Hottest day of my life!

Yesterday was unbelievably hot.....45.1 deg C maximum, which is 113.18 deg F in old money.  It is the hottest temperature ever recorded in this town.  I was born here and spent the first 23 years of my life here, and although I remember hot summers it was never this bad.  Some of the world is currently freezing with snow and ice storms and I'm sure they would like some of our heat, but believe me - you wouldn't want heat like this.  The wind blowing from the outback was so hot it just about seared our eyeballs.  It was still 37 deg C (98.6 deg F) at midnight, and the only way we managed to sleep was because we left the air conditioner running all night.  Goodness knows what our next power bill will be, but it will have been worth it.

Today is still hot, fortunately much milder than yesterday but still hot enough to make concentration difficult.  Consequently the work on the wedding skirt has come to a halt, like everything else round here.  When it's that hot one's brain doesn't work very well and it's easy to make mistakes.

This was taken on our recent holiday; the sun was a ball of intense red-orange, not the rather benign washed out pink it appears here.  It was nowhere as hot as yesterday, either.

Anna the nice physiotherapist has explained to me that parts of the body which have been operated on can be sensitive for quite a while, which explains why my shoulder doesn't like hair or clothes resting on it.  She has given me a couple of suggestion to desensitise it, which will be tried.

Would you believe, this morning I took a tumble in the kitchen......slipped on a drop of water on the tiled floor......my foot slid out from under me and down I went, all in slow motion.......landed on my bum (which fortunately is well padded), bumped my left elbow, and of course it's my left shoulder which is recovering from its operation so I hope no damage has been done.  It all happened so slowly that perhaps I will be lucky; a quick hard fall would have been worse.  The shoulder doesn't feel much different to yesterday, so hopefully that's a good sign nothing has been hurt - it's aching much the same as it has been, no better, no worse.

It was a much harder fall a few years ago which tore the shoulder, so let's hope it's not torn again.  I don't fancy a repeat operation.

"Putting away furs for the summer.
When you are ready to put away furs and woollens, and want to guard against the depredations of moths, pack them securely in paper flour sacks and tie them up well.  This is better than camphor or tobacco or snuff scattered among them in chests and drawers.  Before putting your muffs away for the summer, twirl them by the cord at the ends, so that every hair will straighten.  Put them in their boxes and paste a strip of paper where the lid fits on."

The very last thing on our minds yesterday was cold weather clothing, we were concentrating on how little could be worn while still maintaining decency.

Enjoy your days!

Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2014!

It's already afternoon on the first day of the new year here, before you know it 2015 will be upon us.  Not that I am wishing my life away, but we all know that time flies faster as we get older, don't we?

Did you all have a good Christmas?  We did, it was quiet and peaceful and our lunch at a local restaurant was excellent.  We even had some rain!

A wonderful way to start the new year - stitches have been sewn!  This morning I was able to sew on a button which came off one of my buttoned shirts (which are still pretty much all I can easily wear) and was so emboldened by that success that after lunch the remaining rolled hem finish on the skirt centre back seam was done.  Next step is to press that seam, then pin and sew front to back.  If the shoulder lets me I will do that later, if not.....well, there is always tomorrow isn't there.  In just four weeks we drive to Canberra for the wedding, so that is the looming deadline.

Speaking of the shoulder, it appears to be doing well.  It is very sensitive to touch and my long hair brushing across it feels like broken glass, which is quite surprising and rather painful.  It is still stiff and sore too but the exercises are being done daily, and movement is gradually coming back.  The uke hasn't yet been touched, but on 11th of this month we are having a rehearsal for The Big Gig the following week - I will be there, and I will be playing.  Even if I have to play my little $50 soprano uke rather than my very beautiful new larger much better sounding (and considerably more expensive) tenor uke, I will be playing that day.

Our roses are blooming, aren't they pretty?  I don't know their names because they were in the garden when we moved here.

 While these pics were taken a couple of summers ago the roses look just the same now.

One of three red roses, all different.  The miniature rose in the header pic changes colour as it blooms, the horticulturalist who worked on the garden called it a chameleon rose.  There is also a yellow rose which seems to be struggling, we get one or two flowers a year in spring and that's that.  Such a shame, because I really love yellow roses......perhaps we should replace it.  Because of the low humidity here roses seem to do fairly well, except for that yellow one; our neighbour has some beautiful yellow roses, must ask her their name.  In the Victorian language of flowers a yellow rose stood for "decrease of love".......does that mean if you were given a bouquet of yellow roses it would be a means of saying goodbye?

"Morning receptions, as they are called, but more correctly speaking, afternoon parties, are generally held from four to seven o'clock in the afternoon.  Sometimes a sufficient number for a quadrille arrange to remain after the assemblage has for the most part dispersed."

Perhaps this explains why "morning dress" seems rather formal when compared to what most of us wear before lunch?  I could stay, because I know how to dance a quadrille......several quadrilles, in fact.

Enjoy your days!

Christmas wishes to all!

Many thanks for reading my blog during the year and for taking time to comment!  It is appreciated.

The wombats and I would like to send to you all my very best wishes for a Christmas full of peace, and for good health and happiness in 2014.  Have a wonderful holiday time and drive safely, because we don't want to lose you.

See you next year!

The longest day has been and gone

I know for some people the shortest day has just happened, but here in sunny Oz the longest day was yesterday, December 21st, at 11 minutes past five in the afternoon.  Days will now start to shorten imperceptibly, only by five seconds at first then more rapidly, but it will probably be a few weeks before we notice much difference.    Unfortunately the current heat wave will be with us for a couple more days, but hopefully it might be a little cooler for Christmas because sleeping is not easy in this heat, especially while wearing a sling.  Oh, to be able to curl up on my side again.......

To get us all in the festive mood here are a couple of Christmas wombats with their tree, it's not a pine tree but it's still green!  Aventurine leaves on a bloodstone base; it and the wombats are gifts from previous Christmases.  If I had the use of both arms I would take some pics of our decorations, but that will have to wait until next year.  How is your countdown to Christmas coming along?

The specialist is pleased with the range of movement in my shoulder, apparently it is where it should be at this point, and is very slowly gaining strength although I can't lift my arm very high at all.  This means my hair has to stay down for the time being because putting it up is completely impossible, totally out of the question, and I refuse to cut it.  I like to wear my hair up, and am not yet ready for The Chop.  On Friday the physiotherapist said not to even think of playing uke just yet, pity about that......I had been hoping for a plink or two over the festive season......the uke group has a gig in next month's big country music festival so I need to be able to play for that.  One song, only two chords......I can do it......my arm might fall off afterwards, but it will be done.

Christmas programs are everywhere on TV right now too, some are fun and many are abysmal.  Why do so many performers sing Christmas carols as though they are pop songs?  Most Christmas concerts feature hip young things singing old carols in the style of their latest (probably their only) hit.  And what's with the hand-held microphones?  Surely in this day and age a headset mike gives the audience (these concerts are live) a better view of the performers than having the bottom half of their faces obscured by a microphone.  And who chooses the songs?  Warbling about chestnuts and open fires and winter wonderlands is ridiculous in Australia's summer heat.  Many years ago two Australian composers wrote some lovely songs which are much more relevant to our Christmas, it would be nice to hear them instead of songs about non-existent snow.

When I rule the world things will be different......

"Walking with a lady acquaintance.
A gentleman should not join a lady acquaintance on the street for the purpose of walking with her, unless he ascertains that his company would be perfectly agreeable to her.  It might be otherwise, and she should frankly say so, if asked."

While I don't know about all of you, I suspect that given the age and matrimonial status of most of us this is quite unlikely to happen.

Enjoy your days!

And another week passes.......

........with not much happening here at La Chateau des Wombats.  Binky is not only back to her normal self, she has been behaving like a much younger kitty again.  Bianca, meanwhile, just sits back and watches.

 Her right eye is blue, her left eye is green - the blue eye sometimes shows up as the evil eye, and she is  definitely not human.

This is just to make us feel a little cooler as summer is now well and truly here, it was much cooler in rainy and misty Temiskaming.  There is nothing quite like wearing a black synthetic fabric sling close to one's body on a hot day, you know.

The shoulder has its good days and its not so good days, and occasionally it has a bad day, but no doubt it's progressing.  I don't have a little window in my skin to be able to see what's happening in there.  Tomorrow the shoulder will be taken to see the specialist, so we'll see what he says.  Hopefully the sling can come off in a couple of weeks and that will be a great relief, because it presses on a rib and causes discomfort bordering on pain.

The daily walk has been suspended for the interim on the orders of the specialist, the GP, the physiotherapist and the chiropractor, because it would not be a good idea to trip and fall.  The walk back up the hill had become very slightly easier so some of that progress will be lost when it resumes.  It's never been my favourite part of the day anyway, and it would be so easy to just not start again.......but one mustn't think like that, should one.......one should jump out of bed at the crack of dawn to greet the new day while pulling on one's walking shoes, shouldn't one......even if one has never in one's life been a morning person.

Did you know that there is a Colour Of The Year?  It is announced annually (now there's a surprise), and the colour for 2013 was Emerald, my birthstone and a very nice colour.  (Have I ever mentioned that I am quite fond of green?)  However, you will need your sunnies on for the 2014 colour, Radiant Orchid.  Not being a pink or purple person and definitely not being a fuschia person I will pass on that, thank you very much.  Hopefully the following year will be less in-your-face.

"Harmony of colors in dress.
The various shades of purple and lilac, dark blues and dark greens, lose much of their brilliancy by gaslight, while orange, scarlet, crimson, the light browns and light greens, gain brilliancy by a strong artificial light."

While bright colours were popular in Victorian times, particularly after aniline dyes were discovered, I wonder what our foremothers would have thought of Radiant Orchid?

Enjoy your days!

We are both doing well

That is, Binky and I are both doing well.  Since starting on antibiotics for her infection she has become a new cat:  back to her old self, talking our heads off and bouncing round again like a much younger kitty.  We are quite relieved, as we were starting to imagine a sadder scenario.

Here she is in her younger days, when we lived in the Big Smoke:

This jacaranda tree was in our back yard, and Binky really liked climbing it - probably to keep an eye out for neighbourhood mice, because she was a very good mouser in her youth.

Apparently my shoulder is progressing as it should be, according to the physiotherapist on our weekly visit on Friday.  Thank goodness Anna will be back from her honeymoon and I can see her this Friday instead.  I don't like being patronised by younger blokes, and being called "lass" by someone young enough to be my child sets my teeth on edge.  I don't expect "madam", but Mrs Last Name or Jennifer would be much better.  No doubt he's a good physiotherapist, but he doesn't have a good manner when one is a female Olde Pharte - or perhaps some old dears don't mind.  I do.

One thing he told me was that these operations aren't always successful and the stitched-together tear can come apart fairly soon.  I don't recall the specialist saying this, or perhaps he did and I have forgotten.  It has made me ultra-cautious about doing anything at all with that arm now.  At least the physiotherapist did say that this particular specialist has a very high success rate, something to be thankful for - because I don't think I could do it again.  Yesterday the arm and shoulder were so sore and aching that I don't know how I made it through the day, while today there is almost no pain and I don't know why!  Even the swelling in my upper arm seems to have gone down.  I am hoping that is a good sign and not an indication of something more ominous.  Ah well, it will either get better or fall off, won't it?

I can say, though, that I will pleased when the sling no longer has to worn in bed, because I have never slept well on my back.

On to happier things.

Had a fun time last week at the Thursday night choir Christmas party......held, strangely enough, on Thursday night!  We are looking forward to resuming after our December/January break.  Tomorrow night is the annual meeting of the Monday night choir, I will attend but have pretty much decided that I won't be back next year.  I have realised I don't fit into their mould; I don't attend church, and singing religious songs isn't the be all and end all in my life, as it for the director.  While I don't dislike her I don't think I can cope with her choice of music for much longer, and she seems to have the final say (the only say, from what I have gathered) in the choice of choir material.  I told a couple of members that I may not be back next year and they were quite concerned.  We shall see what tomorrow night brings; I won't burn any bridges, but there's no point in flogging a dead horse, is there?  Nothing like a good cliché!

"Education of girls too superficial.
The school instruction of our girls is too superficial.  There is a smattering of too many branches, where two or three, systematically studied and thoroughly mastered, would accomplish much more for them in the way of a sound mental training, which is the real object of education."

I wish my parents had felt that way.  Perhaps I would have gone on to finish high school, if they had.

Enjoy your days!

Thank you from Binky!

I would like to thank you all for your good wishes, and to let you know that the vet has given me some medication for (ahem) a urinary tract infection, a matter which we won't mention in polite company, which means I will soon be jumping out of my skin and chasing a ball round the house again!  I may be old, but I'm not yet ready for that walk across the Rainbow Bridge.

And from me:  thank you, friends, for your concern about Binky.  Give her a couple of days, and she will be fine again.