handmade christmas shrooms

This year I thought I'd try my hand at some home made gifts of the crafty variety and unlike many of my other christmas ideas i may have actually started this one early enough to be in with a shot of finishing them in time for the big day.



The sewing was a little shoddy on this first effort, but hopefully some practice will sort that out, I'm really happy with the way the little mario mushrooms came out though. The super cute pattern was from the boards on Sprite Stitch and was pretty quick to do, even for a novice like me.

Powder room cats

The salon I go to has a beauty parlor upstairs which is littered with all these little porcelain cats, which is an aesthetic I heartily approve of.



Just look at those guys!

Ooops

No blogging since August, lazy, lazy.

Well it looks like any baby making plans are on a hiatus until the new year at least - thanks to my shiny new heart murmur! I got sick about a month ago now - like really vomity sick, which was all sorts of fun, any way I lying in the local A&E clinic and the Doctor is listening away to my chest and says "Your heart murmur is quite loud, isn't it?"

Cue surprised look from me.

So anyway, Doctor lady assures me that the murmur is due to the sick and that I will be all fine in a week. Accept I'm not. Gutted. The murmur is still there, wooshing away and on the advice of my GP I should wait for a cardiac assessment before getting pregnant. So we will do that, its not like waiting lists are that long right??

As a side note, if it turns out that if I do have something wrong with my heart, I cant wait to write letters to every PE teacher I ever had that said I was lazy because of my sucky beep test/cross country/team sport performances and get all guilt trippy on them about the hole in my heart being responsible for my lack of physical prowess. That will be quite sweet actually.

telethon

Telethon is back!

I loved telethon when I was a kid - I only remember two of them, but both were big events. One of the telethons we were staying at mum's cousin's farm and my sister, her three boys and I were all allowed to sleep in the lounge with the tv on, which is about as good as things get when you're six. The other one I remember distinctly because a girl from my class was interviewed. I already had a bad case of the envies over this girl because A) her name was Cherry B) she had broken her leg (I was forever wishing for broken limbs as a child, which is odd but I have met a lot of others who had similar aspirations) and C) she was in hospital (see reason B). And now here she was on telethon! Jealous!

So I was pretty excited about telethon 09 and I ended up watching an embarrassing amount of it this weekend. I'm not sure why, it wasn't exactly riveting tv but there's something about tired celebrities + live television that I just cant resist. From John Campbell's surprisingly sexual outburst early on, to the unintentionally harsh introductions for some of the bands "Remember these guys? Its fast crew!" Also anything with Mike Puru (awww, Mike Puru, remember him?) has got my vote, and my money apparently, somewhere, one and a quarter children will receive raincoats thanks to me.

Poor Todd was left wondering who exactly was this women and what had she done with the cynic he married. At one stage on Sunday afternoon he looked so genuinely worried I had to reassure him that she would be back tomorrow, safe and sound, and no longer defending Irish dancing as the pinnacle television event of the year.

I even ordered a limited edition flybuys card to support telethon. Interestingly I had intended on donating my flybuys points to the cause, but I didn't have enough. I did not even have enough flybuys points to give them away.

All and all I had a pretty great weekend, I hope they have more in the future, I reckon telethon can only be better with a couple of kiddies to camp out in the lounge with.

dugongs and slice

I know I said that I was going to be writing about babies and what not but something far more pressing has come up and I need your help.

It all started yesterday when I was purchasing a piece of caramel slice for my morning tea at our local trademarked american stye coffee house (or LTASCH). Now I know some of you will say if I am purchasing food from (LTASCH), then really I deserve what I get, because clearly I have no morals, but you can shut up. It’s very close to work and I am lazy. I had selected this particular sweet because it looked fantastic and it was a size suitable for sharing with the receptionist (because as forgiving as leggings are, they are not miracle pants).

It was what happened next that spurred this post, the girl behind the counter took out my slice, cut it in half and put one half in a paper bag and the other half back in the cabinet.

"Um... did you just cut that in half?!?" I was incredulous, and shrill to boot.

This girl then employed the best defense possible, the dugong. By this I mean that she reacted to my shrill displeasure with expression so impassive it stopped me in my tracks (google image search dugong and scroll to the one poking out its tongue, that’s the expression) and said "Yes."

"Well...I'm not very impressed." Lame I know, but her apathy knew no bounds, and heaven knows you can’t argue with a sea cow. On closer inspection the slices in the cabinet did have a score mark on them but unless you are the sort to inspect cabinet food at close range you honestly wouldn't have seen it. I had already paid and people were looking, so I took my sad half a slice and left, muttering vengeful thoughts to myself.

Back at work the receptionist was just as aghast; of course the fact we were now faced with a pathetic quarter of a caramel slice for morning tea probably had something to do with this. Spurred on by her, I decided to phone whoever was responsible and complain, which I did, and I am now owed one coffee, which I have to go in and ask for. Yup, I have to go back to the dugong and ask for my free apology coffee.

So here is where I need help, deep down I am a somewhat petty soul and I want that coffee to make up for my missing slice. But I am also a sensitive soul and even the thought of going in and asking for the coffee makes me embarrassed. What to do, what to do…

So if any one out there has an opinion I’d love to hear it. At the moment I’m giving the coffee a miss.

Needs more boxes

As anyone who has had more than a passing relationship with the medical world will tell you, we health professionals really like our algorithms. I mean we really like them, if something can not be conveyed in flow chart form, then that something is just not worth knowing.

I thought that I understood this curious habit, even embraced it, until tonight, when I was informed my love of flowcharts was seriously lacking.

If you have looked at my profile you may have noticed that I am a nurse and as part of my job I was asked to write up a list of contact details and information sources relating to immunisation to be used by other nurses. I made my list and I even broke it up into little sub lists with pretty headings in bold type, it looked good, it was thorough, I felt pleased with my work. Then came the time for submissions of constructive feedback. "Perhaps if it had boxes?" said one,

"yes boxes" chimed in another.

"But its a list," I said, "not a chart."

"Hmm, yes, boxes and arrows, that would make it easier to read," concluded the first.

Face, palm.

I would like to pretend that I stood my ground, my list was good as it was, sans boxes. But unfortunately text boxes will be added, I think I even conceded bullet points (the outraged scrawl I noted their comments in is difficult to read), but there will be NO arrows!

I have two weeks to resubmit my list. If my listed occupation changes after that then you will know why.

CD 2

Cycle day 2, you say it enough times in your head and it begins to come out like the monologue at the beginning of star trek. Of course, "cycle day 2; I am traversing the increasingly impassable road works outside my home inorder to get to work," is some what less glamorous than what Kirk (who am I kidding, Picard all the way!) and his crew may have been up to on any given star date. Unless of course you are talking about that episode with the space hippies, but I digress...

So yes cycle day 2. Up until 3 months ago I had not given much thought to hormones, or ovulation, or periods. I took my little yellow pill in the morning and it was all sorted, thank you very much. But since June I have neglected my little yellow pills for those of the honking great prenatal vitamin variety, which are rather more kacky in colour. But its cool, even if they do stick in your throat, because we are trying for a baby, and that is exciting as hell.

And so I have discovered a whole new vocabulary, a lot of it abbreviated, TTC, BFP, DTO and a little bit of WTF, which is where the cycle days come in. Well its all a little new for me and because you cant exactly talk about periods or mucus (yes mucus, evidently its important) at work, I thought I might start a blog to nut it out. I haven't written regularly about myself since I was a teenager, but I enjoyed it then and so I am hoping I will enjoy this too, and hopefully I might learn something about my self along the way.

Also now when older people ask what I do, I will say I am a blogger and watch them pitch a fit about genY.

What fun.

PS I promise not to write any more about mucus