Quality time.

I always try and pass on the things I have learnt, important skills, and other things that might come in handy through life’s journey. Today, Jack and I painted the front of the shed. I taught him the right way, to get the paint even, no drips, nice and neat. And he did a fantastic job. We Also did some more sealing work around the back of the shed, getting it ready to paint as well, and some gardening. He just loved seeing how to do all theses things.

For a reward for his hard work, and bloody great work too, it turned out really good, I took him down to Babinda Boulders for a swim this afternoon. Mum was tired, so it was just me and Jack. We had a good drive down there, and spent about an hour and a half in the icy cool water, and it was so refreshing after sweating our backsides off in the morning.

We stopped in at the local supermarket for a treat after the swim, and then did a bit of back road driving on the way home, checking out some of the side roads on the way back. It was worthwhile, as we think we have found another great swimming hole a lot closer to home !!

Tomorrow, weather permitting, I am going to try and get one of the sides of the shed ready to paint, and if lucky, get it painted too. I am trying to get it sorted, especially the sealing it up to stop the leaks bit, because I am going to line the inside with insulation and boards, and turn it into my art studio. I have so wanted a specific space just for painting for so long, and now the opportunity is here. It may not be ready until mid May, as the shed dad is getting built is delayed, yet again, and I can’t do the lining work until his stuff is out of the old shed and in the new one. I can almost see it now, but not quite yet.

I am also looking at some windows, I need to replace the window in the back of the shed with a decent one, as the current one is just a perspex one with plastic frame, and is very crazed and stained, so a bit bigger, glass and aluminium framed one, is really what I want to put in. I have been looking at them at the Recycle Shop, and they are a real good price, but really don’t want to get one just yet until I can virtually just put it straight in, as I don’t want a glass window just sitting around on the off chance that it might get broken before it gets put in. I need a decent window, not only for light, but airflow, it is just a shed, so I need to be able to get it cool enough to sit and work in.

Last night, my one remaining cherry tomato plant was destroyed by the neighbours cats, they snapped it clean off in a fight, and knocked over several pots which have small desert roses in them. Luckily they survived, but unfortunately, the tomato plant is beyond saving. It really sucks, because of the 4 I had growing, 3 succumbed to wet weather and crushing heat early on, it survived, then went really ill as it first flowered, so I did a bit of work on it and managed to resurrect it, carefully cutting it back to help it get strength, and it came back really beautifully, started flowering  again a couple of days ago, and was doing very well, and then the cats snap it off.

I am actually pretty pissed off about it. It is actually illegal for people to leave their cats out at night around here, and our neighbour has three of them that they feed outside, never let inside, and just let them kill everything in sight. I am getting some plants to get rid of them from our yard, apparently they don’t like Coleus plants, so we are going to underplant all the trees around the boundary of our property with them. Plus, we are keeping all the citrus rinds and grating them up to scatter around, as apparently cats hate that too. If it doesn’t work, I will be getting a trap, and if they stray into it, they will be going to the pound. I really don’t like animals that obliterate native wildlife, like cats do, and the fact they are coming in and wrecking the garden irks me as well.

Anyhow, I must get off to bed, it’s late once again, and I really need to get some rest, I have been over doing it for days, and it is really taking it’s toll.

Andy.

 

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School Holidays and other adventures

It seems the craziness of life just wants to keep me hurtling forward. No rest for the wicked they say, but surely I haven’t been that wicked.

Nothing ever stops. There just doesn’t seem to be a moment where I am just in a zone of peace and quiet, without a care in the world. There is always something going on.

So, this first week of the school holidays has flown by. I just don’t know where it has gone. It’s just full on crazy. We had plans for 2 outings a week during the holidays, but this week it’s been one. We had a really wonderful day trip to Lake Barrine, which is just up the road on the Atherton Tablelands. It was really quite a remarkable place. It is a crater lake, ie, a lake in the crater of a former volcanic vent. It is surrounded by the most amazing rainforest, full on tropical rainforest, heck, it even rained when we were there, even though it wasn’t forecast. The sounds of the Eastern Whip birds rang through the trees, amazing curtain figs went from high in the sky to the cool, crystal clear waters of the lake below. A multitude of fungi and strangler vines, huge towering giants of the forest reaching to the sky. It was really beautiful. Mum and Jack even spotted some of the very rare musky rat kangaroo, a small rodent sized kangaroo which live in the very specific habitats surrounding these crater lakes.

After a 5 kilometre hike through the rainforest, we headed on to Atherton, and lunch. At Atherton, they have an amazing IGA supermarket, where you can get all sorts of stuff, it’s like an Aladdin’s cave of food. After lunch, we did a bit of Op Shopping, and stopped in at a place called Crystal Cave, a shop which has, you guessed it, lot’s of crystals, as well as a good range of fossils and other geological wares.  On the roof of this place, in the main street of Atherton, is a Triceratops, and on the footpath at the front door is a velociraptor like those in Jurassic Park. So, obviously, the little dinosaur mad nut was in his element. He even got to hold rocks from outer space, thanks to the sales assistant.

The rest of the week has been filled with lots of jobs around the house, and the usual weekly stuff like shopping. It’s seemed like we haven’t stopped, although, apart from the one outing, we have been at home.

Last Saturday, I did a huge job in the back garden, it was the first rain free day for weeks, and so I got out and did a heap of work in the vege garden. I have planted cucumber, radish, lettuce, spring onion, spinach and some sunflower seeds, and all of them, apart from the sunflowers, have sprouted today. Yes, amazingly, everything apart from the flowers wasn’t there yesterday afternoon when I watered them, and this morning, nice neat rows of seedlings are now poking out of the worked over soil, only 1 week later.

A few of the other plantings have been suffering a little due to the prolonged overcast and wet days, but now, for the past week, it has been sunnier, and we are seeing a good recovery in them all. We even had a small harvest of beans in our stir fry tonight from the garden.

One of the grape vines is now fully trained onto the lower trellis wire, as well as the Passionfruit, and the Passionfruit has a couple of nice leaders just about ready to go up to the top wire of the trellis. The citrus plants are going well, and our birds eye chilli bush is producing well, supplying some nice zing in our pasta’s and other cooking. The food production is really starting to happen.

Our little lean to out the back of the shed is being rebuilt, I completely dismantled it, and am now rebuilding it, the main frame is completed, and now all bolted together rather than just screwed, making it more safe in the event of a cyclone. I have one section of roof back on it, and hopefully, all going well tomorrow, the roof will be complete. It is a bit taller than before, as it was so low that I was leaning over every time I was inside it, and 2 of the main beams of the frame were very weak and half rotted, so it really had to be fixed.

I also cleaned up the front of the shed, and have sealed it all up properly to stop it leaking, and hopefully, weather permitting, Jack and I will paint it in the next day or two. We have some old paint from the exterior of the house, and seeing we won’t be using it on the house again, it’s a waste not, want not scenario, so instead of wasting the paint, we will paint the shed, thus making the shed last longer too. Dad also got a big tin of paving paint, as the concrete steps leading up to the shed are not made well, the concrete is fairly fragile, not enough cement was put in the mix, so it is all pressure washed now, and to stop it deteriorating further, it will be protected by the paving paint. There is enough paint for that, as well as under the entertainment area of the verandah, so once that is sorted a bit more, it will get freshened up too.

Well, it’s just ticked over to midnight, so I must get some sleep, and until next time, smile.

Andy.

Light show

Tonight, after several very warm and incredibly humid days, the heavens have erupted in a dazzling light show. It’s been rumbling with thunder since 5pm, and its just past 10pm now. I made a few attempts to get a few shots, but the rain just kept chasing me around. I may have something, I am not sure, but nothing too spectacular.

Yesterday Mum and I went off to the nursery to get some Bird of Paradise plants, Strelitzia’s, and one is planted already, the other will be done when I level out the ground where it needs to go. We even had the first 3 beans off our bean plants, Jack, Mum and I all had one fresh out of the garden, and it is years since I have had fresh beans !!

I have tied up the bean plants, to get them off the ground, and added some wires to the tomato trellis also, the tomato plants are growing like mad right now, it’s incredible. Talking about incredible, the 2 grape vines and the passionfruit vine are all growing about 2 to 3 inches every day at the moment. I am blown away.

The rest of the garden is doing well, I managed to cut a bit of the lawn out the back today, but my fibromyalgia is not good right now, so there is still a little bit to do.

Tomorrow is shopping day, but tomorrow Mum also wants to get a new school shirt for Jack, the shirts are special ones you can only get from the school, so we will have to get that before we head off to the markets for our fruit and vegetables, and then to the supermarket for the rest. It is our off week for the butcher, so at least we don’t have to do that.

Jack is motoring along at school, making impressive progress. Tomorrow is Cross Country day, and then next week is school photo’s, and it is also the last week before Easter break. We have a few plans for the school holidays, we will go off for a day trip to Babinda Boulders for a swim, we are thinking of a day trip to the Botanic Gardens, and I can’t remember the other things Mum said, but we reckon we will do about 2 things special a week for the holidays.

I must go now, my medications are all kicking in, and the fatigue is coming over in a flood.

Andy.

Pugglewomp

Another of the weird titles, just to try and lighten my mind.

I am in a bit of a shambles right now (I was about to write “write now”, so as you can see….yep, shambles). Too many upsetting things happening in my own country, I’ve already vented about it, but the lessons haven’t been learnt, the people who have created the problem are back to business as usual. It is just so frustrating that imbeciles are running things. These are just plain, stupid people.

Now, aside from that, life goes on, as it does. I have to do things to take my mind off the pathetic state of affairs, so I have got back into my garden today after a couple of weeks of not doing much in it, firstly, I was pretty ill for a week, then it has been raining incessantly for the past week, so gardening hasn’t exactly been a viable option. Firstly, I got out and tied up the tomatoes, and found that all three varieties I have planted are starting to flower. I also have several flowers on the corn I planted, and the beans are also packed with flowers and going great. There are heaps of viable small Pawpaw plants now going ahead in leaps and bounds, I will have to thin them and pot some up, as there are so many growing. I might get them strong and then sell them for a bit of pocket money. The Banana plant is now over 6ft tall, and going great, the passionfruit vine is nearly completely trained on the lower part of the trellis, so the next bit will be getting it started on the upper part, and the 2 grape plants are also going amazingly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t ready to go to the second wire in another months time also.

I also did a bit of a trim up around the place, the Tahitian Lime needed a little trim, it’s still quite small, so I need it to get taller before I let it grow out too many branches, I don’t want a tree that I can’t get to the trunk of when it’s a big tree. The Valencia Orange and the Imperial Mandarin are also going great, the orange in particular, the first one I put in of the citrus, is just growing like crazy. Because all of them are growing so rapidly, and now after a week of solid rain, I have fertilised them all again today as well, as I want them to have everything they need to get well established as quickly as possible.

We have some Murraya’s down the side of one of the verandahs, they were ill when we moved in here, and looked like they might not survive, but with lots of TLC they are now doing what they need to do, create a privacy hedge down the side of the verandah. I gave them a trim also today, most of them are now at Gutter height, and will be kept that height, so they don’t fill the gutters with leaves. Also, the almost dead Golden Duranta’s we had down the side are now also at the top the fence, considering they were almost dead too, when we moved in, and barely half a metre high, they are really doing well. We planted more of them down the same side where obviously some older ones had died, and those are now all getting to the height that the established ones were when we moved in. I think there is about 10 of them we planted, so when it all gets up to around 6ft, we will keep them at that height too. We have some shitty neighbours on that side, so a good screening hedge is exactly what we need there !!

Jack has started a literacy program at school last week, he spends an hour 4 afternoons a week getting extra tuition through the school, so it isn’t costing me anything, thankfully, but he is finally getting the extra help with his reading and writing that we have so desperately wanted for him. It is certainly showing too, because he is going ahead in leaps and bounds, it’s quite astonishing really. I am so glad he is finally getting tghe hang of it. We have poured a lot of work into it ourselves, but because the previous schools didn’t seem to understand that the way they were trying to teach him wasn’t working, it was difficult, because we were trying to teach him the way we had learnt, and they are stuck on this stupid sound out the letters crap, which doesn’t work. You know, if, for example, if you sound out the letters of a simple word like “the”, t-h-e, it doesn’t sound like “the” . We had been trying to teach him all the combined sounds, like th, oo, ou, ee, ea, ing, but the way the school did it was sounding out all the individual letters, which just doesn’t work. Here, in Queensland, they teach it the way we were trying to all along, and now the consistency is happening at school as well, he is going well. He even said to me last night that he now gets what we were trying to teach him, and it’s better, easier, and makes sense. He is a smart kid.

I have a little project that is in waiting, I have yearned for a proper studio in which to paint, and because I just haven’t had the place to do it, I haven’t done much painting for a while. Well, when dad finally has his shed built, and moves all his stuff out of the shed we already have here, I am going to line the roof with insulation and the side wall that gets full sun as well, and then frame up the walls and put proper lining inside it. I have power almost set up, it’s still difficult while all the stuff that will go into dad’s shed is still in there, but I have now organised most of the shed, got a proper bench set up, I used the old, heavy laminated bench tops we replaced in the kitchen, got the window fixed so it now opens, and all the stuff that will remain in the shed once dad’s stuff is out of there is all organised and is now where it will remain once the stuff of dad’s is gone. Put it this way, 3/4 of the shed is full of dad’s stuff, so it is going to be roomy once it’s all out. I will get a stool and a small fan, and I have a great 1970’s banker style desk lamp that I will set up in there also, and then I will move all my art supplies out of my room, and it will be all set up, finally. I am really excited about it. I already have the insulation, and most of the framing for the internal walls, and am looking for some decent pallets to use for lining it. I might even put a wooden floor over the concrete if I get enough pallets. It should look awesome when it’s done, and I plan on taking photo’s of it all as it progresses.

Apart from all that, I have had a shocking day with IBS today, to the point that I was on the toilet for nearly an hour after dinner tonight, it was awful and painful. It isn’t a good sign, because usually, that comes right before a bad flare up of the pain and fatigue, and to be honest, I have been struggling with the fatigue already pretty badly, so hopefully it doesn’t get much worse. Every single day for a few weeks now, I have had to sleep during the day for a few hours, even if I slept well all night and had over 9 hours sleep. It’s so bad that basically if I don’t sleep, I would fall down, because that is what my body wants, I just can’t stay awake.  Oh well, that’s just how life is for me now.

Anyhow, I hope you are all doing well, and I hope to write some more again soon.

Andy.

 

Appalled

I started writing this days ago. Even now, I am determined to finish it, but am really still lost for words. Friday last week, an appalling piece of human detritus decided to murder 50 people in the peaceful nation of New Zealand. This complete bag of shit came from my own country, Australia. I still feel physically ill even writing that.

In the days since, I have seen an amazing political leader, well, lead, and another try and hide his complicity in this madness. Jacinda Ardern is the leader EVERY nation needs. Australia’s Prime Minister is a hypocritical dirtbag.

Why, you ask, would I say that about the Prime Minister of my own country? Well, for more than a decade he has actively demonised people who weren’t white and rich. He blames them for every ill in society, just like that other impostor that calls himself POTUS. He calls them terrorists and rapists and murderers. He claims they steal everyone’s jobs.  He claims they steal our hospital beds, cause all the congestion in our overcrowded cities, absolutely anything wrong, is due to minorities and migrants. He’s been doing this all his political career, which is a lot longer than Trump’s.

So, this week he has been insincerely saying how horrible it all was, pretending that he cares. He is a narcissist and a liar, as they all seem to be. He has no compassion for anyone or anything. Oh, did I mention he is an extremist Christian? Oh Hillsong Church………

So, here he is, in denial, that his own rhetoric has created this monster who went on to murder all these men, women and children in one of the most peaceful nations in the world, one of our neighbours.  Every time he opens his mouth it is denial and hypocrisy. Not a thing is changing here in Australia, he talks the talk, but white supremacists are running rampant, and nobody is doing a thing to stop them. They even get protected by the Police from those extreme radical lefties who might force them to eat some tofu, the most dangerous thing a lefty can do.

I am now really ashamed to be Australian. I really hope, that come May, when we have our federal election, this phoney Prime Minister is voted out, along with the vast majority of his party’s other members in parliament. Total electoral annihilation would be good. We have had this political party (the misnamed Liberal Party of Australia, who are actually right wing extremist conservatives) in power the the best part of two and a half decades, with only a small break from them from 2008 to 2013. They have ripped the country to bits, pitting neighbour against neighbour, man against woman, poor against rich, white against black, Christian against everyone else for all this time. They have acted corruptly and looted the public purse and all it’s assets. They have destroyed the country I love. This horrifying act in New Zealand is just a symptom of the disease that is right wing conservative Christian extremism which has infected Australia.

I am so, so sorry to all those who have been affected by this tragedy. Not all Australians are like this piece of shit who did this terrible thing. I hope, come our election, that we can show you that the majority of us aren’t like that, I hope my country can show ME that the majority isn’t like that.

Love and peace to all,

Andy.

Observations of Day One

I know, some of you have followed me for other reasons, but right now the fibromyalgia thing has taken over a bit. I promise, it will pass, but right now, it is overwhelming my life.

I have gone my first full day without any painkillers, and it is really, really not nice. The pain is off the scale, and honestly, if I hadn’t given myself a few days to mentally prepare, I’d be a mess, more than I am anyhow, right now. Fatigue is just incredible.

We did go out today, as I posted last night, I was determined, whatever I felt like, and I didn’t feel great this morning. We went up to Mossman, the drive up there is a little demanding, very windy bit of road, but stunning at the same time. By about the usual time for me, between 11am and 11.30am, I started getting the waves of fatigue like usual, but pushed on, but after we had lunch, I knew that getting home was a good idea. However, we did stop at a lovely beach on the way back, Mum went for a walk on her own up the beach for half and hour, Jack played in the sand, and I sat in the shade of a tree on the sand watching them both, using all my willpower to try and get my shit together.

So, I will say, I WAS NOT ADDICTED TO TRAMADOL. I have not had any of the side effects I should have by now, except for an increase in pain, which, is what I would have expected from fibromyalgia, so not a side effect of the Tramadol at all. The fatigue increase is also a good indication I wasn’t, because if I was, it should be the reverse. No nausea, or any of the other symptoms I should be experiencing if I was addicted and having withdrawal symptoms. It also shows me another thing, the amytriptaline I was given months ago, and that I had all the trouble with in October, really didn’t work on the fibromyalgia, because all the increase in fibromyalgia symptoms when I stopped Tramadol and was on amytriptaline then are exactly what I am experiencing now.

Anyhow, I am going to go to bed, and get some sleep, but I just thought it was worth an update.

Andy.

Pig Headed

I’ve decided to be pig headed. I am going to suffer for it. I am currently without any pain medications, and I am going to let it all happen. I am determined to try, and prove a few things to people who need it proving to.

I know it’s going to be unpleasant, it already is, my last Tramadol was this morning, and normally, by now, I’d have taken my bedtime one, but I don’t have any.

Yesterday, I slept most of the day, and then slept well last night, in preparation, trying to get myself into a mental space to be able to deal with the pain I know is coming. My fibromyalgia is pretty bad now, and this little fool hardy enterprise will show others just how bad it is. I have a name for a doctor who apparently knows a thing or 2 about this terrible affliction, but can’t see her for a week, and I am honestly sick of dealing with doctors who are too caught up in the hysteria surrounding Opiod painkillers to prescribe them. Some people don’t respond to other treatments, I am one of them. Because of the paranoia surrounding these strong painkillers, I guess I am meant to suffer.

I am going to attempt to do what we have planned for the weekend still, regardless of how I am feeling. My son needs his father, and we need to have some sort of life together. It seems doctors don’t seem to get that, I thought they were meant take an oath to do what’s best for their patients, but obviously, that is a complete load of crap.

I hope I can get some sleep tonight, I will need every bit of it to deal with what I know is coming, I’ve been here before.

Andy.