Stimulating the Nerves and the Brains

My TENS machine is an absolute saviour at the moment, and has been reallocated to cramp-relief from ankle-pain-relief. With my hysterectomy only 2 weeks off, so I am no longer taking any of my endo/PCO meds, there are bearable days and really really painful days. Today was the latter. I threw Ponstan and some pain meds at it and didn't make a dint. So I tried the TENS.

Relief! This little machine is absolutely fantastic!! And to think that my Great Uncle was on the team that developed it!! Thanks Eric!!! 

Whilst I was stimulating nerves to erradicate cramps, hubby & the girls were stimulating their minds. The girls decided they wanted to learn how to play chess, and so this afternoon hubby sat down and they had their first chess lesson.

It was beautiful to watch, and hilarious at times as when hubby would ask Leah what she wanted to do (i.e. what move she wanted to make) and she would often respond "I want to kill something! What can I kill?" LOL!

Change of tact...

OK, so obviously the challenge of blogging every day for a year didn't quite work out, so I'm just going back to a plain old rambling blog that I hope will be interesting to people out there, if not I'll just be talking to myself!

The girls went back to school today - and they were SO ready and SO happy to be back at school. There was great excitement in Abigail's year as there was a new girl starting this term. There was also great excitement in Leah's year because they are going on an excursion tomorrow - very exciting as it is the first excursion they are going on (they get to go by tram and everything!) The preppies are growing up - the school is taking them out in public! ;-)

So with school back (yes, they started later than other schools... it's a private school thing. You pay heaps and get more holidays... hmmm, am I missing something???) What was I saying? Oh yeah, with school back we are back in a routine - which is so good for me. I need it. I go nuts over the holidays because I don't have a strict daily routine. So girls happy to be back at school and me happy because I'm back into routine. Hubby is just working as per normal, so happy household!

Personal training tomorrow - always bloody hard work but I enjoy it and find it really satisfying and feel really good after. Hubby had training tonight and it was one of the weights programs (the other thing I like about training - different combinations of cardiac & strength each time) so I guess that's what I'll be doing tomorrow!

The new toy - Boxee - is great! We are "backing up" our DVDs onto a couple of 2TB external USB drives that will be plugged into the Boxee. Then the DVDs will be boxed up & stored (no law-breaking here!) Just to get the hang of things I put a few movies on the network to see how they worked and they are perfect - you'd swear you were watching the DVD - but with a couple of presses of a button, and no getting off the couch, you can change your mind and watch a completely different DVD! Brilliant!

Study is still going well and I'm learning so much & really enjoying it. I need to learn to code properly (again, because I have forgotten everything I leant at uni and did on the job in my early days in IT...) and so the best place to start is with C. And if you are going to learn C then you are going to need a copy of Kernaghan & Richie. There lies the problem - where's my K&R???!!!!

Well, back to the books & DVDs for me! And then a reasonably early night for once... hopefully...

Day 20 - Visiting the Kids

It's the middle of the school holidays, and the girls have elected to stay with their grandparents, just outside of Bacchus Marsh, so every weekend Hubby & I have been coming up to visit them and see if they want to come home - which they never do... I'm not taking that personally... Anyway, today being a Saturday, we hopped in the car and headed up to Bacchus (only about a 40min drive from Melbourne) for lunch. I was a really nice suprise to see Hubby's sister and family there too.

--- interruption - laptop battery is about to go flat & I don't have the charger with me ---

OK, so I'm back home and the laptop is happily plugged in and charging, so where was I... Oh yeah, heading to Bacchus...

We made a couple of stops on the way. First was at Urban Salvage - the place to go if you want wood for flooring, decking - the stuff you use wood for... In our case, for my parent's deck that hubby is helping design and once designed, will be helping build. So, of to choose some wood. As soon as I saw the sample of the wood that, unknown to me, would be recommended for their deck, I knew it would look fantastic for their deck! I took some pics with my iPhone, but with the lighting in there you will have to excuse the crap quality of the photos...

the untreated wood

the sample deck @ Urban Salvage

We then popped in to Officeworks and Rudi bought me a Boxee :) What's a Boxee you ask... well, I asked that too as I have never heard of them before. But they're really cool! A Boxee...

...is a cool looking, mostly cube-shaped "black box" that is kinda pretty much like an Apple TV only (a) a hell of a lot cheaper (iTunes content is so ridiculously overpriced!!!) and (b) mostly Open Source, so two thumbs up from me! Oh, and [a little hypocritically] there is an iPhone app that makes your iPhone a remote control for your Boxee. So, Boxee has been taken out of it's box and that's about it so far... I'm sure it will be plugged in to a huge hard drive so we play all we want :) I  do know for sure that it will get a lot more use than our Apple TV2!

THEN we finally got on the highway and drove out to Bacchus. God I miss my girls! It was fantastic to see them, play with them and just generally hang out and have fun.

the garage - a cave of wonders!

cheeky monkeys!



Day 15 - Home Sweet Home

My little "time out" at Castlemaine has come to an end and I'm back home, back to reality. I picked the girls up from their grandparents on the way home - they had a wonderful time there and want to go back! They just adore monkeying around on the monkey bars & swing set!

Have a wonderful week!

x

Day 6 - I'm grateful for... Time with my family

Today was a beautiful sunny day (albeit a bit chilly) and was one of those days that I got to simply relax with my family and play with my girls and just do nothing much. We went out and visited hubby's parents in the country and the girls had a fabulous time running around in 5 acres of bushland.

The old swings ...

... were abandoned in favour of a "new" swing set that was a donation from a neighbour ...

And hubby had a great time the bulk of the afternoon perfecting the flying of a miniature helicopter!

Abigail then decided to start building a cubby house...

While Leah decided to help with the gardening...

While I snuck inside to do a bit of study, but was caught by Abigail...

It was a wonderful, relaxing day that we all really enjoyed! It was great to just get away from it all for a few hours (OK, so I did sneak some study in... but I can explain!!!)

Pop over to Maxabella Loves to see what other people are grateful for!

Day 5 - And the school holidays begin...

It's true - the girls finished up term 2 today at 1pm. We are one of the schools that is either (a) stupid for having 3 weeks holiday in the middle of winter, or (b) smart for having 3 weeks holiday in the middle of winter so everyone can go skiing. Not being one for skiing, I vote for (a). I haven't even seen real snow in my entire life! Seriously!!!

As the school holidays don't tend to take into account the lives of those who work, even I, who am pretty flexible working for myself and now studying, have appointments that I can't just cancel. What to do with the girls? Grandparents!!! I packed a suitcase, bundled the girls into the car and took them out to hubby's parents for the next few days. That gets me through until mid-next week!

I think schools should dispense with holidays all together. I don't mean, or in any way suggest, teachers to give up their holidays - not at all! As the daughter of 2 teachers, I know the teachers really need the break! What I'm suggesting is 2 sets of teachers - one set teaches during the standard terms, and the other set teaches during what is currently the school holidays. Sounds good to me! Hey, and we pay enough in school fees - the least they can do is teach the full year! ;-)

x

Day 2 - Parent/Teacher Interviews

It's that time of year again - the end of semester 1 and reports are out and parent/teacher interviews are under-way. I got mine over and done with this afternoon, after receiving the girls' reports yesterday. No suprises in the reports, but the interviews we the wrong way around! The one I expected to have a lot to talk about had virtually nothing to talk about and the one I thought would be straight forward was anything but!

Confusion... But both girls are happy and socialising very well with their peers, so that's all I really care about at this point in their education - they are only in prep and year 2 after all! (And yes, they can both read and write and do all that basic stuff you need to be able to do...)

P/T interviews are weird - but maybe it's just me. I feel like I'm back at school having been called in to see the teacher or something. Ridiculous, I know, but that's the feeling I get none-the-less... It's like I'm being critiqued as a parent rather than being updated on how my daugther is going at school. But, like I said, that's just me and maybe I'm paranoid...

We are all becoming exhausted - as we always do at the end of term - so we are looking forward to school finishing at 1pm on Friday! Only 3 more sleeps!

x