Sleeping ...

All my adult life, until I moved to Sydney, I was never sick. Never spent a moment in hospital unless it was to give birth, and once when I had some stomach pains. Then I moved to Sydney and after about five years, I started getting this and that wrong with me. Often to the words "There doesn't seem to be anyting wrong" after great, torturous visits to the Radiologists. So now that I am pretty much over the worst of my depression, something else comes along. Turns out I have a swollen transverse colon. A CT scan couldn't detect what was wrong so I have been recommended for a colonoscopy.

But to add to that discomfort, I have been coughing, because I have not been keeping warm enough. I layer up, but still feel cold. So this keeps me awake at night. During the day, warm drinks or food seem to relieve it.

So this morning I slept till 11.00 am just before my daughter left for work. I had been awake most of the night - again. Tonight I am going to take in a thermos full of hot tea and see if that doesn't help. Oh, and a hot water bottle.

It's okay, I will get through this, just like everything else, and probably be told much the same thing. I have loads of crafting to do, and any day now, they will ring about the servicing of my machine and I will be off sewing again. I have plenty to do, so I am not dwelling on this.

Finally sorted the camera and uploading ... lol

Sorry it's been a bit longer than I thought. Life sometimes gets in the way when we are making other plans. I have not been idle, but have got the photos from the camera downloaded to the computer and compressed. They were very big files, for whatever reason. Now they are manageable and I am able to post.







This is the cover for the album. It was one fat quarter of fabric. I tried to get the flower coloured with stamp ink the same yellow as the leaves. The red on the petals matches as well. The button has a gold centre. I have had that button for around 30 years and finally found something to use it on.

The cover is lightly padded with doll stuffing and the inside has a cardstock base. The base of the cover is 2mm chipboard, specially for archival use.





This gives you an idea of the thickness of the album. The pages themselves are 22cm x 22cm and there are 43 of them. I will share some of the pages on Bilum which you can access by clicking here.

Back - after quite some time ...

I have decided to take up blogging again, now that the worst of my depression is past. I was treated this time with a stronger medication and did some time with a psychologist. I am slowly coming off the medication and hopefully that will be that. I know the source of the depression and what to do about it, so it should not be a bother to me anymore.

I have done a few things while away, one of which was a 42 page album with the covers for my Aunt in Adelaide. My father was living in Adelaide and had the family album I made for him, but with him now moving to Canberra, she has not family contact. So I downloaded 22 recent photographs of myself and my sisters and our respective families and grandkids. I did scrapbooking and stamping for all the photos. After I had done all that, I thought I had better tell her who everyone was, so duplicating all the pages I wrote a little about each person. With an intro page, and the pages for the two horses and kitten, it came to 42 pages.

After that, I made the covers for the album with chipboard and fabric. I used some stuffing in the front cover. I coloured up a flower for the cover and hung some tags from one corner. Do I have photos? Yes, some. Do I have them on the computer to show everyone. When I have finished working out how to do this I will post them.

Presently I am working on a small album for the old person. The daughter has been taken to work almost every day by him, so it will be a small thank you for him. It has pictures of Her Ladyship the exracehorse and her two foals, Goldie and Cody. I will put in a few more over time.

I am preparing a couple of great diatribes, one for Alien Horses and one for Alien Thoughts. Well just expressing some opinions, anyhow. I hope to be taking both of those blogs in a little new direction soon.

Thank you for being so patient, and I will update from time to time as memory serves me.

Purity of Heart

When I was a child we lived by a code of sorts, and of all things, purity of heart was the most important.

Much of the code consisted of things like, giving to the poor (luckily we didn't know any poor people, or I would have wondered what to give them).

Help little old ladies across the road (even though my mother still had to hold my hand to cross the road).

Always let your horse go home on a loose rein (even if he could outrun the Melbourne Cup champions at dinner time)

Follow the ten commandments, which in turn consisted of love God before all other gods (there were others?), do not steal, do not kill, do not bear false witness (and if I was ever to be a witness in court, I would not bear falsely) and do not covet your neighbour's wife, donkey or worldly goods (since I was a girl, I wasn't likely to covet his wife, he didn't have a donkey, so I couldn't covet it, but I knew I would have if he had had one, and our worldly goods were actually more coveteous than his). The worst things you could be were a yella belly or an Indian giver.

These were sort of formed when I was about seven years old and more or less do me these days as well, albeit somewhat modified. Of course, I now know there are actually 10 ten commandments and I try to live by them. There are other codes that help us live, but these are a good place to start.

I have talked to others from around my generation and a bit before, and they had very similar codes they lived by.

Back again ...

Wow, what a long time since I last posted. Have I got anything new to say? Not really. For some reason I had convinced myself that I need photographs to illustrate my blog, and wouldn't post because I didn't have photos downloaded from my phone or camera. But now I have decided to get my act together over the next few days and get it all sorted out. I would like to blog on a much more frequent basis, especially on Bilum.

I will do a bit of a rehash as to what is going on in my mind during this time as well. Facebook just doesn't cut it when you want to have a really good rant about things. :-)

Really annoyed ....

The government, in its wisdom (and if you can't trust the government, who can you trust?) decided single mothers should go out and work for a living for themselves and their children. So with no work experience per se and a great deal of trepidation, the daughter got herself a job with an IGA supermarket. Well it seems like any dipshit can walk in off the streets and buy and IGA francise. Because the dipshits that ran the one my daughter worked for cut her hours without warning, abused and intimidated her. She left. Then they told her if she wanted her final pay to submit a pay form, which she did, and now the bastards think they can get away with not paying her.

Appearances to the contrary ....

I am not dead. Some days I feel as though I am. I have just been doing much thinking and organising. I still haven't finished organising the studio in the garage. Just little things that need storage that I do not have. It is frustrating. But I am getting there. Hopefully by the end of this week.

I have a new horse, my Arabian mare. Her name is Stephanique but we just call her Steph. She is a real character and has happily settled in with Her Ladyship, the ex-racehorse. I have photos on my mobile phone, so will have to download them soon. She is 26 years old, fit as a fiddle and can raise a trot with the best of them. Tail up over her back and she thinks she can outrun Her Ladyship. That is so funny. (Reminder to self: learn to put vidoes on Youtube and onto blog. It isn't rocket science!)

My eldest son came at the end of February and is still here. He has a job in a warehouse, where they unload containers and stuff for companies to pick up. He also drives a forklift. He is very tired most days when he comes home. He has to start at 6.00 am of a morning.

I am going to try and update all my blogs over the next few days, work on photographs and maybe even a video. I am much more motivated and the worst of the depression seems to have gone. Getting sick last year was the downer and it has taken me this long to feel well again.

until again ...