Well the new dishwasher is here and Tim should install it tomorrow hopefully, it is another cold day here in Newie and if I hear Tim tell me to go sit in the sun again I might scream, I don’t have the time to just sit around in the sun and if I want the heater on I am going to have the damn heater on.

As we all know humans are pretty fragile beings but many of the worlds most indestructible materials are made by living things, such as a spiders strong stretchy silk or a limpet’s record breakingly hard teeth.

We also find super-strength substances in nature, such as diamond and titanium and as time goes on we keep inventing more and more indestructible materials of our own, such as steel and kevlar but which substance is the strongest of all, I don’t know but over the coming weeks I will write a little about some of the most indestructible things on the planet.

Of course most of us know that cockroaches are pretty indestructible, you cut its head off and it will still walk away which is just weird and it isn’t just for a few seconds or minutes that it can survive without its head but in fact can survive for a few weeks headless. This is because they don’t need food every day in fact they can go a month without food, also they don’t have much blood and what they do have moves around the body slowly so the neck can seal itself without bleeding. They also breathe through holes in their skin and not through their mouths, lastly they also have bundles of nerves like mini-brains, to control their legs and reflexes, so they can still move around without their main brain, weird or what.

If all that wasn’t enough they can run at 75cm or 2.5ft per second which is bloody fast can cope being under water for half an hour and of course have been known to survive the fallout from a nuclear explosion.

So is it any wonder we have trouble getting rid of these creepy bugs……………

Hi, well it is Sunday here in Newie and it is another somewhat cold day here I am home alone as Tim is at work, he took the car so I can’t go out but that is ok I don’t go out much during the day in fact the only days I go out are Friday, that is a weekly thing and some weeks I may go out on the Saturday as well but that only happens maybe once a month unless it is at the end of the year when I go out more getting Christmas presents and such.

The older I get the less I want to go out when I was in my 20’s and 30’s I would go to the shops 3 or 4 times a week, now once a week is enough generally speaking. Something else I don’t do as much any more is cook meals as there is only Tim and me here and we eat at different times and thus can’t see the point in cooking unless I have the girls and grandchildren come over on a weekend for either brunch or lunch. At times Tim will say something about how I don’t cook him meals any more but 9 times our of 10 when I did cook a meal he wouldn’t eat it so I just don’t see the point.

I know it is hard for Tim to understand that I am unable to stand for any length of time and at the moment I am having trouble walking and trying at times to get out of my arm chair and when I first stand up I have to stand still and get my balance before I can attempt to walk. At times I feel that I wish Tim would have the same problems so he can understand how difficult it is for me.

I take each day as it come and each day I hope that I will be able to move without pain, on Friday when I was out shopping it took me ages to get things done and by the time I got home I was in so much pain.

Then of course there is my tremor which is in both hands and my right leg and makes doing stuff difficult at times like trying to send a text or use the mouse with the computer. This is something others don’t really get.

Hello everyone out in blog land, yes it is me little ole Jo-Anne, not that I am that little, I am short though does that count. I am not dead nor have I been sick, however, I have been somewhat busy this last week and yes one day saw me in a great deal of pain.

So let us have a look at my last few days, Saturday saw Tim off work and both of us going to the shops and over to my parents place for a bit and Saturday afternoon me go over to Jessica’s to take her cough syrup and a few things from Coles as she was sick. Oh the cough syrup she said she wanted one that was blue and said it was called blue on the bottle, I could not find a blue one I asked her for the name she said she didn’t know so I got one and when I got to hers she had found the bottle and what she wanted wasn’t cough syrup she wanted Demazin cold relief medicine for children aged over 6 so no that isn’t cough syrup, which is why I couldn’t find it.

When I arrived Kelli was there she came down to get Leo and take him back to hers so Jessica could have a night to try and recover, well when it came time for them to head back to hers he didn’t want to go so he ended up being here Saturday night.

Sunday saw Tim off again and going for a motorbike ride with Michael who on Friday night bought himself a motorbike and Kathy drove Leo back to his mums place.

Speaking of Michael and his motorbike the guy he bought it from brought it to Michael and Michael took it for a test ride and when he was turning around to go back to the house he nearly dropped the bike and there was mark on the bike so he thought I had better buy it now that I have damaged it…………..lol

Monday saw Tim and I drive my brother and his family along with some of their friends to Sydney they have gone on a cruise around the South Pacific Islands, at the moment I am not dog sitting my sister Sandra is there but if she decides to go home I am willing to go over and stay with the dogs.

Tuesday saw me going to Charlestown Square to help mum with her Christmas toy layby, now I had pain in my right ankle/ achilles tendon and had trouble walking but while helping her I felt/ heard a pop from my ankle followed by extreme pain so much pain I cried out in pain and my sister Sandy heard my cry out and came running to see what was wrong. Now some people might thing I would pack in the shopping and come home and rest or go straight to see a doctor but no not me I continued to help mum, sliding my right foot across the ground as I could not put and weight on the ankle/foot. When I did get home I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting with me feet up and doing nothing.

So Wednesday saw me off to the doctors to see what he had to say, I was able to walk a bit better yesterday and the pain level was back to the normal everyday level of pain I have in the right ankle and the doctor didn’t even look at the ankle he just said I need an ultrasound to see what is happening and to go back and see him when I have had it. So I came home and rang around and the earliest I could get in to have it done was Tuesday morning. I didn’t exercise yesterday, I slept in and rested the ankle.

That brings us to today, yes I got up at 4.30am and did an hour of exercise although I had to pack it in after an hour as my ankle was hurting.

The weather here has been bloody cold of a morning and afternoon but not too bad during the day, although on Monday when Tim and I were coming back from Sydney, Tim had the drivers side window down and I was bloody cold I had the heater on and Tim was complaining he was hot which he said was why he had the window down, I told him to shut off his vents so the hot air wasn’t blowing on him but no he still kept the bloody window down.

Good morning Friday and what a bloody cold Friday it is here this morning, been up since 4.30am as usual but only did a 50 minute workout. My achilles tendon is really painful and I am barely able to stand let alone walk but of course since it is Friday walking is what I have to do a lot of. The reason the ankle isn’t healing is two fold, first I am not resting it as much as I should but let’s be honest I can’t just sit around all day with my leg elevated and secondly it is an injury that takes a bloody long time to heal.

Anyway here is this weeks five things for Friday

Last day of school (for two weeks)

Mum unable to come shopping (she couldn’t get the scooter)

Loving my life

Leo doing well at school (according to his teacher)

Needing the heater on (it’s bloody cold)

Good morning all, had a busy frantic morning, I was up as usual at 4.30am and did 1hr 21mins of exercises while I was exercising I noticed that one of Leo’s school shoes was missing from where I put them yesterday. After I finished exercising I moved the chair they were sitting on in fact I spent 30 minutes searching for it and ended up sending him to school in old odd shoes again. I ended finding it when I got home from taking him to school, outside in the garden I think it was caught up in Tim’s motorbike jacket and fell to the ground when he was walking to the carport.

Around 7.30am I had a phone call from mum, she rang because when Dawson was outside waiting for his taxi to take him to school he heard a rattling, crackling noise from the caravan, so I sent Tim a text and mum said she would tell dad when he got up and I said I would call in after I went to my doctors appointment this morning. Tim sent me a text saying he would go over and check the van after he finishes work today.

So yes I had a doctors appointment this morning nothing serious just needed a couple of scripts, I then went to mum & dad’s place to tell them Tim would be over this afternoon, when I got there Tim had already rang them and dad went and disconnected something in the van, don’t know what but dad knew what Tim wanted disconnected and Tim will go check it out after work.

I then came home and vacuumed out the house and it was when I was parking the car I noticed Leo’s missing shoe in the garden under his bedroom window.

Since being home I have another headache, I think the headache is caused by the cold, had one yesterday as well all day except when I was in the car with the heater on and in a hot bath in a room with the heater on as well. Tim doesn’t get the whole cold room thing he says if you’re cold wear something warmer but at times I feel the room needs to be warm as well and not just my body, if that makes any sense at all.

Here we are at another Monday, this morning when I dropped Leo off at school he said he had a sore throat, I told him if he gets worse to tell his teacher who will ring mum to go get him and he was ok with that.

Saturday night we had Leo in fact we had him most of the day and all night as his mum was working again, last night he lost another tooth and when I asked him if the tooth fairy came he at first said no and I said I saw money on his desk so he said oh yeah I think nanny tooth fairy came (as in me). He said papa explained to him that the tooth fairy isn’t real, I asked why papa said that and he said I asked him and we had a discussion about it, yes he used the word discussion. His mum has explained to him that he isn’t to tell his younger cousins the tooth fairy isn’t real because that would ruin it for them and he said I understand that they will find out when it is right for them to find out.

My sister was us that on Thursday her daughter lost a tooth when she said something about the tooth fairy she said “Ok mum I know you’re the tooth fairy, so tell me are you and I going to keep making out I don’t know” she pretended not to hear her daughter who said it again and again in the end my sister ran out of the room as fast as she could hearing her daughter say I also know Santa is you and dad, she thinks what the hell girl you’re only 7. She than goes to her husband and said you’re been a parent longer then me you go and deal with this one……………..

He told her you just have to believe in the fairytale or you don’t get any money, so she says ok but the following morning she checked her mums purse to see if the $5 note was still there or not and it was so now she has to think about it a bit more…………………….lol

Family Newsletter

 

As pretty much everyone knows I have a bad back and have had a lot of problems with my knees and achilles tendon on my right ankle these problems back standing for any length of time painful.

So yesterday my dishwasher packed it in and I had to hand wash all the dishes and take it from me that my back was aching so much when it was done. So when I said to Tim that we will need a new dishwasher he said in a tone that we have to pay for the caravans rego first, which I knew and I am ok with put it was his tone that pissed me off. The dishwasher is about 8 years old and has been playing up since sometime last year and I said we would use it till it died and it seems it has now died.

This morning I said to Tim that sometimes he may have to help with doing the dishes because of my back and that on the weekend if the girls come over for lunch they will have to help with the dishes he acted like he didn’t hear me and I had to repeat myself and all he said was yeah the girls will have to help. Totally by-stepping what I said about him helping.

Hello everyone for a while this blog and my other blog had the same stuff on them but that is going to change sometimes both blogs will have the same stuff on them but not always.

Yesterday while driving Leo to school we saw a rainbow and Leo was talking about how he wish there was a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow and how he would love to find a pot of gold and if he did he would give me some gold and some to papa but most would go to his mummy.

Than we had this conversation:

Leo: What’s at the end of rainbow

Me: A pot of gold

Leo: No

Me: What then

Leo: W

He than said I didn’t say what is at the end of a rainbow, but what is at the end of rainbow meaning the word not the thing. He didn’t have to explain it to me as I got it but it was cute the way he explained it to me.

Today I am going to tell you a bit about Rabaul in Papua New Guinea this is a pretty large place the harbour is Simpson Harbour with a lot of history. During the Second World War up to a 100 Japanese ships including battleships, heavy cruisers, destroyers and merchant vessels were anchored in these waters.

It was from this harbour that the famous “Tokyo Express” raced south to re-supply Guadalcanal and other embattled Japanese bases in the Solomon Islands during WW11.

These waters have seen the worst violence man and nature can produce, man during WW11 and nature due to the active volcanoes in the area.

The Rabaul area was originally a German possession, however, in September of 1914 a small Australian force defeated the Germans near Kokopo ending German control of the area. In 1921 the League of Nations granted Australia a mandate to administer New Guinea as a trust territory and Rabaul became the capitol.

On the 23rs January 1942 the Japanese overwhelmed a small Australian garrison and realising the strategic value of the area established their most powerful base in the South-West Pacific at Rabaul. At its peak the fortress of Rabaul included 5 airfields, a seaplane and submarine base plus a huge naval anchorage with support facilities.

The Japanese garrison numbered around 200,000 personal at its peak, as the allied offensive surged towards Rabaul the installations came under relentless attacks and the Japanese decided to move underground, honeycombing the hills around Rabaul with hundreds of kilometres of tunnels these included hospitals, repair facilities and barracks.

Many allied POW’s and local inhabitants experienced extreme deprivations while digging these tunnels, you can visit the Japanese barge tunnel at Karavia Bay and the Kokopo War Museum and Bitapaka War Cemetery which I would have loved to have done but Tim didn’t like the cost.

The locals are Melanesian people with dark skin and fuzzy hair and are suppose to be very friendly they were so isolated from western influence for so long that the very first wheel ever seen was the propeller of an aircraft.

Everywhere you can hear the locals calling “ha-lo” to you which is “hello” there are no taxis in Rabaul there are a number of street vendors selling souvenirs but they are limited.