Boys!

Oh dear, Hugo is sooooooo naughty. He's driving us all to distraction. Can you believe he - at age 5 - actually pokes his tongue out at the teacher!!!!! In 40 years of being an infants teacher I never saw the like.

Emma wouldn't dream of misbehaving for a teacher, though she can be very trying at home.

Just when I was looking for a pic...

Got this from your Facebook page, Lina. I think it is a wonderful idea and the relationship with his cat will probably last longer than any he might have with a human partner!

Am feeling fine this morning, after a sleep of 10hrs 23 mins.

Must do some ancestry today, as it's a while since I have, and yesterday another cousin got in touch, telling me he's had his father's DNA done and that's how he found the connection. I find it absolutely mind-blowing.

I also plan to do some Thermomix cooking - bread, butter, and an apple cake. Will probably have visitors tomorrow, so will do a shepherd's pie, this time with sweet potatoes, which are apparently healthier than ordinary ones.

Had an email from the Thermomix company, assuring us that, as long as we follow directions, ours won't blow boiling liquid all over us. I hope they're right, as I'm really nervous now, after a lot of bad publicity.

Nanny's morning schoolroom

It's more than a fortnight since my last post. I just can't keep up with myself and sleep problems are driving me mad. Sometimes I go night after night with about 3 hours' sleep, then drop from exhaustion. The fitbit measures the exact length of time I sleep. This week: Sun - 14hr 31min; Mon - 4hr 3mins; Tues - 13h 15mins; last night - 6hr 58min.

These wild fluctuations are far from normal, so I went to the doctor about it on Tuesday. It was a middle-aged Indian woman, whom I saw for the first time. She took my problem seriously, where others have not. Not that I've bothered to mention it often. The first thing she did was change one lot of medication, the second, send me for a blood test. I've been seriously depressed, too, so she's looking into counselling for me.

When she asked me what I do, she laughed and said no wonder I was tired, as that's far too much. But that still doesn't explain the insomnia leading to a mammoth sleep. She actually gave me a hug as I was leaving!

The pic today is my kitchen first thing in the morning. Both Emma and Hugo are making wonderful progress with my reading books, 'Sounds of Reading'. Emma was doing what Hugo (now 5yrs 8mths) is doing now when she was four. Given that at the beginning of kinder he was one year behind in language development, he's catching up very quickly, and loves working with Nanny.

The Thermomix is getting a good workout! The other Sunday I had guests for lunch and made the dip, the bread, the butter, the soup and the main chicken course + rice in it. The creme caramel was made the ordinary way.

Unfortunately there are BIG problems with Thermomixes exploding and burning the cooks. I'm very cross that I wasn't made aware of this before I bought mine. Of course, if I had been told, I never would have bought it.

In heaven!

After a long-lasting addiction I've managed to tear myself away from BBC radio 4 and right now I'm listening to an Italian station featuring 60s hits! Earlier, while doing that, I made my first loaf of five-seed bread in the Thermomix AND some butter!!!

The warm bread is so delicious I ate about one third of it as soon as it was cool enough to cut. It was really very easy to make, using the Thermomix. And, to be honest, I really had no idea that butter is simply cream beaten so hard the liquid (butter milk) is forced out. How embarrassing to be so ignorant. I vaguely remember my grandmother making butter when I was little, but had no understanding of what was happening.

Some time back I reserved Dodie Smith's 'A Tale of Two Families', a novel which was discussed on Radio 4, and the library emailed this morning to tell me it's arrived - they had actually bought it specially for me! 

Yesterday I had a tooth pulled and am not supposed to exercise, so won't go to aquazumba this evening, will read the book instead. It's quite exciting having a new routine.

Emma, Hugo and Manami just came down and tried the bread and butter, giving both the thumbs up! From now on I'll make my own bread every day. Winifred, it won't take me long to get back the $2,089 the Thermomix cost. According to my maths, I only have to bake two loaves of bread per week for the next 12 years.

An email just popped in, from a new-found cousin in Hawaii, telling me she might come and visit me in a year or two. Wow! One of her daughters lives in New Zealand, so she can stop off here on the way to visit her. Our grandparents were siblings. My father died in 1969 yet her father is still living. Our great-grandmother was pregnant from 1870 to 1893 - 23 years!! Oh for the good old days - not!

Goodness, gracious me! It's getting even more exciting! Just phoned my sister to tell her about the cousin and she was on the point of phoning me to tell me her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, Mia and Tyler, are coming to Sydney soon!!! They will be en route from New York where they live, via the kids' great-grandmother in Japan.

Here we go again

Getting ready for pilates at 11am, so counted the various tops and bottoms I pulled out. 31 pieces, not counting the ones on the line. But I am not as untidy as the above pic - mine are all neatly arranged in three drawers. Well, they are now.

This means I can live to be 586 years, attending one pilates session per week, before I need to buy any new stuff.

Making a decision about which pieces to wear depends on where the bulges are on any given day and how much needs to be hidden. Fortunately, the air conditioning in the exercise room is usually about -20, which is a good excuse to cover up well. Everything at the leisure centre is automatic - lights, toilet flush, temperature, etc - which of course means most of the time nothing is working at all. One night the fire engine came three times because of three malfunctions!

They call that progress.

My weight fluctuates wildly - anywhere from 67 to 63kg. Today I'm exactly 65.0.

2,527 emails. I should mention that some of these emails contain up to 35 or so individual ones, so this total is really worse than it looks. I do not like the way Gmail does this. It makes it very hard to find anything.

Something really beautiful

Yesterday I did something I rarely do - watch television. I came upon the Ice Dancing Championships in Boston and was enthralled. These skaters are so skilful and so beautiful.

Then there was Who do you think you are? so I watched that too. It was the British comedian Sarah Millican. Of course, that made me want to get back into my own ancestry search, which takes up hours and hours every day.

On Friday I cooked for the whole family - minestrone, shepherd's pie and frozen raspberry sorbet. All delicious and I had no problems at all with the Thermomix. But yesterday I tried my very first sponge cake, and found that quite tricky, with endless washing up along the way. The result was edible, but I won't be in a hurry to repeat that recipe. I'll leave the cake-cooking to the upstairs expert, Mana.

It's hard not to complain about the state of the world...

I went on a sentimental journey to Double Bay (where I used to shop 43 years ago) and came across a fabulous place called Bake Bar, an organic artisan bakery/cafe, where I had lunch and brought home a loaf of their mixed grain sourdour, the most delicious bread I have ever tasted.

While I was looking for their website to get a photo to put here, I opened a link that Nahim (Lina's brother) had sent me, about a chef in England who habitually wiped his bum with his bare hand, then prepared meals for the customers. You've probably guessed it was in the Daily Mail and from there I came across the above pic. I won't bother mentioning names, except to say they are from Australia's Most Embarrassing Family.

Just shows how easily distracted I am! Reading the Daily Mail must be one of the most depressing things anyone can do! Just how sick is society!

Winifred, a Thermomix is a cult thing, so I'm told, which makes me a bit uncomfortable as nobody could be further from being influenced by anything cult-like than me. But two minutes into the demonstration had me wanting to buy one and I just love it. You can mix, chop, knead, simmer, steam, melt - and a thousand other things with the one gadget. (Well, it has several add-ons, which means it's not really just one gadget.)

2,498 emails. Looking back, that's just one less than last time. Since I keep getting new ones every day I doubt I'll ever get down to a reasonable number. Yes, I do have a firewall - this total is simply the stuff I get from friends + a teaching reading network I belong to. Ancestry brings in lots, too.

Nothing short of amazing

219,353. Sorry, if you read this earlier, it might be a bit confusing, so I'll explain this first sentence: That's the number of people in a family tree that showed a DNA match with me. I don't mean 219,353 people match my DNA, but that one person in this huge family was a match. Of all these people, the computer picked out five names that this person, M.W., and I have in common. From there I discovered that a woman called Mary Harrison 1758-1847, is the link. After the death of her husband, John Mounsey, she lived, according to census details of 1841, in this very house!!!!!!!!

Before John's death, they lived in the grand mansion at Patterdale, which I showed way back on this blog.

Their daughter, Ann Mounsey, came to Australia and is buried in Murrurundi cemetery, a town where I used to live and teach!

Of course, it takes me hours and hours at the computer to come up with all this info. But when I make a discovery like this, it's well worth it! I cannot believe DNA analysis and computers are so clever. Mind-boggling.

I've emailed the administrator of M.W.'s account and am waiting for a reply. As far as I can work out, Mary's uncle went to US to live and I assume M.W. is there, too.

View from the pool

I just had an email from a friend saying how happy she is with her life. We in Australia (and other western countries) have a lot to be thankful for. I know this, yet constantly moan. Must make an effort to stop.

As I lie in the pool, this is my view. Just perfect.

5pm Emails down to 2,499.

All-singing all-dancing Japanese toilet seat, retrofitted by Philip

Yes, I did forget to mention the latest bathroom gadget, Lina, so here it is for all to see. Does just about everything but cook a casserole and the Thermomix will do that, so all bases covered ;-))

All the forces of nature are conspiring to prevent my ever getting round to answering those thousands of emails. Right then the computer told me it was shutting down, which was a good chance for me to do something about the blood I just found on the bottom sheet, the top sheet and the doona. (The only reason I use a top sheet is for hot nights, when I throw the doona off and simply have a sheet on.) Goodness knows where this blood came from - I can't find any cuts or scratches on myself, so maybe it was Muffy, where the vet pierced her to do a blood test.

And I noticed - smelled - that Muffy had done a wee in her litter tray (after 14 years of going outside) so I had to put that out and clean it.

While I was up I took my morning pills and got my clothes ready for stretch class at 11am, and, since it's now 10:20 I'd better have my shower and get cracking.

Almost 3pm
What hope have I got of ever clearing my emails? After sitting here for hours and not doing much more than delete, file or answer about 50 mails, I've still got 2,584 to go. And now I have to mind the kids and prepare dinner. Homemade pizzas tonight, dough and all, and iced raspberry dessert. I'll be exhausted by 7:30 and fall into bed.