Lightening Online

We got the dreaded phone call from the school yesterday.

There was an accident on the playground.  They think Trailer Boy has broken his arm.

Ooookkaaaayyyyy.

We’re only an hour and a half away doing some jobs in a regional centre when the phone call comes through on Farmboys mobile.

There’s nothing like the feeling of helplessness when one of your “babies” needs you and you can’t get to them.

Thankfully, Granny (Farmboy’s mum) to the rescue.

We managed to get hold of her and she went to the hospital (one of the front office staff took him to the hospital).

I nearly fell apart when I talked to the little tike on the phone.  Poor kid was being really brave but he really wanted his mum.

We hightailed it back toward our home town, getting progress reports along the way.

Definitely broken.  Have to go to another regional town (an hour and a half from where we live in the OPPOSITE direction to where we were) to see an Orthopaedic Surgeon.

We picked him up from the hospital.  Quick catch up with the nurses (doctor who saw him in town is long gone back to the surgery).  Sign some paperwork.  Find out what has happened so far.  Pick up the x-ray and a letter for the surgeon.  Swap vehicles (thankfully, our other car was in town).  Make arrangements for the older 2 kids.  Head off toward the hospital where the Orthopaedic Surgeon would see him.  Make phone calls along the way to let others know what is going on and make arrangements for the things Farmboy was supposed to do at Footy training ready for Saturday (he’s a team manager).

The poor kid was in a lot of pain, in spite of the pain relief he’d already been given.  I kept trying to distract him in the car.  Was so glad Farmboy was with me to drive while I focused on him.  Eventually he fell asleep and stayed that way until we got to the hospital.

By this time, I am exhausted and brain dead.  Admissions are asking me questions and I’m hard pressed to come up with the answers.

Nurses start rushing around.  Theatre is waiting for him so they want to get all the paperwork done as soon as possible.  They were so good with him.

Poor kid is freaking out.  He doesn’t understand what’s going on.  Doesn’t understand what’s going to happen.

By the time he goes into theatre, we’ve seen at least 4 different nurses, 2 students and 2 doctors (the surgeon and the anaesthetist).

He tries so hard to be brave but it’s all a little bit freaky for a 6 year old, no matter how wonderful the staff are.

Mum gowns up and it takes his mind off it all while he laughs at how funny I look in the all the theatre garb.

The surgeon and nurse start teasing him about putting a pink cast on his arm.

He chooses black.

I thought he’d choose blue but no, he went for black this time.

Into theatre.  Before he knows it there’s a needle in his arm.  He starts to cry and I talk to him, trying to distract him from what they are doing to his arm.  Distract him from the blood pouring out the needle site.

In what seems like seconds, he’s dropped off.  I was shocked at how quickly it all happened.

Back to the waiting area where Farmboy is waiting.

We can see the theatre from where we wait.  He’s out again pretty quickly.  They only needed to reset the bone before putting it into plaster.

He goes into recovery and we wait.  And wait.

40 minutes later they come out.  He’s awake.  We go in.

By this time of night, theatre is closing up for the day.  Just 2 little boys in recovery but the other boy heads up to the children’s ward not long after we enter.

We talk to him.  He’s amazed that it didn’t hurt.  He’s still sleepy but quite chirpy all the same.  He likes that his arm isn’t hurting now.  The nurses give him a balloon.  Tie it to his bed.  He doesn’t like the monitor attached to his finger, keeping check on his pulse and oxygen saturation levels.

Staff call the children’s ward to say he’s ready to come up.  They don’t know anything about him coming.  Thankfully there is one bed left.  They’re busy though so the theatre staff take him upstairs.

He’s hungry and thirsty.  I’m guessing that’s a pretty good sign.

Only problem is, there’s no food.  Apparently because they didn’t know he was coming, they don’t have anything for him.

At least that’s what the first nurse told me.

Fortunately, another nurse seems more on the ball and comes up with jelly and juice for him.

I grab some chips from the vending machine.  Some for him and some for us.  We haven’t eaten in over 6 hours ourselves.

Thankfully no nausea.  The nurses don’t want him getting sick on the way home but it’s all good.

Two hours of observation and we can go.

Almost 9pm but we decide to make the drive home anyway.

Quick stop at the chemist (just made it before 9pm closing time) then the supermarket to try and find something that will actually write on black plaster (found some metallic textas that work quite well).  Final stop is MacDonald’s drive through to get some food.

Back to town.  Pick up older 2 kids.

Get home close to midnight.

A rather more eventful day than we were expecting!!!! 

Everyone had a quiet home day today to recover.  The older 2 are fighting sore throats/runny noses so I figured a day off wouldn’t hurt.  And would help distract Trailer Boy.

Mostly he seems alright but there’s still a little bit of pain.  Apparently that’s to be expected for the first couple of days.

Looks like he’ll have an interesting morning talk come Monday when he goes back to school.

Those  jolly monkey bars have claimed another victim!

Today marked the start of this season of tractor driving.

Actually, I really started yesterday but I needed Farmboy’s help to remind me how to drive the tractor.

So, today was my first solo stint for the year.

I still like it.

A little bit too much I think.

It’s so peaceful sitting out there on the tractor.

Nothing to really complicate things (well, none so far anyway).

Then the kids came home from school.  I could hear them fighting all the way up the drive.  *sigh*

That made me long to be out on the tractor again.

Think Farmboy would like to swap and knock off when the kids are due home while I stay on the tractor?

Unlikely.

Oh, and don’t tell anyone this but I even took care of certain bathroom needs out in the paddock in a manner unbefitting a “lady”.  LOL.

You can call me FarmGirl now.

Might have to rename my blog!

I realised in my last post about my Nanowrimo Novel, I didn’t really tell you anything about what it’s about.

Basically, I tried to use the tried and true method of “write what you know”.

The story is fiction but there are snippets of my own experiences woven into the tale.

It’s pretty much a “feel good” type story about a “city chick” that heads to the country to help out the “country cousins”.  It shows farming and country living through the eyes of someone who is totally out of their “comfort zone” to even be there.

I’ve just posted Chapter Two which includes a reference to Frogdancer’s “hat with corks hanging from it”. 

Some time ago (sadly, years ago as it turns out) I participated in Nanowrimo.  For those not familiar with Nanowrimo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month.  The idea is that participants churn out a 50,000 word (or longer) novel during the month of November.  I did it a couple of years in a row and haven’t participated since.

At the time of my last participation, some of my readers asked if I was going to publish the novel I wrote somewhere online.  I thought it sounded like a nice idea.  I just wanted to edit it a little first.

Hmmmm…..

Still haven’t edited it.  I’ve given up on that idea.  So, bravely or stupidly, I have started a Fiction Blog where I am planning on publishing the novel, one chapter at a time.  Who knows, I might even do a bit of editing as I go (or not, we’ll see).

Here’s a little taster:

Tiny droplets of water trickled down the window. As the sun tentatively broke through the clouds, it lit up the droplets like sparkling diamonds. The weather seemed to do strange things lately. It was hard to know from one day to the next what to expect. Showers of rain during November were unheard of once upon a time. Now it seemed best to expect the unexpected.

Kaitlyn stretched out her legs in an effort to make herself more comfortable. It had only been 5 hours and yet she felt like she had been on this bus for a lifetime. Outside the scenery remained unchanged. Small scrub-like bushes with a slight blue tinge to them dotted the landscape for as far as she could see. How anyone would choose to live in such a barren place was beyond her.

If you want to read the rest of the chapter, you can do so at Comfort Zone Fiction.

WARNING: No guarantees the content will be interesting or display any semblence of correct grammar etc.  Read at your own risk. 

If you read it and think it’s something your own blog readers would enjoy, I would dearly love a link from your blog (via blogroll or whatever) to help the google rankings a little.  Ta.

Have you noticed my lack of posting about our grocery budget of late? That’s never a good sign. LOL.

My March grocery budget pretty much went out the window due to extra spending for the Easter weekend. I was only $30 over budget but it also meant nothing was put aside for meat.

The April budget is going okay-ish but it’s looking like there won’t be much left at the end of this month either.

It’s funny to think that only a few short years ago I was spending $100 a week and now I’m struggling to stay under $150.

Of course, there is one very big difference between then and now (and I’m not talking about grocery price increases - although that is a factor).

I’m not very motivated to keep my spending down.

I go along with the attitude that we have plenty of room in the budget for this little thing or that little thing and before you know it… *poof* Money all spent.

I think it goes to show that the key ingredient in keeping the grocery budget down is EFFORT.

May’s budget might be a little better as I won’t have much time for grocery shopping so there’ll be plenty of “using what we have”. Then again, there’ll probably be a lot more convenience foods purchased too. Will be interesting to see how we go.

The hardest thing right now is I know the kinds of things I COULD do. Things like:

• Menu Plan (and include low cost meals more often or at least on a regular basis)
• Avoid Impulse Buying (write a shopping list and stick to it)
• Bake More Lunch Box Snacks (if I can just find out what the kids WILL eat - they’re getting fussier as they get older)
• Make My Own Yoghurt (I have everything I need other than a “roundtoit”)

The question is, will I do them?

It would have to be one of the hardest parts of parenting.

Teaching your children how to deal with disappointment.

Dealing with their disappointment yourself.

Naturally, we want our children to be happy. There’s a natural instinct to want to protect them from hurt and disappointment.

The problem is, life isn’t fair.

Life disappoints.

Life hurts.

And protecting our children from experiencing such things means they’re not going into adulthood fully prepared to deal with life.

I know all that.

But it’s still hard.

It still sucks.

Lleyton tried out for our local sapsasa football team today.

He didn’t make it.

Naturally, he’s disappointed.

But the hardest thing about the selection process is that it’s so subjective.

Boys who weren’t playing the game well were selected because they stood out (were away from their “man” all the time).

Boys who did play the game well stuck to their opponents and the ball didn’t go near them.

Boys who had the “right” surnames were looked at more closely.

Boys with unknown surnames were overlooked.

Boys were chosen for height over ability.

Decisions were made that didn’t match up with the “ethos” of sapsasa (where it’s close, they’re supposed to take year 7s over year 6s and they didn’t).

It’s hard.

Hard for the selectors too. They have all these boys and a few hours to make their decisions.

Those decisions aren’t going to be perfect.

I understand that.

At the end of the day, all I can do as a parent is sympathise with Lleyton and allow him to work through his disappointment.

And try to use this as a teaching opportunity that life just isn’t fair. No matter how badly we want it to be, we’re all human. Humans have different ideas to one another on what is right or “best”. Humans make mistakes. Humans aren’t always perfect or “fair”. No doubt he’s going to face worse disappointments than this in his life.

But as a mum, all I want to do is take away the hurt. Make everything alright. Make a perfect little bubble for my child to grow up in.

If only that were possible…

For years we have planned to cook a meal on the campfire.  We’ve done plenty of damper and marshmallows but never actually made the jump to cooking meat or anything else.

Finally, this holidays, we found our “roundtoit” and put a roast in the camp oven.

It was delicious!!!!

Roast Lamb and beautifully browned vegies.  SO tasty.

We did cook it a little too quick so it wasn’t as tender as it could have been.  Still good though.  Just need to practise a little more to get it perfect.

I also experimented with a new damper “recipe” (no recipe, just me chucking ingredients in the food processor).  I added a small amount of brown sugar and half a packet of choc chips.  YUM!!!!

Looking forward to winter and hopefully more camp cooking in the near future!!!! 

Sorry, got a bit sidetracked with school holiday busy-ness for a bit there.  Have a pile of posts I want to share with you.  Just need to actually WRITE them.

In the meantime, thanks for your great cooking tips.  Here they are for those who haven’t seen them yet:

Marita

I started my married life as the world’s worst cook.  Okay, maybe not the WORST but I certainly had my fair share of disasters.  Farmboy had this one friend who seemed to ALWAYS drop in when I was having one of those said disasters.

Cake seems to be my biggest downfall.  I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve attempted to tip one out, only to end up with a pile of cake crumbs.  LOL.  I’ve even shared my cooking disasters here on the blog.

Farmboy can hardly complain.  I did warn him early on in our relationship that I couldn’t cook.  Not strictly true as I CAN actually cook most things.  It was just a self defense mechanism so that he had no expectations on me.

I was particularly freaked out at the idea of cooking for shearers.  That was only made worse by particular disasters in the kitchen occuring whenever we had visitors (must be the added pressure).  I quickly learnt to cook things that could be made in advance so that I could correct any disasters BEFORE said visitors arrived.

Shearing is good like that.  You can fairly easily cook in advance (or provide very simple foods) so that you’re not under pressure on the day (a very good idea given there are time pressures to deal with as well).

I do wish I had internet back then.  It’s awesome for providing cooking tips and recipes.  And with yahoo goups and blogs, there are so many ways to pass on wonderful tips and recipes to others.

While experience has helped me in my cooking efforts, I’m always on the look out for tried and true tips.  The kinds of things that get passed down from generation to generation.

I’d love to put together a post combining as many pearls of wisdom as we can come up with.  Can you help me out by posting your top cooking tip (can be anything you like on any aspect of cooking) in the comments section?  You will get full recognition (and a link to your blog if you have one).

Can we come up with 50 tried and true tips amongst us?

You never know, we might just be able to help a new bride (student/just left home/anyone really) avoid some of the disasters we’ve experienced (please tell me I’m not the only one who has disasters in the kitchen! lol).