Bag of bits

full moon rising

Not much has been going on in our household lately. So I thought I would just give a bunch of random bits and pieces.

On the last day of our summer, 28th of February, we had quite a crazy lightning storm going on.  It was north of us and lasted for a few hours.  We could see it well from our house.  The biggest reason it was unique to me was the almost constant light from it.  The flashes so numerous and close together that it looked constant.

 This picture was taken at 10 pm.  It is typically full dark and there's never very much light across the water.  I posted more pictures of it on Facebook.  It was truly incredible to see. 

  March 1st was Jay's birthday as well as the first day of Autumn.  Our weather is a bit strange at the moment, but is fairly normal for this area.  It will be hot and sunny one day followed by colder and rainy the next. 

Last Saturday, we found a 4 foot goanna outside our house.  It was huge and really neat to see one up close.  It was scared of us and headed up at tree as soon as it saw us. 

I reorganized the kids' bookshelf.  It won't stay looking like this for long, though.  I had to do it in order to find Joe's missing library book.  There it was, right on the bookshelf...just like I said it was.  Joe couldn't believe that it was on there.  At least, I found it.
While cleaning the shelf, I pulled a few books out and read them to Sam.  We seem to end up reading the same books over and over again.  Of course, typically we let the kids pick the books, and they pick the same certain books again and again. 

One of the books that I chose to read is a favorite of mine.  My brother got this book for Joe for his birthday one year.  It's called "The Lost Thing" by Shaun Tan. 

Yes, I know the picture is turned wrong.  Will try to fix it later...

Jay went kayaking with Dave this week and I served them dinner afterwards.  I made homemade salsa and it was declared as some of the best ever.  This recipe is all my own.

3 medium to large, fresh ripe tomatoes, diced
1/2 of 1 green pepper (green capsicum), diced
1/2 of a large red onion, diced
 2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/4 cup finely diced fresh cilantro leaves (coriander leaves for the Aussies)
1 jalapeno, finely diced
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/8 cup tequila 
1/8 lime juice or lime juice cordial

Stir well and chill for at least an hour.  The tequila is optional as it is almost as good without it.

Like I said, not much going on here.  I get to go away scrapbooking for the weekend next weekend, and I am looking forward to it. 
Jay is currently looking for a motorcycle to buy.
Joe is swimming at school for sport every Friday.
Tom is busy scrapbooking right now.
Sam is managing to hurt himself in a variety of new ways.  He cut his top lip with scissors by accident yesterday and added a huge scratch to his face today.

Oh, and due to all the rain, flooding and cyclones that Australia's north has had, bananas are about $4.55 a pound!  No, we are not eating bananas right now.  Cripes, they're pricy.  Our bananas are usually more expensive here than in the states, but not by much.  We usually pay about $2 a kilo or $.90 a pound. 

Back in the saddle again

So today was the first day back to school for the big boys.  Both Joe and Tom seemed really excited to be heading back to school.  I know I was pretty excited too!  I celebrated by getting a new hair cut.  This is the first cut I've had since I've moved and it was long overdue. 

It feels so much lighter now that all the extra hair is gone.  Today was just sorta a standard, get errands done sorta day. 
In other news:
Tom has lost his first tooth! 

He was a tiny bit freaked out about it.  The tooth fairy gave him 50 cents.  He was very excited about getting money for a tooth.  The tooth next to it is losse as well, but I think it will be a while before that comes out. 

We spent some time at a local beach on last Friday.  We got to see both dolphins and whales!  How incredibly cool is that! 

I went to my very first Tupperware party on Saturday morning.  Somehow I managed, at age 31, to be the oldest person there.  Not very typical for me to be the oldest in the room.  I didn't buy much as I felt like all of it could be bought somewhere else for a whole lot cheaper!  I did get a couple of things though.  Hopefully, they'll be worth the money spent. 

Other than that, not a whole lot going on.  Jay is going to a poker game on Friday and will be staying over.  Drink Driving is very enforced here so poker games are overnight activities.  I am going to a scrapbooking retreat in two weeks, all by myself.  I am both excited and nervous. 
Talking about being nervous, I noticed that when I am nervous lately, I have developed a nervous laugh.  Maybe I have always had it and am just now noticing it.  I tend to get nervous around people that I don't know at all.  I went to the movies yesterday with Aleeya and a large group of ladies from her church.  I felt like kicking myself because I can hear me doing my little nervous laugh, but can't seem to stop doing it.  We went and saw Eat, Pray, Love.  I feel like I need to read the book just so I can understand all the stuff I missed in the movie.  Of course, everyone that I know that has read the book didn't really like it. 

Vampire Love

So popular fiction right now has to do with vampires.  Not only just vampires, but shape shifters, werewolves, fairies and elves as well.  Many books seem to have a theme of human girl falling in love with vampire guy and slight love interest in local werewolf.  I am currently reading book 10 of the Sookie Stackhouse series.  Throughout the entire series, she's gotten around a bit.  First she loved Vampire Bill, was attracted to shape shifter Sam, got back with Bill, then attracted to werewolf Alcide, loved weretiger Quinn, and currently with Vampire Eric.  Now, I just got get the attraction to vampires.  Yes, they are supposed to be good looking (but so are all supernatural beings according to these books), but they are cold!  They are dead!  They drink blood and could easily kill you.  They don't do well in lots of sunlight (various books give various reasons and various degrees of being able to be out in daylight).  In the Sookie books, vampires die if they get any sunlight.  They are strictly night beings.  I just don't get it.  Who wants to be snuggled up to a cold dead body? 
Once on team Jacob, always on team Jacob, I guess.

General musings

So we finally have our own internet.  I had to load the software on my computer to make it work and then I couldn't get Yahoo mail or Facebook to work.  Jay has now gotten Yahoo to work with Internet Explorer, but Facebook still won't and it needs to be in Firefox in order to work.  It's really annoying, but at least it works somehow.
Sam starts school tomorrow.  Yea!  He is so very excited.  Hopefully all goes well.  Jay will be the one to drop him off and pick him up from school.  Sam will have to get up with Jay which is no problem because Sam is the one who wakes up first in the morning.  He won't get home until Jay comes home though, which is a bit of a drag.  Maybe some days, I could go get him earlier.  However, once the big kids finally go to school at 9:30, I will then have 6 hours until I have to be at the school to pick them up.  This will be the first time that I have had regularly scheduled time to myself since Joe was born, 7 1/2 years ago.  Yippee for me!  It will be nice to be able to clean the house or go to the store without Sam...well, being Sam. 
Speaking of Sam being himself, he has been flushing great gobs of toilet paper down lately.  We've gone through 12 rolls since we moved in, 3 weeks ago.  I caught him filling the toilet with paper a few days ago.  He was quite amused by it all when it flushed. 
Poor Joe had a rough day at school on Friday.  He's been getting picked on by older kids during recess and lunch.  Friday, it got worse than a little teasing and finally something was done about it.  Three Year 6 boys started picking on him while he was tossing a ball to himself.  They kept taking the ball and then throwing it as hard as they could at him.  Joe got hit several times before he finally ran to a teacher.  The boys got in big trouble with calls home, notes on their records and detention.  His teacher and some other teachers have promised to keep a closer watch on Joe during those times, in hopes that the bigger kids leave him alone.  The kids in his class seem to be sticking up for him as well. 
On the bright side, Joe got to play a little baseball on Friday during sport time.  His teacher had a tee set up and was letting the kids take turns hitting.  Since they don't play baseball, most kids aren't used to it.  Also, cricket is a different swing motion.  Anyway, Joe happens to love to hit a ball off a tee and is quite good at it.  He hit it all the way across the field, all the way to the fence.  It really impressed his teacher and several parent volunteers. 
In the last 6 weeks, I have read 11 books by four different authors.  Here's some book reviews:
Janet Evanovich's latest Stephanie Plum book. I can't remember the title, but it's number 16.  I have to say, I was disappointed.  I really enjoyed the first 10 or so, but the last couple have been just not as fun.  Certainly not laugh out loud funny as her earlier ones.  It was probably better than number 15, but just barely. 
3 Jodi Picoult books (Keeping Faith, The Tenth Circle, and Second Glance)  All pretty okay books.  I've read a lot of her books and sometimes themes start to repeat themselves.  Dying kids, neglected kids, cheating spouse, a lawyer, small town, etc. etc.  Keeping Faith and Second Glance were a little supernatural and odd and a little out of the norm for most of her books.  Second Glance is one of her few books that don't have a law case as a main plot point.  There is a small town sheriff and an investigation of a 70 year-old murder.  It just didn't have the typical feel of some of her other books.  The last book of her's that I read before this one was House Rules.  It was good, but I felt like I had read it before.  Some many of her things in that book were drawn from her other books.  Anyway, they weren't too bad and I thought them all a better read than Stephanie Plum.
I also read 4 books by W.E.B. Griffin.  They were the first 4 books in his Badge of Honor series.  I have enjoyed many of his other books and series and these were no exception.  I enjoyed them and now need to get the rest of the series.
Now, for the good stuff.  I also read a trilogy by Stieg Larsson.  The first book was enjoyable and the second two were superb.  The first book (The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo) doesn't have much to do with the second two and actually could be skipped; however it does give all the background info and history of the main characters.  I couldn't really put down the second two (The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest).  Oh course, they are such very long books that I did have to put them down.  Really really great books.  Unfortunately, the author passed away and therefore, no more books.  It is rumored that he wrote over half of a fourth book, but it's such a shame.  Really great books!
Jay and I have a alarm clock radio that we got after getting married.  It served us well and we never complained about it.  Though I packed it and brought it here, it won't work.  Australian power is 240 volts while US is 110 volts.  Many things like computers, Playstation, etc will work here, the clock does not.  So we had to buy a new one.  The first one I purchased sucked.  The display was at a slight slant.  Good perhaps if your clock is lower than your bed and you are looking down on it.  Not good when it sits on a dresser across the room that is slightly higher.  We just couldn't read the darn thing.  So I bought a second one.  Nice big flat display.  It sucks worse!  The numbers are blue which wouldn't be a problem except the face is back lit with blue as well.  It is pretty much just a blue blur and impossible to read no matter what time of day.  Tomorrow, I get to go try for clock number three.  Oh, have I mentioned that you can't return things in Australia unless they are broken.  Buyer's regret is just not allowed. 

A long night and my diet.

Okay, so I stayed up way way way too late last night. I tried to sleep. I tried really hard for a little over an hour. Then I gave up and read instead. The biggest problem with the reading that I was doing...it's not a book I've read before. It was also interesting enough that I wasn't sleepy. Jay (who'd been asleep on the couch) came to bed around 1 and fussed at me. I thanked him for his advice (you need to go to sleep) and kept on reading. I finally forced myself to close the book at 3:03 am and turn off the light. I laid there trying to sleep until after 3:30 before finally falling asleep. Yes, yes, I know...you are tired of hearing about my sleep problems. Well, I'm tired of talking about it too, but it's a prominent part of my life right now.

Okay, so the book I'm reading...well, the book I was reading last night...Time Traveler's Wife. I was reading several books at once (which I NEVER do) and finshed Dune Messiah yesterday and TTW this morning. I enjoyed the books, but more about them later, in another post.

Okay, my diet. I got a comment and two emails about this. Here are the problems with my diet:
1) While we don't eat a lot of processed foods, they do sneak in. Things like crackers for our soup, white rice instead of brown, ketchup, salad dressing, pretty much any of the tex mex food I love, etc. None of these are good.
2) Fast food. I hate to admit it, but we eat this about once a week. Sometimes less, but still too much. None of this is good.
3) Caffine free Diet coke. I seem to have a problem with this. I drink about 2-3 cans a day. Occassionally, I cut it down to 1 and sometimes I try to give it up. When I try to go cold turkey on it, I suddenly start eating all kinds of crap, like chips and candy bars. While part of my brain says that caffine free diet coke is better than the other stuff, there is nothing good or healthy about this. I know that I will be able to kick it in Australia as the diet coke they sell has sugar in it and tastes too sweet (also has like 8 calories or something). I had some while I was there last year and hated it. Hopefully, I'll be able to break myself of this. Meanwhile, I just try to limit it to once a day.
4)Sleep. Jillian talks a lot about the sleep our bodies need. I don't get it. The End.
5) Organic. During the summer, we eat a lot more organic food than we do any other times. When stuff is not in season, we don't tend to eat organic. I just buy cheapest. Also, we don't buy organic diary or meat. I am going to try to do better now that I have read some of this book.
6) Fat free. While I eat a whole lot less of this stuff than I used to, I still do use fat free cheese and fat free salad dressing. Bad very bad... basically poison. Weight Watchers is pretty much based on eating fat free.
7) Seafood. We don't eat nearly enough of it. What we do eat, tends to be farm raised and not wild caught. Why, you ask...well, it's complicated. Wild caught is better for the environment, however, after reading article after article in National Geographic or Science News about how over-fishing is wiping out populations...I have a hard time eating wild caught.
8) Protein. We are supposed to eat protein ever 4 hours. I don't. I usually eat just a banana for breakfast and something for lunch, typically salad or soup with not much protein. I will do better. Promise
9) Breakfast. I am bad about this. I get my children a nice breakfast every day, but I eat a banana or nothing. Unless it is a weekend and Jay makes something for me.
Those are pretty much my problems.

Organic eating

(Three blog posts in one day!)
Okay, I am like the worst possible person when it comes to this. I thought we were eating an okay diet, not much was organic (some was, but not much), but we eat mostly unprocessed foods, i.e. food that is food. I am currently reading a book that I strongly recommend to anyone who is trying to lose weight. It is by the Biggest Loser trainer, Jillian Michaels and is called "Master Your Metabolism." Bascially the book is about how all of our metabolisms are screwed up from the foods we eat and the environments we live in. I know that I have a screwed up metabolism. I have hypothyroidism. And though it is supposed to be controlled by my medications, I have a normal body temp of about 96.7 degrees. That just can't be right. As I am reading this book, it has been a real eye opener. Hopefully, when I make these changes, things will change for me.
BTW, insomnia can be linked to a lot of these imbalances as well as acne and fatigue (which I have as well).
Well, back to reading my book!