where oh where have I been? Not london, and not one queen.

Remeber my smelly son? The one that had his teacher bring to my attention the disturbing fact that yes, he really does fart way outside the parameters of anythign even remotely resembling normal?

He has coeliac disease.

This is why I have been absent from the blog. This is why I have spent the last four weeks trawling shops for gluten free products so that we may have a semblance of normalcy  to our new found diets.

This is why, the rest of my time not trawling shops, has been spent in the kitchen, modifying and tweaking and trying desperately to cling fast to familiar and comfrtable food we love and are loathe to give up.

This is why Sue Sheperd and her cookbooks have become my new best friends. The kind I have coffee with everyday and relax with at night.  This is why I am secretly slamming the incompetant (now dead) doctor who misdiagnosed my coeliac disease when I was 5.  because all of this could have been avoided. 

This is why my husband is discovering cullinary delights he otherwise would never have tried in a million years. And why he looks at me with a look of bemusement when we are in SumoSalad and I politely inquire what ingredients are in their salad dressings.  (regular soy sauce is out for coeliacs.)

SumoSalad where only too happy to bring me bottle after bottle of dressings to check the labels. (Which is why they have my loyal patronage)  The pesto chicken is GF, the spicy prawns are GF. My favourite salad, alas, is not. (Thai beef)

But the great thing about sumo salad is that they offer rice paper wraps. Which is GF. And they are moer than happy to bend over backwards to accomodate anyone who asks nicely.

My new favourite thing? the fact that I finally feel better than I have in years. And my boy is finally thriving. AND  is butt funk free.

Mother is a mchine

This afternoon a miracle occured. I mean a real bonafide miracle. Not just the insane ramblings of a woman hocked up on antihistamines trying to get through the school holidays with grace and dignity and all three children still containing their limbs and breathing abilities, but the real McCoy, walking on water, parting the sea, turning water to wine kind of deal.

Unfortunately the miracle that occured did not contain a long lost Daddy Wharbucks, or the floor of my sons bedroom becoming visible; nor did my ass suddenly regain it’s former glory and lift itself from banging against the backs of my knees; but a girl has her right to a fantasy or two…..

What did happen was this.

A few months ago, I got WiFi broadband. It lasted two days. Whilst I could connect to the internet, I couldn’t actually DO anything on it. I couldn’t log into my account, I couldn’t even log into ebay. So I pulled it all apart and sent it back to telstra with a big thanks but no thanks.

A month later, I recieved a bill. For $470. (The modem and the early termination of contract fee.) I couldn’t believe it. Not only had I sent the modem back, I had the service for two days! I was outraged. Especially considering that I only signed up because the guy flogging bigpond to me specifically said I had ten days in which I could peruse and then terminate should I choose. Of course there is a lesson in there on not taking anything at face value and actually reading the TOS. (Red face moment there, I should know better)

To cut a long story and several tirades short, I recieved an outstanding notice today. Because I had paid the phone and mobile bills, but not the bigpond bill (I was contesting, I sent the modem back, there was no way I was paying for it and I figured I had no choice with the ETF, but the ETF wasn’t due until tomorrow anyway.) there was an outstanding debt. It didn’t state it was a bigpond issue, it was just an amount. So I called Telstra. Because aside from the bigpond charges, my bills were up to date. I have issues with bills, I cannot have overdue notices, they induce insomnia- so generally my bills are always paid either well before or on the date they are due.

It must have been my lucky day because I got Kelly. Kelly was wonderful. She went through the last three bills with me, item by item and amazingly took my anal retention in her stride. She managed to do the unthinkable. She reduced a $710 bill to a mere $236!! She tracked down the modem I had sent back, she even had my ETF taken care of. In short, Kelly restored my faith in Telstra. Big corporations are generally machines, with no ethics or thought of the people who pay for their services, their sole obssession profit margins and top dollar for shareholders. Finally, some common sense prevailed. Someone actually decided that charging a woman $330 for terminating a service she had for two days was ridiculous.

See, bona fide miracle. Thank you Kelly. Telstra is lucky to have you.

Absent note

Dear Intrawebs,

Please excuse my absence and lack of posting of late, it’s not that I am not online, it’s that my body is not coping well with allergies right now, so forming coherant and reasonably intelligent sentences has proven a bit of a challenge.

Couple that with the innate fear of not being clear(at least as clear as I get)….and you have an absent blogger.

Sincerely,

Pirra.

The Fatality list: 8 fingernails and counting

They’re gone. A slow exhalation, a deep inhalation, coughing and gagging on the smell of stale cigarettes they left behind and normality can once again return. 

 I love these people I really do. They raised my husband, the man I chose to marry and procreate with so they aren’t all bad. In fact they aren’t bad at all, they’re just old and rigid in their thoughts and ways.

I made a point of allowing the children free reign with the childrens channels in a bid to avoid the mix of current affairs and my inlaws. With my husband working 16 hour days he wasn’t around enough to be an effective buffer between them and me. Provided our conversations stuck to the weather, the children and family, we were good. So I shut my mouth stood back and let my MIL do my housework. Which kept the peace. I have to go air my house and spray every room. All I can smell is the odour of cigarettes, beer, coffee and Tabu.

I need to refuel on real coffee (not this instant crap my inlaws insist on drinking) and check my emails. But we all survived. Aside from the loss of 7 and a half fingernails, and some serious teeth grinding, all is well.  

I used to have unbitten fingernails…..

My inlaws arrive today. For five days.

Let the tongue biting, hand sitting and teeth grinding commence.

Mind Dumping

I was thinking to day about writing methods. Since, I seem to have done very little writing in the past week. Of anything. the blog serves as a means of writing something. With the slim hope that will fire up enough anything into myself to make me keep writing something of substance long after I hit the publish button.

Yesterday as I sat drinking a cup of coffee, I scribbled notes, ambiguous, abstract notes of something that has been stirring in my mind for a long time.  I have paper all over the house with scribbles and scrawls, sometimes just a single word, stained napkins with a paragraph or random thought, post it notes stuck to random surfaces….in short my entire house is a notebook full of my scribblings.

Yet very few of those scribbles ever make it into anything concrete. And the purpose of this post? Nothing. I am mind dumping. Writing myself in circles, waiting for lightning to strike.

And wondering if anything more will come after I hit publish……..

Because I was bored…..

<a href=”http://www.nerdtests.com/nt2ref.html“>
<img src=”http://www.nerdtests.com/images/badge/nt2/db9be67e08b479a8.png” alt=”NerdTests.com says I’m an Uber-Dorky Nerd Queen.  What are you?  Click here!”>
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Uber Dorky Nerd Queen I may be, apparently pasting simple code into a blog isn’t part of my uber dorky royalness. I’ll get it eventually, it’ll come to me at 3am and I’ll drag my sorry techno-impaired ass out of bed purely to fix the broken code because I am anal and don’t like messy code in my blog.

 My apologies for screwing up the view.

Channeling Erma Bombeck

I’ve hit critical slump moment. I sit here, trying to pretend there aren’t cocopops on the floor that require vaccuming, that the washing needs to be hung out and the garden needs watering.  I need to make a dash to the store to get some Lemsip for the spouse who is losing his voice via a combination of being ill and shouting at recruits from sparrow fart to just left of midnight.

I am distracting myself from the fact that I still need to get in at least 30 minutes of vigorous excercise and think up something for dinner whilst trying to convine my children that the sao’s they ate at 11am where lunch so that I don’t have to make them something now….(now that it’s 3pm this afternoon)

Couple that with an exhausting week ahead,  and I am tired and hurt just thinking about it. Not to mention I haven’t written a single word today….as I wasted my writing hours on facebook writing smutty insults on my sisters wall. (Way to use my talents)

At least last nights quiche worked and tasted pretty darn good.

I curse the catholic church and it’s sacraments today, as the daughter’s confirmation nears (which is why my in-laws are coming, I am not confirmed so I cannot act as sponsor and the spouse is busy with work and my daughter feels a need to be confirmed, insists on it really so she asked her Nanna to be her sponsor, and I need to contemplate discussing the baptism of a five year old boy with Father Peter which I am sure when they pour the holy water on his little blonde head that he will melt like the devil spawn he is and I will need to prepare myself for that very likely event.. ) It’s my fault for marrying a catholic. (And that my mother concieved me with one hence the baptism and holy communioin but lack of confirmation…my mother is a pagan she left that choice to me and I had two names already that I didn’t like and couldn’t figure out why on earth I would want to add a third)

So concludes my weekly whine. I promise, well not sunshine and lollipops, but  no more needless whining about things not really worth whining about.

I better put my shoes on and go to the shops….I think I’ll buy the $15 roast chicken dinner at the takeout. It may not be figure friendly, but it’s badmum friendly.

not here….currently having a life. (for now)

I have been distracted of late, by motherhood. If you read the entry on my son’s parent-teacher conference, you’d know my poor boy is a little on the stinky side.  So we are conducting an experiment. Given that I am lactose intolerant, and our oldest child was slightly lactose intolerant when she was younger…she doesn’t really eat dairy foods so I am not suer if she has grown out of it, it simply doesn’t eat enough of it to make a blip on the radar these days…..I figure, let’s try cutting out dairy.

I am amazed by how much dairy we actually consume. But the boy has gotten to like milk and cheese products from goat and sheep rather quickly. (He despises soy with a passion and frankly I don’t blame him)

So I came up with a dairy free quiche tonight just for my boy. (The husband wasn’t home so it was safe to cook one….cause real men don’t eat quiche so the boys will actually eat it if Dad isn’t home)

Instead of using cream I mashed up a slab of feta made form goat’s milk and added some goats milk to the mashed up feta to give it the consistency of cream. Threw in some eggs, some sundried tomatoes and some of those herb sachets since my garden is too new to harvest yet and the local supermarket herbs look like the lettuce you find all runny in the bottom of your brother’s fridge. Guess what? There’s freakin milk in the herbs!  All I can do was shrug and let him eat it anyway….he’s intolerant not allergic, it on’t kill him, it’ll just make him smelly and uncomfortable.   Which made me think about all those poor parents who do have to contend with allergies. 

Most primary schools and daycare centres these days are peanut free. Long gone are the days when you can bake 24 cupcakes for your kids birthday and send them in to school, now you need to consider the kids with allergies and send them in with an ingredient list.  And as huge a pain in the ass it is that I can’t let my kid have his favourite sandwich of peanut butter and honey at school, I would much rather listen to him whine about it than be the cause of a kid going into anaphalactic shock.

Which is why I now have to march my youngest off to the doctor to get his immunisations up to date. With there being two kids with Luekemia at the school, things like chicken pox can be fatal.

So this is why I am not here at present. I have been busy and writing and reading and have relatives arriving next week for a week. And as much as I love my in-laws, I need to brace myself as we come from two very different worlds.

Gremlins in the system????

Is anybody else experiencing technical hiccups with wordpress, or is it just me?