Day 160 Deja Vu!

This morning while I was in the shower, Sean came in and said that we needed to get Caramel to the vet. He was lying very gingerly and crying lots! He would move reluctantly and did move himself to the bathroom (under the heat light) and curled up on the fluffy bath mat. 

We took him to the vet who diagnosed a blocked bladder and advised he needed an operation to clear the blockage. He further advised that if it was left, it was likely to kill Caramel within 48 hours! 

We left Caramel with the vet with instructions to phone later in the afternoon to see if he was ready to come home. When I called though, he still had not done a wee and had to stay overnight. We are all feeling a little lost without him, but extremely glad he will be coming home, unlike when poor Liccy got sick last year :(

Day 159 It's a tail!

For some reason, Illi seems to have taken to wearing an extra long ribbon on her ponytail. This evening I snapped this pic of it. It is so long that when she puts a jacket on, that the ribbon hangs, quite liberally, out the bottom, making it look like she has a tail! 

Oh dear...the things teenagers do! (I expect I did similar things and so long as it is harmless, I guess I shouldn't complain too much!)

Day 158 Italian Rennaisance Food

This evening was Expo at Stromlo. Illiana and her friend set up a display about Italian Renaissance Food. 

Thanks to my shopping trip last night, they had panini, olive oil, balsamic, savoiardi biscuits and non-alcoholic red wine. 

The idea was for the Panini to be dipped into both the olive oil and the balsamic..which was a hit. The savoiardi biscuits were eaten alone. They served the non-alcoholic red wine in disposable shot glasses and this seemed to be a HUGE hit with the other students. The other parents were equally enquiring and I couldn't estimate how many times the girls had to explain that it was non-alcoholic red wine, or how many parents picked up the bottles to check! Puhleaze!

Day 157 Why do Canberra shopping centres have double external doors?

I think I have figured out the answer! 

When I went to Lanyon to get some groceries tonight while the kids were at karate, the floor of the shopping centre was totally littered with leaves! 

Lanyon has a traditional set of single automatic doors, so I am assuming in shopping centres with double, external doors, that it is hard for the wind to 1) get into the shopping centre and 2) carry leaves in if the breeze does squeak in! I have also noticed that many of these double sets of doors are offset, maybe this aides in keeping the wind/leaves at bay!

Day 156 What a pea souper!

This morning when I was on my way to work driving myself for the first time in a couple of months, I found that it was hard to see across the road. The fog was so thick! 

I drove carefully to work and still the fog was thick. The bell rang, and still the fog was thick. Lunch time came, and still the fog was thick. Lunch ended, a finally the fog lifted! It turned out to be a beautiful sunny warm afternoon. 

One of those rare finds in winter, and very enjoyable while it lasted...now we are looking forward to some very chilli nights, and not so warm days too!

Day 155 Interesting preparation for a picnic

Next Wednesday we are having a picnic for the hearing impaired kids on our collective caseloads at work. I am organising the name badges, so today I priced these convention card holders at Officeworks. The idea is that as kids arrive, they create a name card that we then put in to the card holder so that they have name tags for the day. I am thinking though, that as there are only 50 in a box, that I will need to collect them at the end so that we can reuse them in the future!

Day 154 Shoes

Today I bought Declan a new pair of shoes. I was in Target and found the style of shoe he likes reduced. Add this to the fact that I looked at his shoes this morning and decided the sole had seen better days, and the situation seemed very positive indeed! 

His last pair of shoes were 9s so I got the same size. When I got home though, I found that I had picked up a mismatched 'pair.' One was a 9, the other an 8! I got him to try them on to make sure they were the right size and found that he needs a 10 anyway! 

I also bought Illi a pair of boots in an 8 but when she tried them on, she needs a 9! Talk about growing teenagers! 

Oh well, looks like it is back to the shops for an exchange run!

Day 153 Back on the road.

Today was the day...after 50 days (7 weeks, 1 day) of not driving, I was allowed to drive again! 

Where did I go?? To the shops of course! To be fair, I went to Woden to renew the rego on the other car and go to the chemist. But the big thing is, I DROVE.

 I also found that I didn't need to have as much movement as I thought ( I had been worried that I still had not built up enough strength yet, but found that I tend to pivot my foot from accelerator to brake rather than lift and move. 

I still deferred to Sean to take the kids to karate tonight too...no sense going out in the cold if I don't have to right?