aka R’acquel

A long time since I’ve been in blog world. Our whole family has experienced great relief since we made the decision to pull Aidan out of school and take up the direction of homeschooling as the alternative for our son’s education. The weeks leading up to this decision were acutely stressful for Mitch & myself, Aidan included. The school wasn’t able to manage things well. My maternal instincts were screaming out loud within the second week of school, but i’m glad that bulk of the nausea I endured throughout it all is greatly over for now.

We opted to schedule a break for much needed rest & relaxation over at the Werriberri Lodge in the Megalong Valley, which is about a 20 minute drive from our place. According to the documentation at the lodge, Werriberri was the name of the last Aboriginal chief of a tribe that was located in this area.

This place is known as our ‘home away from home’. We even had the same cabin as last time, No.4. The Smith’s have conglomerated at this place for weddings, funerals in the past. After this adventure - for ‘everything else’ as well, so I couldn’t help but have that Weddings/Funerals & Everything movie run through my head every now at then during out stay there.

As usual with any getaway, I always have to do a toilet review first for Newtown Mums (because this kind of information is very important to them).

This toilet, was impressively sealed for our protection. From what? Boogie Monsters? I still don’t know.

A very b-grade performance on the presentation of the toilet paper, which didn’t come with a neat triangle fold and it was also going ‘under’ instead of over. I wasn’t too disappointed by this at all, because it is budget accommodation after all – but it would have been very problematic if I faced something like this in an expensive 5 star hotel.

The most unusual presentation of the mini-shampoos I’ve ever come across to date, but the bottles were very nicely branded.

I’ve always loved the design of these cabins because it’s a very efficient use of space which can accommodate 6 people with one double bed in the master bedroom,

and 4 bunk beds in the other bedroom.

It gets very cold in this area at night, Mitch turns into an axeman by the shed to help gather the firewood.

Aidan gets busy riding his bike called “Huffy” in the name of exercise amidst oodles of fresh air to get the cheeks all red & rosy. Lots of great bike-riding tracks in this area. I can’t believe it’s been a whole decade since i rode my first-ever 2-wheeled bike off the edge of a small cliff in the more daring drik-bike tracks of this area.

I get distracted by the local flower.

Aidan starts multi-tasking with Huffy by helping to carry the firewood back to the cabin.

Most of our time indoors was spent playing with the open fireplace and telling stories.

Too busy relaxing to take any photos of the delicious home-cooked meals I enjoyed making away-from-home, but that is a left-over plate of chicken schnitzel on the coffee table! For breakfast, we enjoyed grilled bacon with eggs, char-grilled cherry tomatos & home-made pancakes.

Landscape shot from the base of the Megalong Valley – there’s obviously many wonderful look-outs from the cliff tops that looks down into this area. Very fortunate to have lovely weather during our stay.

Father & son go in search for the horses, which made me think of Mrs.Lifecruiser’s childhood!

Saying hello to the local donkey. It was wonderful to see Aidan so happy & peaceful, glowing from the inside.

He was glowing even more when he finally got to ride the horse who’s name was “Hound”.

Going “solo” – it was amazing to see him so happy. He had another turn riding the horse known as “Coin” the next day. We’re hoping to make horse riding lessons as regular feature in Aidan’s life – something for him to master in an area which his parents are completely clueless.

Ah yes, the final dishwashing detergent review. A classic 1-2 star, predictably – very heavily “diluted” with water, so you need to use even more in order to clean the dishes up!

Looking forward to doing this sometime next month to “get away” again. Will be sure to go on a bush walk to check out the waterfall/creek for the next round and i’ll get more snappy with the camera when it comes to the food!

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The weather is foggy & damp, but there are no thunderstorms in Leura. Without warning, the computers shut down – and it’s another blackout. The mother finds her body in a state of shock. Her insides are silently taking a while to digest the fact that she’s just lost a shitload lot of data that didn’t get saved, whilst her son displays a more overt version of being scared by screaming out loud. He runs up to her with his ears covered by his hands, crouching into her to seek protection like an animal cowering for shelter in a cave. He pleads with his mother to go into the bed so they can hide under the covers for safety…

Mum & an almost 7yo boy called Aidan, race to grab the flashlight from under the kitchen sink, and run into the bedroom. They are hiding underneath the doona covers. The following conversation evolves during the 19 minutes of their lives that are spent together without any power in the house…

Aidan: I’m scared we’re going to die!
Mum: Why do you think we’ll die darlin’?
Aidan: Because our fridge doesn’t work.
Mum: How is that going to kill us?
Aidan: Because our food won’t be refrigerated, they’ll rot away.
Mum: Do you understand that there are some foods that don’t need a fridge?
Aidan: Huh? (he cheers up) Toast?
Mum: Yeah. Toast doesn’t need a fridge.
Aidan: but… the toaster doesn’t work.
Mum: That’s right, but you still have bread. Sometimes you have sandwiches, don’t you?
Aidan: Aha!
Mum: You don’t need a toaster to make a sandwich …and there’s tinned tuna. That doesn’t need a fridge. There are still foods that don’t need a fridge…
Aidan: Tinned Tuna?! That needs a fridge!
Mum: No it doesn’t. I put it in the fridge because I like it cold.
Aidan: Why?
Mum: Tuna doesn’t have to stay in the fridge because it’s a preserved food. Food in tins can live on the shelf. Does that help? To know that we won’t starve?
Aidan: Hmm, mmm
Mum: Another way to get food is to go to the shop.
Aidan: but those shops, none of the shops registers will be working. They’re all destroyed. They’re all… what might have happened for that lack of power?
Mum: I don’t know, our electricity supplier always has constant blackouts, it’s a problem – isn’t it? It is a problem, I agree. We’re not going to die.
Aidan: I think we’ve been using too much electronics!
Mum: I think you’re right. We’re very dependant on electricity.
Aidan: It makes more greenhouse gases and an angry mob will come here any minute now.
Mum: Why?
Aidan: because….
Mum: An angry mob might come to our house?
Aidan: but they’ll breathe all the greenhouse gasses.
Mum: Huh?
Aidan: They’ll smell all the greenhouse gasses. The greenhouse gasses will make people sick and they’ll call the angry mob.
Mum: The angry mob? Who’s the angry mob?
Aidan: It’s a crowd of people with flame torches.
Mum: A crowd of people with flame torches huh?
Aidan: aw…. In Newtown, I wished I lived on level 3.
Mum: Why?
Aidan: Because it’s not so high.
Mum: But we’re living on the ground now.
Aidan: But an angry mob can go to our house on the ground.
Mum: Oh… well you don’t have to be scared of the angry mob because we won’t have an angry mob attacking our house. We’re not the one’s responsible for power supply, it’s Integral Energy that is. I think I’d be more worried if I was Integral Energy living on the ground floor don’t you think?
Aidan: What’s Integral Energy?
Mum: Integral Energy, that’s the business that supplies the power in the Blue Mountains. It’s their job to give us the power supply and they’re not doing a very good job.
Aidan: Well I’ll throw their butts in COURT!
Mum: or… you could write a letter, and tell them about the problem. We also live in the mountains, so there might be a reason for why this area is more prone to blackouts compared to the city. Perhaps it’s time we wrote them a letter and asked them why it’s happening, and what they’re doing about it to fix the problem.
Aidan: They can’t do anything about it.
Mum: Are you ok? You look very sad.

(tears are beginning to well in Aidan eyes, he’s doing “the wavering lip”)

Mum: My poor boy – are you ok darlin’? We’re not going to die. We’re not gonna die. We have food at home. We have blankets to keep us warm.

Aidan starts to cry…

Aidan: I’m not very sure, I think it’s very sad. All the power plants might be destroyed.
Mum: Destroyed? By what?
Aidan: Some evil Japanese, Japan. The Japanese. they must’ve been destroying the power plant to stop Australia defending the whales so they can kill Australia’s whales. When I join the army or the air-force, I’ll have to drive an aircraft bomber. When I’m over the Japanese ships, I’ll drop bombs on them and BOOM – that’ll kill some of the Japanese.
Mum: To stop them from killing whales?
Aidan: Yes!
Mum: So you’re not happy about that… You’re not happy that the Japanese are killing their whales?
Aidan: Yes, and here’s something more for you. They destroyed our power plants.
Mum: What makes you say that?
Aidan: To stop Australia guarding the whales.
Mum: But ships don’t run on electricity. They’ve got petrol and generators on the ship. If the Japanese destroy a power plant on land, it’s not going to affect the power on a ship. The Australian ships can still do their job. They’ve got separate power supply units on the ship.
Aidan: and after the war at Japanese, I’ll have to go over to the country of Japanese and send all the soldiers out and then drop bombs on Japan.
Mum: Why? Why do you want to go war with Japan?
Aidan: Because they’re bad, they’re bad people.
Mum: How are they bad people?
Aidan: They tried to kill Australian whales.
Mum: Do you realise there might be some Japanese people living in Japan that aren’t happy about the whales getting killed?
Aidan: No. All of them want the whales, because they want to eat them.
Mum: …but there are some Japanese people who are vegetarian. They don’t eat meat, so they wouldn’t want to eat whales.
Aidan: What’s a vegetarian?
Mum: A vegetarian is a person who only eats vegetable foods, they don’t eat any animals. There are Japanese who are vegetarians.
Aidan: Vegetarians die…
Mum: What makes you say that?
Aidan: Because they don’t any nutritious, more nutritious foods. No nutritious.
Mum: Vegetables are very nutritious…
Aidan: but they’re not very calciumful… They don’t have much calcium.
Mum: Vegetables have calcium in them.
Aidan: How much?
Mum: :O I don’t know… some vegetarians drink milk, that’s a good source of calcium. They don’t kill cows to get milk. So that’s why some vegetarians are ok with drinking milk and eating cheese.
Aidan: ..and milking cows?
Mum: Well, not many people milk cows these days.
Aidan: Why not?
Mum: Because it’s done by machines. You saw the You Tube video on how to milk a cow, do you remember?
Aidan: Yeah Well – the machines are, they break down!
Mum: What machines?
Aidan: Cow milking machines.
Mum: How do they break down?
Aidan: Maybe the suction device gets broken. It can’t work without electricity!
Mum: Are you feeling a bit better about the blackout now?
Aidan: No… (very sad) This electricity problem is going up. Awwww… no! You know, Japanese ships are stronger than our war ships. We’ll be defeated easily.
Mum: I don’t think the power supply problem here is caused by the Japanese.
Aidan: What is it caused by?
Mum: I’m not exactly sure, but I don’t think it’s got anything to do with people bombing the power plants. It’s another type of problem, it’s a local problem.
Aidan: Did someone cut the electricity wires?
Mum: Um.. I don’t know, but I do know that these problems usually occur when there is a storm.
Aidan: Oh no. A tornado will suck up our house and destroy it to bits. Then we’ll be killed…
Mum: Hmm… We don’t get tornados in this region. Not in this part of Australia. The tornados are called cyclones here, and those tend to occur in northern parts of Australia. Up in the top parts like of Australia like Darwin and northern Queensland.
Aidan: But tornados could go all the way to here.
Mum: Um… there might be the odd tornado or water-spout that happens in Sydney but they usually don’t come to the NSW area, not where we live.
Aidan: Which is Darwin region?
Mum: Right at the top of Australia.
Aidan: Which is DARWIN region?
Mum: Northern Territory.
Aidan: Is it “NT”?
Mum: Yep – that’s right. It’s NT
Aidan: What is – Olympic Park?
Mum: Olympic park? That’s in Sydney.
Aidan: What’s an Olympic Park?
Mum: It’s a big space with lots of sporting facilities. Venues to do sports like archery, cycling, swimming, gymnastics, boxing, weightlifting
Aidan: Errrrrrr I hate those trams.
Mum: Trams?
Aidan: I hate them running and going in the streets because they disturb the traffic!
Mum: They’re usually co-ordinated with the traffic Aidan.
Aidan: What does co-ordinate mean?
Mum: Work-together. I think some have to follow the traffic lights as well.
Aidan: Why do some trams have traffic lights?
Mum: So that they can work together with the cars on the streets. When one direction of cars needs to stop, the tram can stop or go.
Aidan: You know? Trams are very boring.
Mum: Why are trams boring?
Aidan: Because they’re such a slow, low train that goes on the road.
Mum: They’re faster than cars sometimes, because cars can get compacted in traffic jams whereas the trams are on a rail system…
Aidan: But it might accidentally crash into a car that’s passing!
Mum: A car might accidentally crash into one, maybe… are you feeling a bit better now?
Aidan: But when a car accidentally crashes…police will arrest… stop the tram running… Australia’s power supply is not very good. I think I’ll have to leave I’ll have to go to another country… I think I have to go to another country.
Mum: mmm
Aidan: We will have to go to another country!
Mum: Well… are you feeling a little bit better now? A little bit less scared?
Aidan: Ohh no, I’m getting more scared.
Mum: Why?
Aidan: Look – the sky is getting darker. When it gets darker, evil monsters come.
Mum: We can light candles… would that be fun?
Aidan: No thanks.. No thanks! nononono, I’m not good at handling flammables.
Mum: You don’t have to handle it, I can handle it. Listen, how about I check the fuse box, to make sure it’s not a problem with the fuse box? If we can get the electricity back on, then it’s probably not a blackout.
Aidan: No! Don’t do that to the fuse box, you might get killed! There’s spiders hanging around the fuse box! (concerned, because his mother was bitten by a female huntsman whilst opening the car door recently, it was hiding under the door handle)
Mum: I can use a broom to sweep them away.
Aidan: But they’ll run up the broom and bite you.
Mum: That’s alright – I’ll use karate!
Aidan: No! That don’t work! If you use karate, that will never work. Spiders will.. when you try to punch the spider, it will bite you. The spider will bite you if you do karate.
Mum: (laughs) I can bring some fly spray.
Aidan: But it’s poisonous!
Mum: Yeah. It’ll kill them, if there’s any there.
Aidan: But you’ll have to run away quickly.
Mum: I can do that.
Aidan: But you can’t run through the gate because it’ll take too much time closing it.
Mum: Well I need to check the fuse box anyway. I need to check the street to see if we actually have a blackout or if it’s a fusebox issue ok? So, I’ll check it out.
Aidan: Are you going to go far from my house?
Mum: No, I’m just going to check the houses. There’s no lights in that house out the bedroom window over here, so I’m just going to go to Daddy’s workroom to see if the lights are off in the other neighbours house. Because there’s no storm, there’s been no signs of thunder so it’s very unsual to have a blackout…

Mother and son exit the bedroom. The power returns.

Mum: It’s back. The electricity is back!

Windows plays it’s start-up music on the computer, startling both of them.

Aidan: I hate that windows start up music!
Mum: Me too! I don’t like it either!

The End

…of a very interesting 19minutes of life together with my son, and no power.

Like, I think we’ve clocked more hours without power in Leura compared to “Earth Hour” this year.

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The other day, my son reported that he had seen a yellow snake with brown spots. We’ve been on the alert because a friend spotted a brown snake in their backyard recently. After some researching on Google to try an identify what this snake could’ve been, my husband spotted the culprit who’s made it’s home beside Mitch’s workshed in the backyard.

It panned out to be a blue-tongued lizzard, but i’ve got to admit - this creature did freak me out a fair bit because it did look like a snake when his legs were being obscured by the leaves (erm - hence the ability to take a close-up shot after i knew that it definitely wasn’t a snake - despite my husband telling me, “IT’S NOT A SNAKE” - i didn’t believe Mitch until i could see this creature’s legs with my own eyes. Just put your fingers on the monitor to cover this creature’s legs in the photo and you’ll see what i mean). It’s tongue was a bright electric neon blue colour. I’ve never seen one this big before, about 7-8cm? diameter in the trunk of it’s body - quite a monster compared to the other’s i’ve seen in the bushtracks.

The wildlife is getting noticeably wilder here and i suspect that the large influx of high rainfall we had a few weeks ago has had something to do with it. Perhaps it’s also paired with the former tenant/owner’s last pesticidal treatment around the house wearing off as well. The school grounds are getting leeches. There’s more different spiecies of large ants scrawling about and heaps of spiders now - many are breeding & laying egg sacks everywhere. My husband spotted a red-back spider under the BBQ, another one near the water meter. They’re venom is poisonous so we need to be on guard. They don’t scare me as much as the funnel web spiders but i continue to be vigilent in the garden whilst mowing & cleaning up.

Here’s hoping that our new local lizzard has the time of it’s life by helping us to tackle the increase in creepy crawlies everywhere. I imagine that’s why he/she has arrived to our home, as it’s such a royal banquet over here atm.

We’re currently going though a heat-wave/dry-spell although we’re not feeling it that much over here in the mountains. The Leura Flies aren’t very psycho at the moment. I encountered one of them in the backyard today - so a storm is likely to be comming soon, but i think it’s going to be a few days. I guess i’ll know better when the flies start to get uber-psycho.

~

Hectic with work & managing my son’s needs at home & school. It’s going well, although my spirits are somewhat low & depressed today. I need to decompress from it all - hence taking the moment to time-out in blog-world but i’ll be booking myself into the gym to let it all rip tonight.

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See how busy we’ve been? Look at the state of the lawn in our backyard. Hubby has been so caught up with manufacturing his whistles that I ended up challenging my refusal to learn how to start up a lawn mower. I’m the one always cleaning the toilets in this house, because my husband doesn’t know how to use a toilet brush. The embarassment of owning weeds and scottish thistles gowing up to 1.5m high in the front lawn of this house, in a “Garden Village” for crying out loud, finally got the better of me.

The flies have been so psycho up this way, that i had to invent my new Woztraylian Bushwoman’s (Reverse Swagman’s) Hat for protection. The psycho flies were attacking my ears so badly, that i created some protective ear flaps out of sticky fly-catching paper. Instead of shooing flys away with a regular swaggie hat, i designed this one to attract flies by offering them free beer and then killing them (the cap has a Guiness logo on it).

The front lawn before i started to learn how to start the mower. Take note of how the quality of light in the sky begins to change with the next photo! It’s the early beginnings of a new afternoon storm approaching.

The front lawn after i learned that there’s no point in pulling the string thingie if you haven’t pushed the accelerator throttle down thingie first. The down side of finishing all the mowing, was that the sound of the motor was no longer drowning out the sound of the dying flies stuck around my ear flaps screaming “help me, help me, help me, help me!” in stereo! 555

It took me about 60 minutes to mow our lawn. This new hat of mine reduced the entire psycho fly population of Leura by close to 150 flies. That’s approximtely the equivalent of one psycho fly attacking your ears every 24 seconds. Can you see why i had to invent this hat now? I was hoping that i could send them a very strong message of “fuck off” - that maybe they could tell their friends to,

“Stay away from this woman’s ears! She’s dangerous!”

…but they seemed to be somewhat aloof to this.

It is no longer a myth for me that the sign of sticky psycho flies attacking your ears in Leura, now means that there is going to be a fierce storm that will be brewing in the afternoon. The more psycho & sticky the flies are, the more volatile the storm usually becomes.

Some shots of the orange hazed clouds post-storm. This is about the 4th time that i’ve seen this phenomena across the last 2 years. You can see more orange-sky phenomena photos from My First Storm Chase in Feb 2006.

It’s been the coldest summer i’ve ever experienced in my life. I had to wear my winter coat a number of times during December(our summer here), and we’ve had to put the heaters on for some nights as well.

The dought has broken in many parts of oz with the La Nina weather pattern returning. Very high levels of rainfall have been having a significant impact on my plants.

Napoleon has never flowered for 2 years, just as my dwarf palm hasn’t given birth to a new stem either.

I’ve had this breed of succulent for close to 6 years. The first time i ever saw it flower was last year, where it had no more than 5 or 6 flowers. This time around - it’s a a full blown explosion!

This other succlent, has never looked so pregnant in my entire life of getting to know it over the years. The intensity of it’s colour has never been this saturated or explosive in it’s display. Old plants once deemed as potential dead - have been rising from the dead in my front lawn as well.

What has been the most striking across this summer, is the weather pattern of hot mornings with clear blue skies, that are consistently followed by the formation of electrically charged storms in the afternoon.

I’ve found it fascinating how the storms always form between 3-4pm on average so consistently. As for why i’ve been able to register such a time frame? It’s because these cloud formations start to occur when it’s time for me to pick my son up from school.

We had another hail storm the other day. My son never enjoys the thunderstorms because the electricity blackouts upset him a lot. It scares him. He thinks it’s going to be the end of the world (without electricity) and he’s also seeing the news reports of the climate getting worse, with many floodings and all sorts of other natural disasters revolving around the weather on TV.

I decided to try and divert his negative regard towards the weather into something positive. Here is part 1 of measuring the Leura “Floods” at the front of our house:

After the storm subsides, my son does a more accurate reading of the water level with his red K’nex stick.

For now - i must return back to life & work/work/work ~ and learn how to take more time to relax. It’s been good to be able to pull out my camera… but *sighs* ~ i have to get back to my work. Life’s great - but there’s a lot of amazing things in my life that i have to get back to achieving.

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The Leura flies have been rather psychotic of late and yesterday’s weather was equally over-the-top. We’re still experiencing the familiar pattern of very hot sunny days followed by dramatic thunderstorms in the afternoons that form roughly around 3pm - whenever i’m about to pick my son up from school.

A shame i didn’t have my camera to pick up the very dark formations of clouds before the storm struck. They were a very deep dark blue-grey, darker than usual - a very ominous-feeling energy because of the way it was effecting the quality of luminence. Not the kind of clouds that i would usually associate with pending hail, but still perceived it could be a possibility as very hot weather followed by a sudden cool storm are usually the conditions that do occur …and we’ve had small fleetings of hail during the storms of late too.

Lots of hail for 2007, have never seen this much before.

We experienced very small hail at our place, no bigger than 4mm here, but as weather elements tend to be more extreme in the higher altitudes, i’m sure it would’ve been must worse in other areas. Our car has thankfully survived well as we don’t have a carport or a garage that can offer it shelter. Caught a weather report on the late night news announcing that the Blue Mountains region was struck with hail, 1500+ homes/shops without power.

We had three waves of blackouts with electricity, two of them lasting a good hour or two. This is one aspect of the mountain life i’m not too thrilled with - the electricity network is very vulnerable to power-outages during thunderstorms. We have to always turn the computers/electronic/modem gear off when we hear thunder because the house is destined to experience a brown-out at the very least. This house is much better at dealing with it compared to the former one, which experienced a lot more brown-outs even during good weather conditions - which is hellish for the computers.

It would be good to source some kind of power-backup/battery i could plug into the back of the computers to at least give us adeqate time to shutdown which functions similar to my son’s laptop.

After the first afternoon storm struck around 3:30pm-4:30pm, we experienced a calm & clear-skies returned again. Figured it was a good excuse for me to head out for my ritual afternoon walk/jog around the town. To my amusement, the clouds quickly returned and another severe storm was about to emerge as i headed out and i wasn’t going to allow the weather to stop me.

The rain began to start pelting down towards 1/3 of my journey. A kind man offered me a lift - but no thanks, i wanted the exercise. By the time i reached town, the severity of the storm had amplified - freak lightning strikes followed by loud claps of thunder - a great shame i didn’t have my camera but it wouldn’t have survived getting soaked by the torrential dumping of rain anyway. Had to take shelter under the shop awnings for a while to wait for the rain to subside a bit, then made the brave jogging bolt back home.

Here i am, completely soaked by the time i got home, but it was an amazing experience to run in heavy rain. It almost felt like i was swimming! Very cathartic to not allow the weather to stop me but also an extra charged element of adrenalin throughout it all as this town is laden with trees everywhere - not the safest of places to run through with severe lightning strikes occuring. Had to ask hubby for a towel and strip-off at the front door. *lol*

I’m feeling thrilled with the impact that regular exercise has had on the body and levels of fitness. I’ve never been able to run non-stop for such long periods of time like i can now, and it’s such an incredible feeling. No post-exercise pain in the muscles either - it’s been remarkable. I’m enjoying the emerging physical strength a great deal as well, it has helped well with internal confidence. To be able to tune the body up to be in a good position for self-defence, to walk in the streets at night, without “woman fear” - would be something grand and i look forward to getting there with time.

With no electricity available to cook dinner, had to head out into Katoomba in the car to hunt & gather for the family together with my son. Visibility was very poor due to the region being in blackout and i witnessed one of the most intense strikes of lightning I’ve ever seen on the way as well. Pity the camera wasn’t nearby, but it’s not like i could take a shot whilst driving either.

When we got into town, there were fire engines with uber-flashy lights blocking the supermarket entries (acute sensory overload for my son, but it’s too exciting at this stage rather than negative). NO BEER - the liquor shop got flooded. NO FOOD - the supermarket was locked down due to enduring an electrical fire. Again, pity i didn’t bring the camera around the capture the electric drama but oh well, maybe next time!

This upset my son a great deal, and the poor thing was already highly agitated from the storms before we left.

Power was eventually restored so the town began to light up again. A very joyful sensation which reminds me of the times that water used to get cut-off during my stay in Turkey. Whenever the water was restored, you could hear the community/neighbours cheering so this is how you used to know that the water was back again (then joyfully run to the toilet and be able to flush it, instead of using a bucket).

Takeaway Kebabs it was for dinner then, but the shop no longer had EFTPOS - so this meant i had to pray hard that the ATM machine at the bank was still working. For my son (with autism) on the otherhand, this was a great tragedy and his body had been thrown into sensory overload -

“We’re not getting served, we’re not going to get our dinner!”

It upset him a great deal, he cried a lot. How to explain the magnitude of a cry like that? It’s the equivalent of “the world is coming to an end!”. Sure - I guess all children experience this to a degree, but i know in my experience - situations like this are a whole load more intense for my husband & me to cope with compared to the neurotypical families.

There is no amount of hugz, attempts to reason with words and offer rational explanations that can sooth a cry like that from Aidan. We can do our best to try, but once it’s in the motions - it’s often the situation of things needing to run it’s own full course until it finds it’s own resolution.

EXERCISE - hard labour & linear movement, is one technique that can help. No time for “madonna & child” - it’s not going to work. Money - i needed money real fast,

“It’s ok - we just need to go to the bank, go to the hole in the wall to get the money, then we can get the food. Come on , let’s go!”

Oh the humanity, it’s the end of the world for him and it would have indeed been the end of the world for me if that ATM machine wasn’t working. Just picture it….

A mother runs frantically towards the ATM, the machine has been rooted from the electrical storm, no money = no food, this will cause even more extreme pain/terror to the child!

As i’m running towards the ATM machine, I am already catching the judgemental look of one woman - one which i have been incredibly familiar with,

“What kind of a mother allows her child to cry like that in public and not know how make it shut the fuck up (in the tradition of madonna-and-child) at the click of a finger.”

This no longer affects me. I am this child’s mother and i am the one who knows how to best handle this situation. Quickest access to money, physical money - a visual confirmation of MONEY in hand is the only possible way to sooth this child’s acute distress (which can’t be consoled by rational “reasoning” via spoken words or hugz) - in an instant.

To my relief, there’s another woman at the ATM making a successful money transaction when i arrive - thank goodness, the ATM machine was working. It would’ve been such a major drama if it hadn’t, it would’ve made my son scream with terror even more. Phew!

My son finally catches up with me at the ATM, just as i’m pulling a $50 bill out of the machine - he’s still crying.

“See Aidan, here is the money - see, see - look, it’s here (flashes and waves the money at him) - we’re going to be OK, now we can take the money back to the shop, pay the man and we can get our food. See, it’s OK honey, we’re going to be ok!!!”

My son cheers up in an instant. The world is not about to end after all and he starts to laugh.

“Now come on, let’s get back to the shop!”

…and he’s racing me down the hill, running and laughing.

“Not too fast! Slow down Aidan, you don’t want to fall over, it’s a steep hill!”

“Not too fast, slow down!”

“Slow down!”

“Slow down!”

This is the equivalent of the autistic kid in the “Mercury Rising” film with Bruce Willis, standing on the railway tracks and there’s a train headed towards him. The world is screaming at him,

“GET OFF THE TRACKS!”

…but the kid doesn’t hear it.

I still have confidence in my child nevertheless - that i’m aware he’s moderately aware and capable of being able to take care of himself. He’s aware that he might be challenging limits, but i can see how he’s also got an understanding that he’s capable of handling it better than his own mother thinks that he can.

As for the joy - my son probably spent no longer than a minute in distress, was able to recover from it so quickly - almost at the click of a finger and he did it all by himself. For him to be able to self-regulate such strong emotions in the manner that he did, was truly remarkable - a significant achievement.

We walk into the Kebab shop, i pick up the Kebabs whilst Aidan takes on the role of picking up the drinks. He throws up a melodramatic expression of,

“Oh, these bottles are so heavy! Oooh. Ahh. Oooh. They’re soo heavy.” *stomp* *stomp*

It makes the customers grin & laugh. It makes me laugh because my son’s being a stand-up comedian - and he’s very good at it.

Good to arrive home, enjoy rare take-away food laden with MEAT.

“Sorry love, no BEER - Liquorland got flooded and Coles got FIRE.”

…so husband jumps into the car to hunt & gather for a second round to see if he can make the Leura liquor store in time before it closed and we rounded the evening up with Baileys on Ice instead.

It was a great night.

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The psycho flies of Leura are back with a vengeance this year. Late October was the season they initially struck last year, and i’m beginning to wonder if it’s somehow related to the community ritual of donging on the stinky blood’n'bone onto the lawns which preside in this Garden Village.

The weather this week has been showing a pattern of sunny hot mornings followed by thunderstorms in the afternoons of late. It was a loose theory that psycho-flies with frenetic & agitated flight paths usually acted like this before a pending storm - now i think i can confirm it. This phenomena may not necessarily occur on every single occasion, but on many occasions - it does, especially during the summer.

Psycho-flies that stick and try to dive into the ears, it’s incredibly annoying and difficult to walk the streets without CONSTANTLY swatting. Some people can tolerate this better than others, but i don’t fair well with it and neither does my son. Despite loading ourselves with insect repellent - the Leura Flies appear to be somewhat immune. Although the warmer weather is a welcome comfort to the body, it’s times like these where you miss the cold winters that have a considerably lower fly-count.

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Have not coped well with daylight savings for another round. We’ve been plagued by a week of wet weather so it feels like the darker cloud-covered days have compounded the problem even further. One morning, it was so dark that the absence of luminence was nauseating.

I’ve been getting out of bed in the mornings for the last few weeks around 5:30-45am. My body is used to the darkness emerging into daylight, so erg - horrible to wake up to realising i had just lost an hour because i forgot to psychologically prepare myself for it. The cloudy mornings of late have not been helping at all.

To have extra sunshine strike at 6pm the other cloud-free day was disturbing for my body. 6pm…. and yet the sunlight was still flooding the house. It felt terrible, disturbing and distinctively wrong.

The experience is so much like a 3 bulbed ceiling light, where one or two of the light bulbs blow up and you’re left with a different level of luminence which is disturbing to the body. It takes time to adjust to the new level of light if you’re too lazy to change the bulb. With time, you obviously get used to the lower level of light.

It’s probably close to 3 years now that i haven’t been coping well with the shift of time with daylight savings. It never was a problem for me before but now it shows a trend of taking 1.5-2 weeks for my body to cope & re-adjust. Had one productive day knocked out due to waking up fatigued and needing to nap & take things easy.

I knew it was coming up, thought i would be in the position of psyching myself up for it but I “forgot”, again. Microsoft windows automatically changing the computer clocks, again. Not enough forewarning in the news about it either. It’s like i need to schedule this event into the outlook calendar so that the computer monitor prompts me with,

“DAYLIGHT SAVINGS COMING UP!!! DON’T FORGET!”

Incredibly unpleasant to wake up to a morning to realise i had lost an entire hour.

Maybe i’m getting old, maybe life has just become more sensitive to the role of sunlight affecting the sleep cycle, maybe getting up so early in the mornings is a factor, maybe the quality of light hitting the earth has changed in someway, maybe i’ve just grown far too reliant on Microsoft’s auto-change of clocks at 2-3am in the morning.

Slowly getting back on track again but rather shocked by how sensitive my body has become to it.

I guess summer will inevitably be arriving soon, I do look forward to enjoying the extra hours of sunlight again but yesterday’s weather was also disturbing. With summer-like heatwaves striking in October, wearing t-shirts and the like, to then face winter-like conditions yesterday where i had to pull out my winter coat again - far out, it’s been categorically jarring. The day before, we had a warm super-fog, visibility obscured at around 20m.

There’s less annoying kamakaze flies attacking you here when it’s cooler, so i can’t complain too much. Funny how the crazy flies seem to appear before a period of rain. It probably doesn’t happen all the time, but i’ve noticed how a pending increase in humidity tends to make them go “psycho”.

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