melvania

Yeah, I guess I am.

Started cutting out pieces for more new nappies yesterday. And then last night when I went to bed, I remembered I hadn't yet washed the half metre of bamboo I bought a couple months ago. So everything went on hold till tomorrow. Hopefully then I'll get to actually SEW them. Or one.

Well. I was just looking at the website for the US Consulate to find out what I have to do to get Caleb a passport and register his US citizenship.

If I read it correctly, I have to submit forms to the office in Melbourne. In person.

And (at this point) it costs a total of $176.40 to do both together.

So. Melbourne is what, about 8-10 hours drive from Adelaide? And we'd have to go during the week when the consulate is actually open. Which means using some of Darrin's holiday time.

And do we drive, take the Overland (train), or fly? They probably cost about the same for two adults and an infant, so I guess flying would give us more time.

And I have a road geek for a husband, so that means we HAVE to hire a car.

Yeah, so someday we'll have to do all that.

Yeah, I miss the comments. So either everyone's too lazy to login and comment, or I haven't posted anything comment-worthy in over a month. I'm getting a complex.

So I've turned off the registered-users-only-commenting and now everyone can comment again. And let's just hope the spammers don't work it out. But they will.

Caleb's favourite toy at the moment: my hairbrush.

This morning I found Tim Tams for $1.78 at the Rite Price in Salisbury (John Street). So yeah, of course I bought a couple packets.

And what's with all the FLIES in my house this week? I killed about 30 yesterday, and today there's that many in the windows AGAIN. If I didn't care about the quality of the air we breathe here, I'd just use fly spray.

I've discovered I really like enchiladas. Of course this is using enchilada sauce found in Australia, so it's probably a lot milder than what you'd find in Mexico. Which makes it much more palatable to me.

Take these two cases.

Rabbits in Australia. They're an introduced species here, and they run amok. A number of diseases have been introduced to the rabbit population to try to cut them down. It works on some of the rabbits, but the ones that recover from the disease then produce stronger offspring. So the government introduces another disease, and on and on it goes.

The second case is horse flu in Australia. Horses were getting sick & dying from this horse flu. All the tracks (in South Australia, at least) were closed for a time not long ago because they didn't want it to spread. Then suddenly there's a vaccine available for it, just in time for the Melbourne Cup (which took place yesterday).

So here's my point. Maybe, in order to have a better chance at getting a winning horse, breeders should be letting their animals get sick, get over it, and move on to breed stronger horses, rather than jockeys thinking they have to starve themselves before a race.

Yeah, so I took our vacuum into AusVac this morning, and the guy listened to it for all of two seconds, and said the motor is burned out. And - get this - a new one is $220. He quite rightly pointed out it's cheaper to get a new one, and showed me an example for $199.

So yeah, I don't think we'll try getting it fixed. I did have a look at the Salvos shop, but they didn't have any in the store. If I can't find one on a garage sale this weekend, then we'll see about a brand new one.

Just noticed I used ellipses (plural of ellipsis) in the last three post titles. That's the name for the three dots (...) used to indicate omission of text. So I suppose I used them incorrectly. My apologies.

I just think it's kinda cool that I can still remember the name of it from eighth grade, which is now more than half my life ago.

Well. I told you all about the new mattress. I didn't tell you about the fleas.

Yep, fleas. The day after my parents arrived to visit, Calico jumped the fence and spent THE ENTIRE DAY over on the neighbour's shed roof. And while she was there, she caught fleas off another cat. She brought them home and gave them to Biscuit, who took up residence in our bedroom, all the while shaking and scratching them (and their eggs) onto our bed.

So we had to wash all the sheets & blankets, and we thought the matter was hopefully settled. But apparently we didn't get everything, because I started getting bites on my feet & legs. Darrin didn't get any. Caleb didn't get any. Just my luck. And it's been almost two months since the start of it, and I was still itchy. So Darrin Googled for solutions to the problem. He found a page suggesting fleas are attracted to water with dish soap in it. So he brought a bowl of it into the bedroom, and before he'd even got it on the floor, a couple had jumped in. And they kept jumping in. We kept this up for about a week.

Then I found the mattress. And we picked it up. And one of the other suggestions for dealing with fleas was to sprinkle Borax on the carpet & leave it for 48 hours. So Friday afternoon (after we had pulled the old mattress out in the morning) I Boraxed the floor and shut the door, because apparently the dust isn't good for you. Caleb & I slept in the spare bed and Darrin on the couch for the weekend. We had the new mattress standing up half in the entry, half in the spare room, because there wasn't anywhere else to put it.

Now Sunday afternoon comes along, and we get back from picking up a load of bricks someone was giving away on Freecycle. And I sit down to feed Caleb before I go vacuum up the Borax so we can put the new mattress in...and Caleb falls asleep. Since at this point he won't stay asleep if I put him down, this means I get to sit & watch Veronica Mars till he wakes up (I've been working my way through the entire series; got up to the 3rd season now where Veronica gets drugged...again).

Okay. So by the time he wakes up, the pizza gets here. So we eat it, and watch an episode of Firefly (Our Mrs. Reynolds), and once that's finished, I pull out the vacuum cleaner from its cupboard and start vacuuming the bedroom. And about halfway through the job, it suddenly gets louder and starts smelling like burning circuitry. So I shut it off, emptied the bag, and Darrin comes back inside and smells it, and agrees that it's probably dead.

So we've still got some Borax on the carpet, and now I have to go looking for a new vacuum. Yippee. Well, the Salvos were good with the mattress, so maybe I'll be twice lucky next time I go back.

But yeah, we put the mattress in and slept on it last night, and aside from a slight feeling of rolling off the edge on my side, it's GREAT. For the first time in months I didn't wake up sore.

Oh, and by the way, I'm going to try National Blog Posting Month (or NaBloPoMo) this year and see how I go. Let's see, I've got a 7 month old baby, a veggie garden, a pile of bricks, and some opinions. Should be able to find something to write about every day for the next 3 1/2 weeks....

Here we read the story of a woman whose 17-year-old son was diagnosed with skin cancer. And instead of following what the doctor (who was sure the son would die in a couple of weeks if the cancer was left untreated) told them, they decided to find alternative natural therapies for it. And the boy's cancer is gone now, doesn't show up on any tests...yet the mother is being charged with child abuse, and has been locked up by child "protective" services.

Anyway read the story for yourself, unless you don't want to be ranting at the computer the rest of the weekend....

Yep. A week later than I expected, but he's doing it (only with no nappy though). Not only that, but starting to pull himself up against things and kneeling. And he got his third tooth last weekend. And he swallowed some newspaper on Sunday, which I found in his nappy Monday morning, so I figure since he's got the whole swallowing thing figured out he's ready for a little food. He seemed to like the mashed carrots I gave him.

And twice now he's pushed himself from tummy to a sitting position and we've MISSED IT both times! One minute he's on his tummy, we turn our backs, look at him again, and he's sitting.

And now he's hungry, so I'd better feed him.