores and fair sprinkling of raw nuts and seeds through the kids zone in the back seat of the car.  And no we didn’t get our car fully detailed by the WA customs service, damn.

 

We headed straight to Kununurra where we spent 3 nights.The caravan park where we stayed was over run with young backpackers and movie star extra hopefuls.  The new Baz Lurman epic Australia was due to set up filmimg  in Kununurra soon and a few were waiting around in the hope of getting discovered.  One particularly unattractive man spent a lot of time in various poses, obvioiusly trying to work out his best side.

 

We moved onto Wyndham for 4 nights and watched a most amazing sunset over Cambridge Gulf.  We ate the best fish and chips I have ever tasted (fresh Barramundi) served by a tattooed man whose face was totally and completely covered by tattooes.  He was a tourist attraction all in himself.  We visited Parry’s lagoon for some bird watching, Emma drove the Old Hall’s Creek Road in 4wd.  The road still has some of its original stone work on it.  Emma had a hoot, Steve had very white knuckles (it’s not so much fun in the passenger seat).  Next day Steve got his go at 4wding taking us for a trip down the King River Road past a massive boab that was still alive but could fit about a dozen people inside it, known as the prison tree.  We tackled the Kurunji Track which traverses through El Questro on the western side of the Cockburn range.  The Cockburn range is amazing.  We came out onto the famed Gibb River Road at the Pentecost River. 

 

The following day we re-entered El Questro and walked up Emma Gorge.  Had to go because of its name.  Although it was beautiful it was hard to justify the $15 it cost us for the pleasure when there are so many other beautiful and free gorges to explore in Australia.  On the way back to camp that night we got our third flat tyre in two days.  The local servo at Wyndham loved us.

 

Having come this far we desperately wanted to keep going west.  But we had to bite the bullet and turn around at some stage.  So reluctantly we decided to save Broome for another trip and turned back towards the East.

 

We stopped off at Lake Argyle for a look at the massive expanse of water (many many times the size of Sydney Harbour).  It was created by damming the Ord River and still has not realised it’s full irrigation potential.  We decided against staying at the lake and made our way back over the border to Keep River NP again.  We really liked it there the first time so decided to checkout another campsite further into the park.

 

After only one night we moved onto the Bullita homestead campsite back in Gregory River.  Many of the 4wd tracks that we wanted to tackle were shut because of late unseasonal rain.  But we managed to learn a bit about the Duracks and the cattle stations in the East Kimberly region.

 

We had big plans to travel from Bullita to Top Springs down some dirt roads that were actually open.  However about 10 mins into our journey a rock ricochetted off the trailer and smashed our back window.  Not a good sound or look.  Thinking it was more prudent to go to Katherine to have it fixed rather than travel any further than necessary on dirt, we taped the window as best we could and set off for Katherine.

 

We booked into a camp called Springvale, that has a pool fed by beautiful warm springfed water.  It had a big slide into the pool that the kids can’t get enough of.  The day after setting up camp we discovered that we were camped next to some ex work collegues of Steve’s from Narooma.  So we had a great couple of nights socialising and reminicing with them.

 

As for the smashed window we discovered the true meaning of NT.  It doesn’t mean Northern Territory at all.  It means Not Today, Not Tomorrow, Not Tuesday, Not Thursday, Not This Week........  It took 3 days for the window to be delivered and fitted.  Eager to be on our way we packed up camp, collected the repaired car, hitched up the trailer and set off.  Less than 1 kilometre from our camp we heard that telltale sound again. Crack.  Steve and Emma looked at each other....No it couldn’t be.....  We turned around and looked....yes it was.  The window had shattered again! Bugger.

Another camp set up and another long wait for a new window.  We were getting to know Katherine really well, wondering if we would ever leave the place.

So what can you do, but sit back and relax, pour yourself another Gin and Tonic because we wont be leaving NT in a hurry, at least Not Today, Not Tomorrow, Not Tuesday, Not Thursday, Not This week and it even looks like Not This Month!

 

That’s Emma’s version of the story!  My knuckles weren’t white at all – just a pale shade.

 

With all this waiting around in caravan parks waiting for car things to get fixed I have invented a new hobby – spotting forestry look-a-likes.  So far I have a Peter Crowe, John Murray and two Steve Dodds.  I thought I had the jackpot when I got a Graeme Riches and an Alan Douch, but it turned out they were real.  I don’t think that counts.  Emma thinks I must be missing work but I can assure you I’m not.  In fact last night Graeme asked me what job I’d been doing and I couldn’t even remember the title of my job.  Just make sure you guys don’t forget the title of my job OK.  Money is becoming scarce at this end of the trip.

 

See ya

 

 

Weekends

Weekends are a contradiction.

We look forward to them all week because they offer so much potential and so many possibilities.

Then the weekend arrives and we feel torn. Torn between catching up on all those things that never seem to get done during the course of the week, socialising, or just resting.

Weekends consist, of two lists, the lengthy to do list of the enthusiastic home keeper and the actual list of the well it's the weekend let's just relax home keeper.

List number one looks a bit like this:
paint the fence
dig the garden
mow the lawn
tidy the shed
clean the pool
go to the shops
catch up with friends
go sailing
bake an amazing dinner
polish the silver

list number two ends up being list number one, but ever so slightly modified:
sleep in
have a relaxed and lengthy breakfast/brunch
wander outside and see what needs doing
pick up newspaper and come inside and do the crossword
wander over to the computer and check Facebook
goob on the computer for a while
search the cupboards for something to eat
have lunch
linger over coffee
afternoon nap
oh beer o'clock
crack open a beer and wander outside again
water the garden whilst wondering what to have for dinner
duck off to the shops to pick up a few things for dinner
get home, open another beer or pour a glass of wine
cook dinner
eat dinner
watch TV
go to bed


This is the problem with weekends, there's always an excuse to just take it easy.
The house really needs a good clean, a noble thing to do on the weekend. But well it's not much fun cleaning up when the family are at home traipsing over the newly mopped floor, or messing up the kitchen after it's just been cleaned. So better leave the cleaning for another day.

The garden needs digging and weeding and replanting. But it's a bit hot in the middle of the day, and it's important to be mindful of not getting too much sun exposure.

The weekly shopping is a good thing to catch up on, but the shops are always so busy, everyone seems to be out doing the same thing.

I could write that job application, but it's the weekend, and weekends are all about having a rest from thinking about work.

We could spend all day sailing, but really there's so much to be done at home, we really should stay home and make sure we get it all done.

The lawns needs mowing, etc, etc, but hey weekends are the time for relaxing, I really should be taking the opportunity to catch up on rest and sleep.

And so the tug of war continues for two days, between achieving something and just having a jolly good rest. By Monday morning, no matter which path you took, the rest and relaxation, or the busy social life and catch up on house work path, you feel vaguely dissatisfied that weekends just aren't long enough, and maybe you should have chosen a slightly better way to spend your two days off.

Meanwhile you can start your lengthy to do list for next weekend.........

Sailing Lessons

It was Week 2 of the sailing lessons, this week, and we learnt to capsize our boats.  Last week we didn't go anywhere near the water, this week we were right up close and personal with the water. Too close really.  I thought the idea was to stay IN the boat. But no, apparently we needed to learn how to right the boat in case of capsize.  I am assuming that may be a very real possibility when learning to sail.

Last week  we learnt how to rig the boat and get it ready for sailing, you know hoist the main sail and all that. We learnt what everything was called, a bunch of knots and what order we were supposed to use to get the boat rigged and ready to go. Well, that was what we were supposed to learn. But as I've said before I know NOTHING about sailing, so much of what I learnt last week was goobly gook.

I had good intentions of reinforcing my knowledge over the following week by practising tying knots and rigging up our manly junior.  Well none of that happened, the week flew by with out me even giving it a second thought.  Then I arrived at today, last week's theory was to become this week's practical.

We arrived early and loaded up the boats to take them to the river. The we had to rig these boats based on what we remembered from last week.  Luckily it was a team effort and we managed to bumble our way through it.  With boats rigged, it was time for a lesson in capsize on the dry land.  Ellie chose this time to need a feed.  So I headed over to the shade and popped her on the boob and attempted to hear what Chris, our instructor, was saying and watch the actions he was making when demonstrating the technique to right the boat.  I think I picked up about every third word and tried to build a general idea from what I thought I saw him doing.

The time came for the lesson to move from dry land to the water. Ellie finished her feed and I re-joined the lesson in full expectation that I would watch and learn from the others who had been present at the demonstration. A reasonable assumption, I thought, but no I was wrong.  I was to be the first one (sucker) to be taken out to waist deep water for the capsize. Kind of like being thrown in at the deep end.

We got the boat out to shallow water and tipped it over. I went over the side, thankfully the water was a pleasant temperature. I loosed the sheets, and threw the jib sheet over the boat, then swam, well walked really, around to the hull side of the boat.  Grabbed the jib sheet and pulled on it then hoisted myself onto the dagger board to use my body weight as a counter weight to pull the boat over into an upright position.  Then I had to get myself back into the boat.  It all went pretty smoothly and I was quite proud of myself, it wasn't too hard at all.

Then Chris announced that we had to go further out and do capsize in the deeper water.

What?......No one mentioned that.  I thought that we were keeping it in the waist deep water. No wonder everyone back on shore was snickering.

We sailed out to deeper water, capsized the boat and into the drink, we both jumped.  Now with nothing to stand on the first issue was to get the jib rope up and over the boat, Not so easy to do when swimming around in the water.  It took a few attempts to get the rope to sail up and over the hull.  With dagger board in, I swam around to the other side of the hull.  This time without the ground for leverage I had to use my feet on the gunelles while pulling on the jib sheet to lower the dagger board enough to climb on top of it. The boat flipped back into position nicely. That was the easy bit.  The hard bit was to come, getting back into the boat, with no ground to push off.  I have never had the best upper body strength, so I knew that this was going to be a challenge.

The first few attempts were pitiful.  I moved closer to the stern and managed to re-capsize the boat back the other way, oops a big fail there.  At least it gave the audience some good entertainment and gave me another chance to practice getting the boat back up right again.

With the boat back afloat I still faced the issue of actually getting back into the thing.  I was starting to wonder just what I'd do if I couldn't get in.  I got myself right back near the stern and hauled myself onto the deck, grabbed one of the foot holds and very unglamourously slithered into the cockpit. Ah I made it aboard, yay.  Then I had to help haul Chris aboard.

All aboard and we got to go for a bit of a sail. It was fun and I felt a little bit  more like I could understand what was happening.  It obviously didn't show, as Chris told me I made a pretty crappy crew member.  Ah well, guess I still have a heap more to learn.

Dave took me out again later on in the laser and I even got to use the tiller that time and bring the boat into shore. I liked that, I think I'm getting the hang of the tiller, maybe because that is somewhere where I have had a bit of experience with driving power boats.

This week I AM going to practise my knots in preparation for the next lesson.  I look forward to learning more about sailing next week, and NOT capsizing the boat.

Women in the workforce

It is interesting that females out score males throughout school, they represent greater numbers of the student population at university, where, they also outscore males.  They perform better than males in the early parts of their careers and then, blip, they are suddenly under represented in upper management roles.  Yet people can still argue that there are no gender biases when it comes to selecting people for promotion at work. Suddenly women become seriously out performed by men?

Women also have to manage childbearing as well as maintaining their careers, so yes they need some extra flexibility in the work place to achieve this.  But resistance to providing flexibility discriminates against women and prevents them from being able to reach their full potential. Not only that, the workplace loses out because it is not utilising a good proportion of its talent.

I find this line very interesting:
Australia has one of the world’s lowest rates of educated women participating in the workforce and one of the world’s highest rates of female education, a situation that is "uniquely acute" in Australia, the report added.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/some-men-fear-competing-with-women-20131025-2w5i8.html#ixzz2ihcpHp1L

Can Australia really afford to ignore half of it's talent?

It is convenient for a male dominated workforce to effectively get rid of fifty percent of its competition by removing women from being contenders in the climb up the corporate ladder. It also means that nothing culturally has to change and business can continue as usual. It takes some more evolved thinking to structure our workplaces in order to make them fairer for women and to encourage their greater participation.

Nearby childcare, flexibility of hours, part time positions, management that understands the needs of women with families, are just a few of the things that need to change. Understanding the needs of families also extends to the male partners of women, who may also need flexibility within the work force. A male dominated culture can discriminate against other males who do not share the same views on putting work above the needs of family and home life.  Many men would like to be able to support and facilitate their partners back into the work force by sharing some of the child care load.  But they fear that by asking for flexible hours or the ability to work from home they will be seen as 'not serious' about their careers and they too will be discriminated against and have progression in their careers hampered.

Again, women lose out, as they may feel that for the good of their partner's careers they themselves have to accept less work or no work in order to bare the majority of the demands of child rearing.

The old model of nine to five, Monday - Friday, can change.  By extending work hours, but making the hours at work more flexible, parents can easily both combine child rearing and paid work.  The workforce benefits and the workers benefit in maintaining key employability skills.  The years of child bearing are just a proportion out of  a person's career. We can't afford to lose good educated women out of the workforce long term, just because they have spent some time out raising children.  We need to value the role these women (and men) play in raising the next generation and then facilitate their re entry into the work force by adequately recognising their skills and talents.

Homemade soy yoghurt

I just can't keep up with the amount of yoghurt my family is eating since I started to make my own soy yoghurt.

It's yummy, it's cheap and it's as easy as making a cup of tea. Here's how I do it:

You will need:
1 carton of UHT soymilk
1 Easiyo jar and insulator
boiling water
yoghurt starter


Step 1.
Boil the kettle

                                                 Step 2
                                                 Clean and sterilise the yoghurt jar









Step 3
Pour the UHT soy milk into the yogurt jar

Step 4

Sprinkle in a tiny amount of yogurt starter culture

Step 5

Put the lid on and shake the jar

Step 6
Put the bevel into the insulator and add boiling water only up to the bottom of the bevel

 

 

Step 7

Put the yoghurt jar into the insulator and put on the lid

 

Step 8

Leave for 8-10 hours

Step 9

Remove the yoghurt from the insulator and chill.

Then it is time to ENJOY

YUM

 

Notes

About 15 years ago I used to make soy yoghurt from an Easiyo packet mix. Probably due to poor sales the soy yoghurt packet mix disappeared from the shelves. I pretty much gave up making yoghurt at that stage and gave my Easiyo maker away.

Recently, after some internet research I decided to give the soy yogurt making another go. I experimented with different ways to insulate the milk for the required length of time to produce yoghurt with varying degrees of success. Once I settled on my method, I decided to buy another Easiyo and use it. I was using commercial soy yoghurt as my culture, but my success rate was very hit and miss. Plus, I was also mixing in powdered soymilk to try and thicken the yoghurt and give it a more creamy consistency.

 

Then I found a website where I could buy non dairy yoghurt culture.  It was nice and cheap and they delivered to my address.

It was with some trepidation that I used the culture the first time.  It was not very clear about how much to use, just a tiny amount was all that was necessary.

The first batch was an outstanding success, and the family loved it. Since then I  have been making soy yoghurt regularly and it always works. It's so easy and so delicious.  The only failure I had was when I decided to get clever and branch out and try and make yoghurt out of Chai and Quinoa milk.  Big mistake, it just didn't work at all.

 

One litre of yoghurt costs a little over $2.  About $2 for the carton of milk and the culture which was about $25 for 100 doses. Recently I purchased milk at half price. I bought up a lot because being UHT it has a nice long shelf life. The cost of my yoghurt making has dropped dramatically to about $1.25 a litre.

 

The advantage of using UHT milk is that you don't need to scald the milk. That means one less step in the yoghurt making process and less washing up!

 



 

 

 

 

 

Feeling very uncomfortable about cheap clothes

I have a moral difficulty with buying clothes now.

I have noticed that the price of clothing has dropped markedly in recent years.  This doesn't feel right. Logically, with the effects of inflation, I should be paying 2, 3 or 4 times as much for clothing as I did when I was a teenager in the eighties.  Instead I am faced with a wide choice of clothing options that cost many times less.  This feels wrong and quite frankly makes me feel uncomfortable.

I can accept that with the popularity of certain common clothes and advances in manufacturing techniques, clothing costs could be rationalised  to a certain degree. I remember jeans costing around $60 - $80 dollars, that was very expensive for a teenager back in the eighties. But jeans were something that we all wanted.  We didn't have a lot of choice of jeans and tended to have to buy them from specialist jeans shops. Last year, I bought a black pair of skinny jeans for $10 from Kmart. Hmmm almost 30 years down the track and the price has dropped from $60 to $10?

I can understand prices in technology dropping like that over time, but actual physical, manufactured items being so cheap, feels completely unsustainable. The raw materials, the manufacturing of the cloth, the transport to the factory, the production of the article, the transport to the warehouse, (including in most cases international transportation) then the transport to the shops.  Each stage requires mark up so each person makes some money out of the supply chain. How is this possible?  How do we manage to create fair and equitable  profit in each step of the chain?

This is where the discomfort comes from, as instinctively I know we can't. Some people in the chain are getting seriously squeezed.  What conditions do these people endure to enable me to buy a $10 pair of jeans?

It is not just jeans either. T-shirts for $5, shoes for $10, sometimes less. The raw materials alone, should surely cost more than that. Then add in wages and transportation cost and profit margin.  It makes me feel like we are rushing towards a mighty abyss. The day of reckoning must one day come.

We can't  hide from the fact that there are people in third world countries who are working in awful conditions, being paid bugger all, to produce this clothing. All this cheap stuff from Big W, Kmart and Target flash sweatshop and human suffering to me like a neon sign. 

So now I have the dilemma of what can I do about it?  Not buy the cheap clothing?
That, unfortunately is a little too simplistic.
1. How does me stopping buying cheap clothing affect the sweat shop workers livelihoods? Even if their wages are disgustingly low, surely some wage is better than none.
2. If I actively buy more expensive clothing where is the guarantee that they too are not still produced by people in third world country sweatshops?

My teenage daughter suggested only shopping in Op shops.  Then my money would  pay forward in a good way by helping charity.

That's an OK idea, but I've never been a particularly good Op shopper.  Maybe it's something to do with being the youngest in my family and the recipient of too many hand me downs as a youngster. I don't know. But I struggle to find styles and sizes I like and that suit me in Op shops. I do shop there occasionally, but I never feel that I find the plums like other people seem to do.

I think what I'd really like is some good moral labelling, so that when I walk into a shop I can make a choice about whether I agree with the way the product has been produced. I buy organic food where I can so as to support the concept of encouraging organic farming as a viable food production method. In a similar way, I'd like my dollars to be able to go towards encouraging a fairer system of the manufacture of my goods.

I would also like one of those major chains to show some initiative and leadership and move beyond the model of dirt cheap is best and support a more sustainable and fairer system. I'd like to see them proudly and bravely stand up and denounce this trade in human suffering and insist that their suppliers source goods from companies that pay their workers reasonable wages and provide decent working conditions.  Of course the goods are going to cost us more. But then it is up to us consumers to get on board and support those retailers doing the right thing and spend our money with them.  Surely once one retailer makes the move and shows how it can be done, the others will be shamed into following suit.

Delivering Catalogues

Tried delivering Penny Miller catalogues as a way to make some money for a stay at home mum.

"make up to $200 a week" was the ad.

The literature said 1 hour each on Thursday and Friday to deliver, Two hours each on Monday and Tuesday to pick up.  Then the delivery of the goods will add another couple of hours, works out as a nice hourly rate of at least $20.

Hmmm well that was very optimistic.

Delivery took me about 5-5 and a half hours and I didn't even get them all delivered.  Pickup was quicker than expected.  I thought it would take 11 hours. So far it has taken six hours. I'll need at least another hour tomorrow to pick up some stragglers.

The take up rate is very small of around 240 magazines delivered there were 14 orders. I may pick up another tomorrow, but it doubtful.

Commission plus delivery will net me around $125. So at 12 and half hours, plus another hour and half at least to deliver the goods, the hourly rate is looking more like $9 an hour, and that's being generous.

Happy Anniversary

Eighteen years ago I married my Husband, Steve, at Boydtown NSW. We chose the Seahorse Inn as our place to wed because we had had some special moments there in the past. On the day of our wedding the Inn was closed for renovations, but they kindly opened a room for us to get ready in and allowed us to use their grounds for the ceremony.  It was really nice to have the place to ourselves.

Steve and I chose to have a quiet wedding ceremony. We both came from fairly big families so a traditional wedding would have been a reasonably big deal.  We wanted a wedding that would mean something very personal and special to us. We didn't want to please others or conform to convention.

So.... we eloped.

Well, almost eloped.

At the time Steve was living in Bombala and I was living in Canberra.  We saw each other on the weekends, with mainly me, driving down to Bombala for the weekend. This arrangement continued for a while after we were married.

We planned our wedding in secret. This was in the days before everyone had mobile phones. So when we invited our parents down to Bombala for the weekend, we had them at our mercy. I came down in my parents car and we drove through snow.  It was a slightly magical experience being driven through the snow knowing that I was getting married the next day. Also knowing that my parents had no idea that they were transporting their daughter on the day before her marriage. The snow felt like a good omen to me.
 Both sets of parents knew that we had a big announcement, and they were right! I was pregnant with our first baby and we had a very strong relationship, so an engagement announcement was not to be unexpected. What was unexpected was the announcement that came next.

We made dinner on Friday night for our guests and then made the big announcement:

"we are getting married.......tomorrow"

No mobile phones, so no way to let the rest of the family know.  No need for us to worry about gate crashers.

On Saturday morning we awoke to a winter wonderland with a soft coating of snow on the ground. Although Bombala has altitude and is cold, snow is not such a common occurrence. We got all dressed up and headed down to the coast to the Sea Horse Inn at Boydtown.  It was a rainy day, but that didn't bother us a bit.  The rain seemed to bring out the beautiful colours in the gardens.
My father complained about the lack of warning as he felt a little lacking in suitable clothes for a wedding. That didn't bother us a bit either.

My mum was my 'bridesmaid/matron of honour' and Steve's dad was his best man. They were also the witnesses on our wedding certificate. Steve's mum and my dad were given some readings to read out as part of the ceremony. Steve's grand mother was there too. Just the seven of us ( is that a lucky number?) making it very small, very personal and very special.

After the ceremony we adjourned to the Eden Fisherman's Club for lunch and a cake.

Steve and I spent the night at Bumblebrook cottage in Candelo, a farmstay B and B.

Then it was back to life and back to work. We always joke that we spent our honeymoon with other people. On the Monday I went to Long Beach on a camp with my year 3/4 class from Yarralumla Primary School. Steve was at a course in Sydney.

God is like a woman

I found a reference to God being like a woman in our church bulletin today.
I must say that I have always heard God referred to in the masculine, apart from that joke (when God made man she was only joking). Literature, film and art all seem to depict God in the masculine. He is the father and many metaphors are based around the idea of him being our father. It has bothered me for a while because God should have no gender.

This is an excerpt from the parish bulletin

' ...we are often old in the bible that God is like a woman. For example, like a woman in labour; like a woman who can never forget the child of her womb; like a mother eagle that shelters her chicks beneath her ample wings....(of course God has no gender. However we humans are obliged to use both masculine and feminine images in order to talk about God).....'

 It's interesting because apart from images of Mary, we don't see too many female depictions of God in our culture.

To cot or not to cot

We never really used a bassinet with Ellie. As a new born I needed to have her in bed with me. As time has gone on she has stayed in our bed. I'm so used to her being tucked up between us, it is hard to imagine being able to sleep without her there.

That then has got me thinking about when should we start the transition to a cot. Or indeed should we take that step at all? I wonder how many people out there have managed to skip the cot stage with their babies?

So much paraphernalia is synonymous with babies such as cots, high chairs, dummies and bottles. Yet many of these things are not actually necessary.  It wasn't until my second child I realised I could by pass the bottle stage and go directly from breast to cup. Somehow I didn't seem to be able to connect those dots with my first baby and just used a bottle as a matter of course. It wasn't until someone mentioned that a bottle wasn't really necessary once they were old enough to drink from a cup, that I realised there was no need to introduce a bottle at all.

Now after three babies and up to my fourth, I'm wondering if I can skip the cot stage.  I have a friend who is kindly storing a cot for me. I can pick it up at any time.  But when ever I think of the concept of a cot I just get this image of a cage on wheels. I feel like I would be imprisoning Ellie like a little animal if I put her in a cot.

Up until now, Ellie has been having her sleeps in our bed. I feed her to sleep (which gives me a chance to lay down and have a rest too) and then I get up and stack some pillows around her and let her sleep.  I use a baby monitor with video surveillance to keep a close eye on her. But now she is on the move, hence the dilemma.  She is able to sit herself up and crawl over the pillow barrier and potentially fall off the bed.

Two days ago I put down a single bed mattress on the floor.  Ellie has been having fun crawling on it and I have told her a few times that it is her bed. She has had one day time sleep on it so far.

It was interesting tonight that she actually crawled over to the mattress, climbed onto it and started to grizzle at me. Not really sure what she wanted, I thought that I may as well lay down with her and give her a feed, she may pop off to sleep. Lo and Behold she did!

The mattress on the floor is quite safe and it enables me or my hubby to lay with her if need be. So now I think maybe a cot may not be needed at all. To cot or not to cot.......

Educate the whole child

Copied this off a post on my facebook.
The person who wrote this deserves an A triple plus.

Education is about so much more than test scores.

[My daughter's new elementary school principle sent this to all the students as they received their state standardized testing scores this week:
"We are concerned that these tests do not always assess all of what it is that make each of you special and unique. The people who create these tests and score them do not know each of you-- the way your teachers do, the way I hope to, and certainly not the way your families do. They do not know that many of you speak two languages. They do not know that you can play a musical i...nstrument or that you can dance or paint a picture. They do not know that your friends count on you to be there for them or that your laughter can brighten the dreariest day. They do not know that you write poetry or songs, play or participate in sports, wonder about the future, or that sometimes you take care of your little brother or sister after school. They do not know that you have traveled to a really neat place or that you know how to tell a great story or that you really love spending time with special family members and friends. They do not know that you can be trustworthy, kind or thoughtful, and that you try, every day, to be your very best... the scores you get will tell you something, but they will not tell you everything. There are many ways of being smart."]

 

 

 

Naplan scores

The children did their naplan tests this year and are just starting to get their results. So far I have seen the year nine results for Evan.  He did great, scoring in band 10 for everything. The state average is around band 7-8. His school's average is a little lower in bands 6-7.
The school caters to a multi cultural and low socio economic area, so will always struggle to get high scores.  It always seems unfair to compare schools from very different areas.

This is an article that was published in the Tyalla school newsletter this week and was taken from the Sydney Morning Herald. It discusses the fact that background plays a much bigger role in relative success in test scores than the choice of school that your child goes to.

It is nice that common sense prevails and that you just can't beat the value of having a parent at home while the children are young.  Trying to buy back that time later by shopping around for 'good' schools may not necessarily give you the value you hoped for in terms of test scores for your children.

See my related blog about the things that tests can't score

Orara High school flash mob

I've been waiting to see this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lNS-VaefMag
My daughter, Sarah had been practising secretly for weeks with a select group of year 11 students and teachers. It was so secret that she couldn't even tell her brother in year 9 about it.
It sounded like a fantastic way to liven up a dreary presentation day. I wasn't keen enough to actually go and sit through the presentation assembly, but I really wanted to see the end result after I had heard so much about it.
Well done William and Jack for videoing this, I was hoping that it would make it's way onto youtube
Great job year 11!

Ellie is on the move

Ellie is at that very active age where she has mastered crawling and is desperate to get the hang of walking.  She pulls herself up at every opportunity and likes to let go so she is balancing on her feet. Sometimes she even claps her hands while standing. She has started to cruise around the furniture, using it to get herself to lots of new and interesting places.

With this new found mobility and activeness it is that much harder to get a decent cuddle or snuggle out of her.  That's one really lovely thing about breastfeeding her, she has to stop and snuggle up for a feed. Often she will still wriggle around a bit, but last night was so sweet, she fell asleep in my arms. I was enjoying the opportunity to hold and cuddle a sleeping baby when suddenly I leapt out of my chair,  ouch! 

She still had my nipple in her mouth and in her sleep she had clamped down on it with her few new and very sharp teeth.  It wasn't her fault as she was asleep, well was asleep until I yelped.  The poor thing got quite a rude awakening.

Luckily I was able to swap sides and settle her back to sleep again.  As she was feeding on the second side I thought I could feel one or maybe two top teeth.  She has had her two bottom teeth for 2 months now. We have been waiting for the top two to emerge, and it looks like they have.  All without any stress or fan fare, which is great.

I'm going to enjoy seeing those two teeth grow in, they will make her little face look a bit different.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be very careful I don't get bitten again.  The more teeth there are the more painful it is going to be.

Here's a really good article about breastfeeding and biting
https://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/bfinfo/biting.html

Fires around Coffs

I went for a drive today and got a surprise as I approached Nana Glen. Over in the distance the whole ridge stretching from Nana Glen to Glenreagh was billowing smoke.  It looked like a line of volcanoes.

I took these photos from two places along Bucca Road.

From Bucca Road just outside Nana Glen Primary school

Over Mandy's back fence a bit further along
 Bucca Road.

Steve has been working on this fire in the incident control room since last Wednesday.  He has been working 12 hour shifts and is feeling quite exhausted. Interestingly, he hasn't actually seen the fire.  He's been managing it through radio communication with men on the ground and plotting information on maps.  I thought that he might enjoy actually seeing photos of the fire that he has been so immersed in over the past week.

This fire is burning right along this ridge and smoke extends beyond the frame of this photo to the left.  It stretches all the way to the escarpment above Glenreagh.

Sailing

Today is the very first time that I have ever been sailing.

The family acquired a Manly Junior sail boat from a work mate of Steve's a couple of years ago.
Steve and Sarah have attempted to sail it based on Steve's  flimsy memory of sailing as a child.  Needless to say, after a few disastrous attempts later they gave up the venture.  My dream of being chauffeured around the harbour in a yacht while sipping champagne looked like it was not going to materialise.
Steve and Sarah still nursed the driving ambition to learn to sail, so recently contacted Urunga Sail Training Club about their sailing course that they run.

http://www.yachting.org.au/db/clubdisplay.asp?ID=516680&Action=Display&MenuID=Clubs+and+Classes%2F6%2F0%2CThe+OnBoard+Program%2F10559%2F0%2CWhat_is_OnBoard%3F%2F10612%2F0%2CParticipants%2F11668%2F6236

Rather than let the two of them head off every weekend for fun and frivolity whilst leaving me home to tend baby and home, I decided to throw my hat into the ring too.

Almost $1000 later, the three of us are signed up for a sailing course, that begins next week, and a family club membership for the season.

Sarah and I got ourselves kitted out yesterday with water shoes, long sleeve rashies and gardening gloves. With forecast temperatures of 33 degrees today, we thought we'd pop down to Urunga and have a go at the social sailing that the club runs every Sunday.

Sarah got first go in the boats. I get the distinct impression that they hold very high hopes for Sarah. (Not so high hopes for me). Sarah is a natural, well she looked like it to me who was watching from shore. I stayed on shore to mind Ellie, who at 8 months loved discovering sand. Handful after handful was shoved into her mouth.  This was not the cleanest looking sand either.  There was no way to stop her, so before long she looked like a monster from the deep with brown sand dribbling down her chin.  I'm sure she managed to eat more sand in that sitting than she eats food at meal times. It's going to be interesting to see the results out the other end when I change her nappy tomorrow.

I took Ellie down to the water's edge to clean her up a bit.  She adored the water too and carried right on scooping up handfuls of muddy sand and shoving it in her mouth.  Maybe it was the salty tang she enjoyed.  I have heard that I should avoid salting Ellie's food so that she doesn't develop a taste for salt and also because it is supposed to be hard on her kidneys.  Well with baby led weaning philosophy stating that babies know what food they want and if we provide them with a variety they will naturally choose what they need, Ellie is obviously in need of sludgy river sand, mmmmm.

As is always the case when you try to time these things, right when it was my turn to go in the boat, Ellie was in need of a feed and a sleep. Oh well, I knew she wasn't starving after that belly full of sand, and I had complete faith in Sarah's ability to rock her or walk her in the pram if she needed settling.  There was nothing to hold me back. So I got to have my turn, my very first go in a sailing boat.

Doug kindly, perhaps I should say patiently, offered to take me out in the Tazer. A two - three person boat. My job was to sit up front and manage the jib, whilst ducking the boom and counter weighting the boat if we tipped up too high.  The main goal being not to capsize. Doug gave me instructions peppered with lots of sailing terms while he did all the hard work and kept us on the move. All those fancy sailing terms were like a foreign language and I just let them swirl around my head and wash off me, confident that by the time I finished the sailing course I'd know all of them. So we jibed and we tacked and we did some other things too. I remembered to duck at the appropriate times and deluded myself into believing that I was getting the hang of the jib rope.

Then we swapped positions.  Eeek, me to the back of the boat, in charge of steering, and Doug up front managing the jib, and all the other fancy things he was doing from the back that magically makes the boat go. Steering a boat is great fun, but prone to bring out a spot of dyslexia. Doug kept telling me to look forwards, not back, as each time I looked back we invariably ended up off course. We ended up off course a fair bit of the time when I was looking forward too.

Eventually I got sacked after some miss understanding about which way to turn. The boat floundered and Doug needed to scoot back and remedy the situation. As we pulled in towards shore, he declared that based on our sailing abilities, Sarah had better be skipper and I had better stick with crew. Which was probably a really nice way to say that I sucked. That just means that come the start of the sailing course next week, my learning curve is going to be steeper than Sarah's, and I have an excuse to be slack, and let all the others do the work while I relax, sip champagne and dream.

Our 2007 Family trip around Australia

In 2007 our family took a 6 month break from real life and went on a camping/driving trip around Australia.  At the time the kids were aged 11,9 and 5. It was a fantastic experience, but the coming back to daily ordinary life was a hard one to adjust to.  As I was looking through my documents yesterday, I found a letter that I wrote from Darwin. It was really interesting to read what I had written. So I have decided to post it here..

23/6/07

Well, here we are still in Darwin.

We can’t seem to get enough of the place.  It probably has something to do with the fact that the rest of Australia has been plunged into the extreme coldness of winter, and the balmy days and nights up here just seem too good to be true.  But we Darwin-ites haven’t escaped all of the cold fronts. Last Tuesday Darwin recorded the lowest maximum temperature for a June day, EVER!  Yes, it set a new record low of 22.7 degrees Celsius.  The poor old locals nearly froze to death.

 

We have been staying at a bit of a rundown caravan park at Lee Point.  It is huge.  We like it because they don’t charge anything for the kids. We have found not charging extra for the kids is a rarity at other caravan parks.

 

We have gotten over our addiction with the massive Casuarina Shopping centre and have managed to discover some real gems in the Darwin area.  There are lots of free things for the kids to do.  Due to the prevalence of stingers and crocodiles on the beaches, the council has created lots of free water parks and other outdoor recreation areas.  There are outdoor markets, free outdoor concerts and a beautiful jetty where you can dine out on fish and chips, feed the fish and watch the sunset.  It is a really nice vibrant youthful laidback city.

 

We have discovered the wonders of the local library.  Steve joined up for a refundable deposit of $50.  Since then the kids have enjoyed story times, play stations, free internet access and have borrowed books, DVDs, cds and computer games almost on a daily basis.

 

We did leave Darwin briefly to meet Steve’s parents and go to an Aboriginal festival at Barunga.  Normally we would need a permit to visit, but for only $5 per adult we were able to camp on common ground in the community for the whole of the June, Queen’s birthday long weekend.  No rules here, we could light a fire where ever we liked.  This turned out to be a good thing as there was a cold snap that weekend and the overnight temperature plummeted to nearly zero. That was a bit of a shock after being used to Darwin where the temperature never dropped below twenty something degrees over night.  In fact our first week in Darwin was shocking.  With very high humidity and no relief in the night time temperatures we were seriously considering heading directly south, and fast.  But the dry season hit by the second week and we were finally able to enjoy cooler temperatures (overnight, at least).

 

The festival in Barunga was a great experience.  It felt really interesting to be in a cultural minority in our own country.  But there was a really positive vibe and it was a great way for the children to experience the kind of life that indigenous people have in these communities.  Our only disappointment was that we did not get much of an experience of traditional culture at the festival.  Much of it was geared to educate the aboriginal people about being healthy, their rights and social services that were available to them.  We did, however, enjoy lots of indigenous rock music at the nighttime concerts

 

After the festival we headed north again and camped in at Katherine gorge.  We found the gorge itself a bit expensive and comercialised.  Choosing not to pay exorbitant rates to travel the gorge via air or water we tried our luck walking across the top.  Sarah and Evan accompanied Ninny and Pa to Butterfly gorge.  It sounded like the pick of the gorges, as it was picturesque and yes there were plenty of butterflies there too.  Steve, Emma and Harry tackled a less demanding walk and headed out to Pat’s lookout.  It took plenty of cajoling but we managed to get Harry all the way there (eventually) and we enjoyed the splendid views.

 

Sadly, we found out about the death of Emma’s Father, the children’s little Pa, upon our return to mobile phone reception in Katherine.  We headed back to Darwin and set up camp again at Lee point.  Then Emma left Steve and the children to spend a week in Darwin while she flew back to a very cold Canberra.  Ninny and (big)Pa moved on to Kakadu.  We were hoping to catch up with them again later in our trip.

 

6/7/07

We are now in Katherine and still enjoying the perfect camping weather.

When Emma returned to Darwin after her week freezing in Canberra we stayed on a few extra days and made sure we saw all of the Darwin Museum.  It took three goes, but I think we managed it.  Lucky it was free.  The museum was wonderful, we particularly liked the exhibits about Cyclone Tracy, Australia under Attack and the stuffed specimens of birds and animals.  Steve has become quite a bird watcher (of the feathered variety).

We left Darwin and drove onto Kakadu and ended up spending 10 days there.  We didn’t intend staying so long but the time flew by without us even noticing.  Kakadu is great, and cheap.  There is no park entry fee anymore and many of the campsites are free.

We spent 3 nights in Northern Kakadu at a free campsite called Malabandjubandju.  From here we visited Jabiru, and the excellent visitor information centre and the spectacular Ubirr Rock.

Ubirr Rock was amazing!  The rock art was extensive and impressive, and the view towards the Arnhem Land escarpment from the top of Ubirr Rock was breathtaking.

 

We headed almost 200km south (Kakadu is a big place) to Gumlon Campground.  This was a $5.40/night campground where we could get a nice hot shower.  Here we met up again with Steve’s parents (Ninny and big Pa). We stayed for 3 nights and while here had the fortune to go into an area that we should have had a permit for.  People we were camped with had a key to Koolpin gorge.  So we borrowed it and went for an explore over rocks and up rock pools to the top of the gorge.  Once again, magnificent views were to be had.

While at Gumlon we caught up with some traditional Aboriginal culture.  We visited the culture centre near Cooinda, watched a slide show about history of the area (including the 1950’s uranium mine at Coronation Hill) and participated in some basket weaving using pandanus palms.  We ate bush damper prepared by our Aboriginal host which Evan and Harry particularly liked, embarrassingly so.  They ate so much that the Aboriginal family had to pull out an extra one from their store to feed them with.

We climbed up above the falls at Gumlon to some beautiful rock pools at the top.  The water was so clear it looked like a picture from a resort brochure.  These falls used to be called UDP falls which stands for Uranium Development Project.  It gives some indication of the area’s past history and the fact that using Aboriginal names for places is a much more attractive option.

 

We continued travelling with Ninny and Pa and moved camp to another free camp ground at Sandy Billabong.  This one was more in the middle of Kakadu, down a 4WD only track.  The first night was frighteningly quiet with no other campers around and Emma laying in bed imagining one or all of 4 different wild animals coming to devour the family in their sleep. Crocodiles, buffalo, wild pigs or dingoes were all possible visitors to this campsite.  The following nights saw many campers move into to join us including a number of tour groups.  So we never felt so alone again.

From this campsite we explored central Kakadu.  We visited Nourlange Rock and were treated to very interesting and entertaining ranger talks about the landscape and the rock art that we were seeing.  We visited Anbangbang Billabong for lunch and then climbed the rocks above it to the lookout.  We went further than the track and climbed right to the top of the Rocky escarpment for some wonderful views.  On the way back down we discovered some rock art.  It showed a story depicting lots of stick figures and a large rainbow serpent.  We wish we had our ranger with us to interpret the rock paintings for us and to tell us about the significance of the site.

We visited Jim Jim Falls on one of the days.  This is probably one of the best known areas in Kakadu.  We could not access Twin falls as the road was closed.  Jim Jim was a tall fall that we accessed by a long rocky scramble.  There was a plunge pool at the bottom in which we all enjoyed a well earned swim.

 

Reluctantly we packed up; knowing that there was still heaps to do, but that  it will have to be saved for another visit.  Now we are in Katherine (again) re- stocking and catching up on washing before the next leg of our journey.  We have decided to head west and dip our toe into Western Australia.  It was never our intention to touch West Oz, but given the cold southern air and the fact that we are so close we just can’t resist popping across to Kunnunara and Wyndam.  Where to from there who knows.................

Until next time, from who knows where, take care and enjoy the winter, we sure are!