terrors of tally’s talons

paul and tally were playing on the floor last sunday afternoon.  tally was sitting astride paul when he just decided to lean forward and stick his finger into paul’s eye.  this unfortunately resulted in the cornea of pauls eye sustaining a rather nasty tear.  it was also very, very painful.  poor paul spent sunday night in accident and emergency at sutherland hospital, arriving home at 5am.  during his all nite wait to see a doctor he asked three times for pain relief and got none.  is this some sort of hospital policy?  keep the bastard hurting so the doctor gets to see all the symptoms?

 with no improvement despite some strong opiates, anaesthetics and antibiotics he was back there for much of monday.  an appointment was made to see an opthamologist on wednesday morning, hence our reason for doing nothing celebratory on australia day (see “percyisms” post) as it was back to the hospital at 9:30am.

we spent the afternoon in our “welfare water wonderland playland” as we have dubbed it.  must get a picture up soon, it’s quite creative and lots of fun.  we have a theory that because we live in the worst house in the street and drive the oldest, crappest car people feel sorry for us and give us stuff.  it’s not a notion i wish to disabuse people of because i like getting their unused, perfectly good stuff and it’s generally true that we live here and drive that 21 year old car because we can’t afford anything else.

the water wonderland is made up of our neighbours disused plastic kiddy cubby house with slide, our old blow up boat, a dripping hose and the desire to cool off.  the boat is filled with water, the slide is placed into one end of it, the hose is draped over the roof of the cubby house to drip down the slide and vwa-la! one wet, fun afternoon of climbing the cubby house, sliding into the boat, lots of splashing and giggles.  on a slightly disturbing note both percy and tally have been standing under the dripping hose, grapping it to stuff in their mouths and gurgling or swallowing or gasping as they laugh thru what is eerily like watching a child water-board themselves.  hmmmm…

to end on a happy note, paul’s eye is much improved with no lingering pain while infection, stressed as a very possible result of the gunk under our childs finger nail getting into paul’s eye, avoided.   back to normal.

“percyisms”

as my friend brooke has advised i think i will start to store up our darling girl’s weird, wacky and wonderful sayings for future print publication.  in the meantime i will continue to regal you with them here and on facebook.

here’s a funny story…

on australia day (wed 26th jan) due to reasons beyond our control we did nothing to mark our nation’s birthday, or invasion day, depending on how you look at.  i think down ‘ere in “the shire”, the idea of invasion day would be very foreign to nearly everyone.  anyways, back to my story.  paul was taking primary carer duties for a while so i decided to indulge myself in watching a movie (stuff the housework or exercise.)  i picked something that i figured would be mostly acceptable should percy end up watching it with me; which she did.  and also something i felt i might enjoy again… it ended up be ‘titanic.’  yeah, yeah, whatever, i like it as a once every five years sort of movie.  if you recall the story is told with some jumping back and forth thru time.  paul and i explained to percy that the big boat had sunk but then the people telling the story decided to go back in time and explain why.  so we are happily watching along and after a segement showing the sunken ship followed by a segement prior to sinking percy pipes up “see, that boat didn’t stay sunk for long!”

maybe you had to be there but we just cracked up.

christmas 2010

at 4:30am on friday 24th dec 2010 we gently picked the kids up out of their beds and carried them out to the fully packed car.  we’d hoped they’d sleep a good deal still but that was not to be.  never mind; tally enjoyed watching all the trucks as we sped north along the pacific highway.  at 9am, after two stops to stretch limbs and refuel bodies we arrived in the town of dungog.  at this point i shared with paul that we were going to be very early to our agreed midday arrival at the farm stay.  oops!  paul rang ahead and cleared that an early arrival was ok.  on we went following the newcastle water supply pipe line nearly all the way to chichester dam.

our stay at dusodie farm holiday cottage was enjoyed by all.  paul’s parents spent three nites there as well, while mine came for one and three nites too.  the cottage itself was a little disappointing in that it’s too “rustic” for me but we noticed once paul’s parent’s dogs were gone it was actually much nicer.  they clearly don’t see it but those dogs make life dirty and annoying.  oh well, i don’t intend to take someone else’s dogs on holiday with me every time i go! 

percy and tally loved the trampoline, the two storey cubby house with sand pit below and all the animals.  tally enjoyed feeding the cows and horses hay while percy also got stuck into feeding the ducks and chickens, patting the goats and giving the calf its milk bottle every morning.  i think the poor guinea pigs were happy to see the backside of percy by day five- she swamped them with love shall we say?

fondest moments of this holiday for me was tally in the sand pit quietly burying the resident old brown dog, who put up no argument at all; sweet thing, percy finding a new play mate the day before we left (bummer) and paul telling me after we had paddled the row boat up the river, got out for a wade, paddled back and he and percy going for a swim in the river, that he was drunk at the time.  well, tipsy at least.  normally i can pick to the half glass how much paul has had to drink, that day i thought he was just exuberant and happy to be on holiday!

there are two cottages on the farm.  guests arrived for the second cottage nearing the end of our stay.  the couple had two children, ayla just 5 and dane 2.  ayla and percy quickly hit it off.  percy was over heard to say within the first hour of meeting; “we are best friends now!”  how i love the sponteniety of children and their open hearts.  dane also trotted around the yard chanting “percy, percy, percy…” so she must have made an impression on him too.  tally was a little little to keep up but he did enjoy having a buddy to bounce on the trampoline with.

we’d hoped to come home with a less full car because all the food we took with us had been eaten.  that much was true but the car was just as full.  percy and tally were totally spoilt with an overload of presents.  next year we must put the brakes on that.  which will be difficult as it wasn’t us that gave them so many but their grandparents.  hmmm…  percy quickly got to the point of unwrapping one present, saying what it was and then moving onto the next.  not even pausing to open the box or enjoy whatever it was, just eager to unwrap more.  it was very mercantile and a bit upsetting.  lesson learned i hope.

because we are a family of aethiests, bar my born again mother, christmas does not have a religious significance for us.  and i’m struggling to see the point at all.  percy thinks it’s all about santa and presents, and i suppose for now that will have to be it.  when she’s older i will explain to her the christian and pagan reasons for christmas, in the meantime i think i’ll work on the spirit of sharing and giving and loving.

we arrived home to many loads of clothes washing and some relatively quiet days at home.  we don’t have contact details for ayla and her family but they have ours so hopefully they will be in touch.  they live in manly.  why the one way info sharing?  i’d handed ours over and was just about to ask if they wouldn’t mind sharing theirs when the guinea pig fiasco broke out.  percy and ayla were taking the pigs out of their enclosure to pat them and otherwise maul them when one smarty made a break for it behind a shed and amongst the stinging nettle.  in the ensuing kafuffle to nab the escapee the exchange of contact details was forgotten.

our first family holiday was quite good.  no photos as the batteries were flat.  we had the charger but just rathered to enjoy ourselves than summon up the enegy to plug the damn thing in to then take pictures of ourselves.