Sadness...

We leave the land of smiles tomorrow... I am sad, will miss the food and shopping.  But also eager to get home to cuddle Gryph (who got some serious bling bling!!) and Sox... so miss them.

I'll share my loot in the next post.

See ya back in Oz!

Adieu, goodbye, auf wiedersehen, farewell!

Squeeeeee!

About to go to the airport.  House-sitter is settling in nicely.  Gryph in the doting hands of Roy's parents.  Sox in the same cat motel she's gone to last four years.  Plenty of knitting WIP's packed.  I wanted more, but hey... realistically there's already about 7 or 8 (I'm afraid to count!).  I'm actually pretty thrilled in that all my WIP's are now organised; we needed the suitcase they were willy-nilly jammed in LOL so I went and got some handbag organisers that hang in your wardrobe and I've never been more organised!

My Thailand lies over the ocean,
My Thailand lies over the sea,
My Thailand lies over the ocean,
Bring me back to Thailand yippee!

(our last trip there was when Matilda was living in my belly :))
--- and no I'm not from Thailand, but Malaysia.  It didn't stop the locals trying to speak Thai to me though!

Sawatdee-ka!

PS -- if you never hear from me again it's because we bought one of those million-baht houses and have decided to stay.  :-P

Sick as a dog...

...(Dog! Stop eating my sick!!)  GRYPH!  COME HERE NOW!!!

We've had a spectacular run of gross, gushing V&D this past week.  (That's, for the blissfully inexperienced stands for vomit and diarrhoea). :P

It started with a great day at the Variety Club Xmas party.  Spectacular rides (with M's favourite being the pirate ship slide, even though there were lots of kids she asserted herself when she needed to!), face painting (rainbow butterfly to match her rainbow Rainbow Dress and Pinwheel Sunhat), AND a circus!  We'd gone to the Joseph Ashton Circus before, they're always touring around Perth; that was a few years ago.  Interesting to see them grown up a bit, what a family enterprise!  And a lot, a lot, a lot of food.  There were sandwiches and R was telling me he overheard a lady asking for gluten-free food and was basically laughed at.  So we let her indulge.

Later that night, four or five times of Matilda just waking up, big hurl, change bed change sheets change PJ's, and then pretty much go back to sleep again til the next vomit.  And horrid, horrid poos in the morning.

Well a couple of days later it's my turn.  Nothing says class more than driving down Welshpool Rd in peak hour, discreetly (ah, you think?!) dry-retching into a Kleenex tube... I just wanted to get home.  And 5pm I'm in bed curled up under two doonas but still freezing.  Thank you Roy for stepping up and taking care of Matilda tonight despite your mate being here xoxo.

Ate some leftover dinner, ten minutes later it's out.  And Gryph is feasting.  Ugh!

End of comfort blogging.  I might have the man-flu.

TMI?  Ya think!

She loves it, she really really loves it!

Woot!  After a series of two-hour "welcome to pre-primary" sessions in the last six weeks, Matilda had her first full day at "big kids school" (a local, public, friendly and multicultural) Pre-Primary school today.  She just CANNOT stop talking about how great it is.  There are enough kids for two PP classes, and even though unfortunately the small handful of kids she knew from kindy are actually placed in the other class, she still can't stop talking about the kids in her class, by name (which in itself is a major milestone for her, she has only started referring to specific people by name in the last month or so).  Already it's Cameron said this, Ella did that, etc etc.  I am so thrilled, to the point of tears (happy ones of course), that she has developed SO MUCH socially, she is like a totally different child to when she was diagnosed with ASD.  Now you can't shut her up, now I am a mother who has to deal with "Why?" questions all the time.  Now she is happy and sociable and loves meeting new kids and having new experiences. I'm just SO proud of my little girl... so you'll have to forgive my gushings.  I'm proud, I'm loud about it, and I want to tell the whole world!!!

Times like this, I want to have more kids.  But I don't think I will ever again summon up the level of love and pride that I feel about my one and only.

Tomorrow, we've been invited to the Variety Club's Christmas Party for special needs kids.  A couple of weeks ago we went to a similar event and were showered with gifts, free rides, ice-cream (a special enough occasion to break the dairy ban).

My world is a pretty happy place right now.

I LOVE YOU, MATILDA M. S.!!!  Forever and a day (or two)....

Ah, the perils of anonymous comments

I just had to share this comment I recently got on one of my posts, the spam filter missed it. 

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Hilarious, no???  I have NO idea what it's supposed to mean, or what the native language of the person/bot (more likely) leaving it, but I just found it funny to try to decipher.

All jokes aside, people, please please please (OK three's my limit for begging) leave me some comments!  I'd like to know who's reading this lonely old blog.  I want to try to link up to other blogs (I've seen "blog rolls" on others' blogs) but can't quite work it out yet.  Teknologically challenged is what I am.  So go ahead and give me some hints eh?

To Megan...

(I had a very interesting, unusual encounter with a stranger yesterday.  The parking lot at early intervention was unusually full and I had to park illegally, drop off (the already late) Matilda, and then rush back to my car to move it into a spot that had just freed up.  I was stopped by a stranger, a lovely woman who was doing a seminar on personal development and one of their homework tasks was to approach a stranger with a sealed envelope, ask the stranger to open it and read out some questions about their personal goals, dreams and achievements)

To the lovely Megan, I'm sorry we didn't have more time to talk, what you are participating in sounds very intriguing.  I give kudos for you wanting to improve your personal development, and feel very strongly in the little time we had to talk that you will achieve your "purpose in life", and be damned good at it.  Stress not, it will come in time, life moves in mysterious ways and on it's own timeline.  In the meantime I applaud your desire to help the kids and I wish you all the best in your endeavours.  Thank you for adding a little bit of life-outside-my-own to my day and week.  It is very highly unlikely that you will read this, but I will send it out there to the cosmos anyway.  May your path in life be smooth and clear.  And when it's not, may the trials make you stronger.  xoxo

Muggles in my studio

Urgh. I have the heeby-jeebies at this moment in time. Roy's parents are here for an *extremely rare* visit, and he and his dad are taking apart something in my studio! I need to get in there and dye. Instead I am sitting here feeling wierd that there are muggles in my studio poking around. MY space! MINE MINE MINE!!!

To fill out this post, some recent pics of little Diva Princess (so much so in the past couple of weeks) modeling some recent and not-so-recent FO's.

A "Flirty Skirty" (more than three years old!)  in APHRODITE (never shaved, good as new!), with a couple of "Rainbows and Ringlets" tops

Geisha Girl:  an "In-Threes" with ATHENA Monochromal Gradual Gradient in "My Sweet Valentine"

"Ningaloo Maxi" Super-twirly in Dec 2010 yarn club, dress is in yarn boot camp! (used, abused, washed carelessly)

"Citrus Garden" in hand-dyed ARTEMIS (BWM cotton 8ply), definitely a pattern to be repeated (longer length, cotton shrinks)

An IvyAnna test knit from Zanz 10ply dishcloth cotton