bullywoolly

Good job it's no-one's birthday today

Because I would have forgotten it.

For the last 30 days I have been convinced that November ended on a Friday i.e. tomorrow i.e. the day that is actually the 1st day of December.  But November ends today! As in on Thursday November 30th! What that means, and what I just realised when I looked at my little typepad calendar thing, is that way down here at the bottom of the southern hemisphere, the NaBloPoMo challenge is over. And I did it. Yay!

NaBloPoMo, we've had a great month. Apart from a few problems early in our relationship, when we didn't really understand what made each other tick, on the whole we've gotten along swimmingly. And while there were times when the internet tried to come between us, we stood our ground.

Looks like we made it
Or I thought so, till today
Until you were there
everywhere
And all I could taste was love
the way we made it

*sniff*

[NaNoWriMo -- I've still got your number. I'll give you a call next year].

It's not my party but I'll cry if I want to anyway because omg where am I going to put all the children?

Tomorrow after school approximately 15 children are expected to show up at our house for Quin and Tabitha's joint birthday party. Because their birthdays are both over the school holiday period, we usually have parties before school ends, otherwise everyone's at the beach, and there is no greater reason for feeling ripped off than when no one can come to your birthday party. Trust me. My birthday's 29 December. Oh no wait, there is a greater reason for feeling ripped off -- it's when your aunties and uncles give you one present on Christmas day and say "and that's for your birthday as well". Oh god, it's all coming back to me now. I can distinctly remember the day I realised -- it must have been the Christmas of 1975 -- that if my birthday was in November like my sister's, or August like my brother's, I'd actually get two presents per year per aunt and uncle. I had been robbed.

Anyway, back to the present. As in the here and now, not the gift. Tomorrow we are having this birthday party and where we are living is the perfect place for kids parties because of y'know, all the outdoors and stuff, and I have this huge list of games like dress-up relay, feed the monster, wrap your partner up in toilet paper (I know! We are crazy) etc etc. Then I woke up this morning to the sound of cyclone-y speed winds blowing the living daylights out of the outdoor sail.  So I checked the weather report and sure enough, the winds will continue over the weekend, but wait, there's more! There are showers forecasted for Friday and Saturday.

While I have plenty of space for millions of children outside, I have space inside for approximately 2.3 children. So I'm thinking maybe we'll play sardines?

You can dance, you can jive

Or you can jazz ballet. We got the official photographs from the concert.  Voila. Or Viola. Or whatever.

This is Quin.

And this is Tabitha.

Omg, they're dressed the same. They must be twins.

Now that the concert is a safe distance away in thank-god-that's-over-with land, I can look at the photos and think, awww, I'm glad they're doing it again next year.  Check in with me next November to see if that sentiment has been maintained.

Phoning it in for NaBloPoMo. No really, I am typing this on my I-mate. Electric fence woes strike again. I blame the neighbours. pfft. Fancy wanting to keep the stock in.

How do I bore thee? Let me count the ways.

You know how I said this blog didn't have a theme? I changed my mind. The theme of this blog is "how much I like living in the country -- stay a while and let me bore you with stories of how many pea pods I picked today and don't even get me started on the strawberries".

Five. That's how many strawberries I picked today.  And when you take five strawberries and quarter them and divide that number by three(ish) that equates to three residents of this house feeling pretty satisfied with their lot in life. We're easily pleased, all of us.

Combine that with a lovely sunny (albeit windy, but not tornado-y) evening, hence the opportunity to cut the grass after work, and it leads one (if that one is me) to the conclusion, as I haul the lawnmower up and down the bank, that this really is the life.   For reals. And then it got even better, because the neighbour from up the road came down on his tractor and asked me if I want to borrow some of his cows. Now, how many times would I have got that offer living in the city, huh?

Sadly I had to decline his offer, because I'd already taken up the offer of the next door neighbour to borrow some of his goats.  It's all about the sharing, out here in farm land.

Peas (in which the pinnacle of blog-worthiness is reached)

But as Sir Edmund Hillary said, getting to the top is only half the battle.

Anyway, as the title of this post indicates, it's all about the peas. Namely, the first peas off the vine.

When we were young, not wanting to run the risk that Mum would cook them, my brother and sister and I would steal the pods off the vine before Mum could get to them. We'd run our thumbnail down one side of the pod to open it up, then run a finger down the inside, pooling all the peas together at one end, and finally flick them into our mouths.

Today I discovered I hadn't lost the art of pea-stealing. And the peas are still as sweet as they ever were.

The long long grass of home

The previous owners of our place didn't have any stock, apart from a goat who is now our goat but she was tethered to a fence so there was no need for fences.  But! I want to have stock (goats and alpacas) who are untethered, and so over the last year my Dad and I built stock fences. Okay, so my DAD built the fences, I just stood there and did what I was told (as in 'hold this straight. No straight! I mean vertical. *Exasperated sigh* Never mind, I'll do it myself'). I would like to add, however, that while stock fences are generally my father's domain, I did actually manage to put a picket fence up all by myself. Which was great until the trampoline came down upon it.

Anyway, the paddock that was created as a result of the fence building has been all set to contain stock for the best part of a year now, and oh my god does it ever need stock in there because the grass? The grass is up to my armpits and admittedly I'm not tall but still, the grass is longer than it should be according to the laws of rural grass management (as in: the neighbours are looking at me askance and even asked me if they could put their goats in there) BUT there are two young oak trees in the paddock that require stock-proofing and I can't let the goats loose in there because they will strip the trees bare.  Strangely, no form of protection for the trees has miraculously appeared in the time since we got the fences finished, and everytime my Dad comes to visit it is too cold/wet/tornado-ish to actually do anything outside, so I have taken it upon myself to build some little (actually they're gonna have to be big suckas) tree fences.

Each fence is a triangle, needing three posts. And I need two fences. So that's four more posts that I have to (1) dig holes for (2) align properly and (3) stabilise by ramming (ramming with an iron rammer) the earth around them.

So far, I've done two posts.

Good god it's hard work.

Some-ty random things about this blog

It's NaBloPoMo day 24 and for no other reason than that I'm out of posting ideas, it's time to supplement that wealth of information on my about page with further and better particulars about this blog.

• There is no theme, unless "what I think about while I'm chasing goats" is a theme. I didn't know that blogs were supposed to have themes. But I read somewhere that perhaps they are? I don't know.
• While I have opinions on a lot of things, with two exceptions I generally do not share those opinions. They lead to arguments, and I don't much care for confrontation.
• The two subjects upon which I am prepared to opine loudly and long on are (1) badly behaved children and (2) sexual offenders. The topics are not related.
• In the main, therefore, there will not be any insightful commentary on this blog.
• Which may signify that this blog's shelf-life is limited, unless I've missed research suggesting that 4/5 blog readers prefer no substance.
• Also? I get bored easily. This list was supposed to contain 50 items.

Something something something

I've finished my marking! I've finished my marking! I've finished my marking! I've finished my marking! I've finished my marking!

Yesterday I dropped the girls at school, called into work to do a couple of admin jobs, then went home to get started on the last batch. It was freezing (hello, summer? where are you?) so I turned my electric blanket on, and made myself a nice little possie in my bed, and sat there for six hours (except for when I got up to make toast and coffee). And the result? I finished my marking! I finished my marking! I finished my marking!

To give credit where it's due, I did have some help.

He's very fair, but he's a stickler for grammar. Just so you know.

The post must get through

Due to recurring dial-up problems of the electric fence variety (is there any other kind, out here in the wilderness?), this may be the only post I get up today.  I will try again later. And I had such a good post in me, too.  Erm.