Category: Trying new things

And all that Jazz

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A couple of my very talented friends invited me to the Brisbane Jazz Club Sunday week ago to hear them perform with some of their very talented friends. Among other things, there was a grand piano that was very grand; a lovely lass with an angelic voice; a saxophone with some deep tones; a cheeky bass; and 3 ukeleles played by 3 lovely ladies. And it was just lovely. Song after song, I was humming along. (Yes, I meant that.) They played 3 sets that were all very different from each other, and really kept the whole crowd entertained.

But the highlight for me was the 3 lovely ladies playing this song on their ukeleles, though it sounded (and looked) a little different!

Cast off

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Aaaaaaahhhhh…..

That was the relief I felt when my cast came off yesterday. I’m free! I can walk again! Or so I thought. Was it crazy for me to think that they would just fit me with a boot and I’d walk out of there unaided? (You know, except for the boot.) How wrong I was. I figured since the bones had healed nicely, I’d be right! A bit weak maybe, but I certainly didn’t expect the level of pain I was about to experience. Especially when the kind orthopaedic surgeon pushed down on certain parts of my foot and asked “Does this hurt?”

Does it hurt? DOES IT HURT????? YES IT FREAKIN’ HURTS!! DID YOU NOT SEE THE 3 BROKEN BONES THAT ARE STILL HEALING!!!!!?????

My foot is still bruised and a bit swollen, and I can’t really move it much on my own. The best bruise is the one under my foot:

And I can’t believe it’s still swollen!!

I just figured by this stage it would be a lot better than it is. I thought I’d wear the boot for a week or 2 and be good as gold, but I couldn’t even walk on my foot yesterday at the hospital without the crutches, even in the boot. By the end of the day though, I was just walking around in the boot. Just a bit, to ease myself into it. When I woke up today I needed the crutches for the first couple of hours but am now walking around okay. I just have to be careful not to push it, and to pace myself so it doesn’t take longer than necessary to get me back on both feet.

I have to wear the boot 24/7 (yes, even to bed), (but not in the shower – woo!) for 1-2 weeks, then just during the day for another 2-4 weeks after that. I guess the Doctor at my visit 4 weeks ago did say it was a 3 month injury.

So this is me for the next few weeks:
Sexy, oui?

Correction

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In fact, I broke 3 bones in my foot. I went to the doctor in Mt Beauty yesterday to get my cast “upgraded”, so they took off my intermediate cast, and this is what my foot looked like:

What? Doesn’t it look bad enough? How about from this angle?
Still not convinced? Well check THIS out!!? Hellooooooo cankle!!

After having a look at the CT Report, the doctors thought it best that I actually go back to Wangaratta and attend their fracture clinic this Friday so an Orthopod can check it out and decide on a “game plan”.

Why, you ask? (or maybe you didn’t…)

Well, I’ve always been a little contrary. I’ve never done things the normal way. My life doesn’t really “follow the rules”. So when I break bones, I break them good. And as the doctor yesterday stated, I have broken “an unusual combination of bones.” From what I can remember, I’ve broken the 2nd Metatarsal, the 2nd/Medial Cuneiform, and the Cuboid. (See here.) (Hubs is going to correct me I’m sure.)

So yeah, the fun continues! Mum has been an absolute God send these last few days while Hubs has been at work. I’ve just been sitting around, contemplating my navel laptop. And Mum just made us chicken stir fry for dinner. Hubs isn’t a big fan of stir fry but it’s one of my favourite meals so I’m going to be enjoying it with Mum quite a bit while Hubs is in Wang! Yum!

Bring on the PMA

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My friend and I frequently use the term “PMA” (Positive Mental Attitude) in our day to day lives. When we’ve had a rough night with our boys, we try to instill a PMA for the following day.; if we think something is going to be too hard, we try our darndest to have a PMA and get through it.

On Sunday afternoon, my PMA was nowhere to be found. Hubs was working in his office for the afternoon, and I was tired and defeated by the thought of tidying the house and packing for Wang. I had written my list, but I wasn’t prepared to act on it. So I sat down and started writing a “my life is so hard” blog post. I was reading through and editing when Chanbe needed my attention so I left it, planning to return and publish the post later on.

Chance was going a little bonkers inside the house so we went out onto the deck and played with his cart and trike. We had a really good time and as I was watching him I thought “I have the power to turn this around!” Bring on the PMA!! So we came back inside and I started tidying and packing. Just doing one task at a time, playing with Chance for a bit, then doing a bit more.

I had completely forgotten about my blog post until hours later when I found it, had a quick read, and promptly deleted it. It felt goooooood. So thanks to my super organising, we were pretty much ready to go by Sunday night at 10pm! Chance woke us up around 7am (very reasonable!) and all we had to do was eat brekky, pack the esky, pack the car and make our cups of tea for the road. Which meant we left an hour early, which meant we arrived in Wang an hour early, which meant the 3 of us could walk to Hubs’ work together and grab lunch on the way!

I love it when hard work pays off! Speaking of hard work, I also joined the gym yesterday afternoon, and between walking there and back both yesterday and today, and the pump* class I did this morning, I’m beat! But, you guess it, it feels gooooood. I might just have a little nappy-nap before Chance wakes up 🙂


*I only wish I looked as good as the guys and gals on the video!!

We’re sailing! – Part I

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Since being in Brisbane, Hubs hasn’t had a lot of luck with sailing. He has owned his hobie catamaran, “Big B”, since before we were together, and we have had a lot of great times on that boat. For the last 3.5 years however, it has been sitting in his Dad’s backyard, yearning to be free. So the boat was in our front yard within days of arriving in Brisbane.

The first day he took the boat out with BFF Ben, they cartwheeled the cat in really rough conditions resulting in this:

But you should have seen their faces. “It was totally awesome! You should have seen us!!” I’m kind of glad I didn’t as I probably would have been worried sick, but I’m glad they got some thrills in the process of smashing up the boat 🙂

So Hubs and Ben spent an evening building a new boat from the 2.5 boats Hubs owns, and had quite a bit of success. Um, except for the fact that when they took it out, it… um… almost sunk. After more fibreglassing of the hulls, Hubs and another one of his mates Nate had a great afternoon of sailing up and down the waterfront at Margate:

It turned out though, as you can see from the photo, the blue hull was taking on water again, but it was through the pylon, not the bottom of the hull, so Hubs has since sealed this leak and is keen to take “The Phoenix” out again.

Part II to come…

A numbers game

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(See here and here for previous numbers games)

in 2011…
20 (ish) – the number of full nights sleep I had
3 – the number of places we have lived
5 – the number of times we visited Brisbane
??? – the number of kms we’ve clocked up
1 – the number of candles on Chanbe’s birthday cake
2 – the number of Grandparents I lost
192 – the number of blog posts I published
8 – the number of awesome Mums I met who enrich my life

in 2012…
2 – the number of times we will move house
20 – the number of boxes of stuff I’d like to donate to Vinnies
4 – the number of tables/bench spaces I will strive to keep clear
2 – the number of semesters Hubs has left of medicine
1 – the number of PhDs Hubs will receive
1 – the number of blogs I’d like to beautify

Sconnoisseur

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To say that Hubs loves scones would be an understatement. He loves scones. When our lovely neighbour made some the other week, Hubs devoured them and claimed they were the best scones he’d ever had. So when we had said lovely neighbour over for dinner last night, I asked what her recipe was.

She reminded me of Nanny when she told me she had to recipe. You just start with about 2 cups of self-raising flour, and add the right amount of butter, a couple of spoons of icing sugar, an egg, some very cold cream and chopped dates. Her tips were to just use a knife to stir (handling as little as possible) and use a very hot oven – about 240 degrees. Also, if it’s an electric oven, cook the scones on the bottom shelf, and if it’s gas, cook on the top.

Seeing as how I’d never made scones before, I thought I’d give it a go, as Hubs has his first exam this week and I wanted to do something extra nice for him.

I didn’t have dates so I substituted with craisins. That reminds me of one of our favourite moments in the TV show My Family, where Susan is cooking dinner (she is not known for her skills in the kitchen) and she says “I’m cooking Duck a l’orange. But I didn’t have any duck so I used mince. And I didn’t have any oranges so I used pears.” Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Anyway. Back to the scones. This is how the mixture looked:

It wasn’t until I had put them on the tray that I realised I’d forgotten the egg. And the icing sugar. But I figured they looked pretty good, so I’d give them a go. What do you think?

They were very very light and fluffy and quite delicious, even if I do say so myself! We had them straight out of the oven with a bit of butter and a cup of coffee, sitting on our deck. Chanbe even liked them!

As I was sitting there, enjoying our view, I thought to myself once again how lucky I have been to have had Hubs around so much in the last 12 months. A lot of people say to us how hard it must be with Hubs studying full time, and not having an income. And as much as it sucks not having money most of the time, having Hubs around to see Chanbe’s first year, and to give me sleep-ins and a cooked breakfast a few mornings a week, and to be able to have 3 meals a day together a lot of the time, and and and and… well it’s worth being broke for a while. Hubs has 1 more year of full-time study, and then it will be a totally different ball game. But I’m looking forward to the challenges that will bring.

We made it!

/ Renae / 1 Comment

Here’s cheers to the first year of parenthood! It gets easier from now on, right? 🙂

And here’s cheers to my 600th post! I’m currently trying to make scones for the first time ever. And I just realised I forgot to add the egg. Oh well! We’ll see how they go…

The weaning game

/ Renae / 2 Comments

Yes this is a post about breastfeeding. And lack of sleep. Just letting you know.

I have successfully weaned Chanbe off his daytime feeds, with only his post-dinner feed remaining. Night-time feeds, however, have been a bit trickier. He’s used to waking up, getting boob, then going back to sleep. It’s worked for him for almost 12 months now, so why should he expect any change?

Because Mama needs more sleep, that’s why.

I’ve been able to put him to sleep during the day a couple of times without having to resort to a feed, which I’ve been really happy with, but when he wakes up at night, (ie 11pm, 1am, 3am, 5am etc) it’s a different story. So far, I haven’t even tried dropping those feeds, as it would just mean lots of tears (mostly mine) and too much of a disruption to an already crazy routine. The theory is, there will be 3-7 rough nights, but then they learn that they don’t need boob to go back to sleep, and they start to “self settle”.

It’s those 3-7 rough nights that we haven’t been able to commit to as yet.

I just spent 15 minutes trying to settle Chanbe by rocking, singing, patting etc, but he knows what he wants, and doesn’t understand why, after having it for so long, he’s suddenly being cut off. Hubs came to the rescue, and I can currently hear the whistle from the Sleepy Train starting off. I’m really hoping it works, as Chanbe is getting himself into quite a state.

I’m not a fan of controlled-crying, but somehow this is supposed to be different – you’re with them the whole time so you are able to comfort them, but it still breaks my heart. We have committed ourselves to the 3-7 nights once we arrive in Brisbane and have settled in for a few days. The idea is, that Hubs tends to him during the night, and when he realises there’s no boob to be had, he won’t wake up anymore. The reason we can’t do it now, is that Hubs is coming into exams and really can’t afford to lose the sleep.

So the question is, does this really work? Or, more importantly, after a year of interrupted sleep, will it work for us!!??

bbbbbbbbad to the bone

/ Renae / 1 Comment
Guess who?

(I’ll give you a hint: It’s not me or Chanbe. Or The Stig.)

Did you guess?? So yeah. Now my Hubsband rides a motorbike. I guess he felt like he had too much free time, what with studying/working full time, raising an (almost) 1-year-old, being an attentive wonderful Hubs, gliding on weekends…. Ha!

Hubs first broached the subject of getting his motorbike licence a few months ago, and at the time I thought that it would be something that would happen in the next year or 2. Instead, it happened in a few months. He did a course and got his learner’s permit, and in Victoria, that pretty much means you can get yourself a bike and ride on your own. Crazy, no?? The learners course is in a carpark at the Wangaratta airport. No traffic and no speeds over 30kph. And all of a sudden they’re allowed to ride a motorbike up to 650CC in the big wide world??????

So then it was time to look for a bike. Hubs jumped onto eBay, and Hubs being Hubs was quite taken by a couple of fixer-uppers (or “orphan bikes” as my Dad calls them) but I suggested that could be something he looked into later down the track when he has an actual garage to do the fixing up. And then he found it. A 2006 Kawasaki Eliminator. Who on earth had the great idea to call a motorbike an Eliminator. As if I’m not scared enough!!

And the icing on this danger cake of insanity? We had to pick it up from Melbourne. 350km away. So we left Chanbe behind with my parents who are staying with us at the moment, and set out on Sunday at 8:30am. We made it to Melbourne in great time and was at the guy’s place at 1pm. Hubs took it for a burn safe ride around the back streets to get a feel for it, and we were on the road. Well, kind of. It took us 20 minutes to go about 2km because of Melbourne traffic, and we weren’t even in town!! I was in the car following Hubs and I don’t know that I have ever been more terrified in my life. But he navigated his way beautifully and we were soon out of the busy traffic and onto the safety of…. the freeway.

We arrived at the motorbike accessories shop and I started to calm down a bit. It seems that Hubs is a bit of a natural. He looks like he’s been riding for years, and he loved the freeway riding – much less stressful than being in the middle of traffic. We suited him up with a new helmet, jacket, gloves and pants. He sure does look the part. We then started to head home. It was 3:30pm by this stage, and by the time we stopped a couple of times for fuel, and for a rest in Wangaratta, we didn’t get home until 9:30pm. It was a ridiculously long day, and we were both happy to be back home.

I must admit that I love it. I’m not saying that I’m not going to worry every time he gets on and rides away, but there’s something very sexy about a man on a motorbike, oui?