Linda’s Notes

I’ve managed to book two weekend trips for when Kathy and crew will be visiting. We will be going up to the Blue Mountains for some hiking and because that is where I’ve heard the best Ugg boots can be found. It was a bit challenging to find a place that could accommodate four adults and our three kids all 3 and under, that was walking distance to the town center, but I managed it, and we’ll be staying at Lane’s End Cottage in Leura. We’ll definitely be making a stop at a place that some folks describe as a bit kitschy but Arthur will love it, so we have to go. There’s a railway that descends into an ancient rainforest, and since Arthur loves trains, we pretty much have to go.

We’ll also be spending a weekend at Myall Lakes National Park at the Eco Lodge there. I’ve heard great things about the Myall Lakes area and Adam and I saw a bit of the beach area on a stop during our drive up to Port Macquarie. So I’m looking forward to our upcoming trips.

So that leaves booking Tasmania (it’s pretty much planned out), booking a long weekend in Melbourne, and booking two weeks in New Zealand. Oh, and we still need to finish booking and planning our trip to California in August. We have tickets to California and that’s it. Haven’t booked a place to stay, haven’t book return tickets, and haven’t booked any of our vacation activities. I have my work cut out for me!

I’ve been searching for a place to spend a weekend up at Myall Lakes National Park area. I came across this website that highlighted Myall Lakes Accommodation and had this photo up front and center.

I also found this place on the recommendation of a friend.

Which would you rather stay at?

Athena had her first day (by herself) at day care yesterday and apparently loved it. She did not cry when Adam and I left her. She was more interested in getting down and exploring all the toys and the other babies. I was sure I would have to go back after an hour and pick her up b/c I thought she would have a meltdown but I called and checked on her and she was doing great, so I had a nice few hours to myself. She let out a token cry when I came to get her but did not pick her up and cuddle her right away. After her cuddle, she just wanted to get back down and play.

On the menu for brekkie (breakfast) was toast with butter and Vegemite. Adam thought that was awesome. (I think it was probably for the slightly older kids, I can’t imagine Athena liking Vegemite, but then again, she seems to take after her Dad a lot!).

I managed to go run some errands which are usually pretty impossible with Athena, and then went to a bookstore and actually had time to browse for a book! It’s 532 pages long, so I think it will take me a while to get through it. But so far it’s really interesting. I also had lunch at a cafe where I didn’t have to ask for a high chair, or figure out where to put the pram out of the way, or deal with a cranky baby who wants her food or wants to throw it on the floor. It was really nice.

I did buy her a couple of toys to assuage my guilt for leaving her at the day care. Although after I picked her up, I realized I had nothing to be guilty about because she had loads of fun.

I’ve been slacking on posting wines we’ve had lately. So here is the list of bottles we haven’t chucked into the recycle bin yet.

Long Point Deckchair Red - Lake Cathie NSW: this was OK
Bago Vineyards Merlot Chambourcin 2007 - Wauchope NSW: good
Marsh Estate Vat N Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 - Pokolbin Hunter Valley: excellent
Marsh Estate Semillon 2008 - Pokolbin Hunter Valley: excellent

This was a couple of months ago, but it’s still cute.

I uploaded a ton of photos and a couple of videos to my Flickr page today. This is what happens when that drought we were in ends and the monsoon comes. We ditched our plans for the day and ended up staying in, so I worked on photos most of the day.

About two hours ago, we were getting ready to go out for our Saturday brekkie. Adam looks outside and says, “looks like it’s going to be a nice day”. So, I put on my trainers and a light jacket and we go off into the day. It was cool and a little bit foggy and a little bit sunny. Then, as we were finishing our brekkie, it started pouring down rain outside. Not just a little rain, but pouring! We thought about ordering some more coffee & tea and staying a bit longer, but Athena clearly needed her morning nap. Thankfully, I did have a light umbrella in the pram, so I was able to stay marginally dry on the walk home. Adam is soaked. Athena is dry, but her pram is soaked. I am soaked from about the knees down. When we moved here Australia was in the middle of a drought. NSW is no longer in a drought!

Also, Adam didn’t realize he would be sharing his Big Brekkie with Athena. She loves beans on toast, so she ate about half of his beans and almost a whole slice of toast, with butter, the toast always have to have lots of butter. He complained a little, but too bad for him. I ordered an omlette and she didn’t want any of that.

This was taken a few weeks ago, but it shows the right amount of rain we are experiencing today.

Hmm, looks like I never uploaded the Glebe rain picture. I will do that soon and update this post in a bit.

Here it is:

We spent the day exploring Surry Hills and Darlinghurst today. I really like the Surry Hills area and think if we didn’t live in Balmain, I’d want to live there. I am starting to think I like the Rozelle end of Darling Street better than the Balmain end of Darling Street. That is OK because we are walking distance from both downtown areas, so I can pretty much choose between them easily on any given day. Darlinghurst would have been better pre-Athena, although I’m not sure I was ever cool enough to live there. I saw a guy walking down the street talking on his cell phone pushing a stroller. To an untrained eye, he might just look a bit disheveled. However, I could tell he was wearing designer-distressed jeans, a washed-leather jacket (rather than some old thing), a “grown out haircut” he probably spent $200 on, and the kid he was pushing in a dinky stroller - well, that stroller was Burberry. (And I just checked, and I was correct when I told Adam it cost $1000 - it’s $700 in the US, so that’s about $1000 AUD). In Rozelle and Balmain, you see more fleece and Phil & Ted’s strollers or Bugaboos.

Before we headed over to Surry Hills, we had brekkie in Rozelle at The Coffee Bean. I had the veggie version of what Adam had and split mine with Athena. Last weekend she loved it. This weekend she just wanted the toast. That kid loves butter!

We stopped at a cafe in Darlinghurst called La Petite something so we could just sit and chill for a bit. My tea and croissant were very good, what I had of it. Adam swears he only had a bite but he had about a third of it, Athena ate about a third of it too. Like I said, that kid loves butter. I also let her have jam for the first time, just a smidge on her croissant. She was on my lap and facing Adam and he said she was quite surprised. She seemed to like it though.

We also stopped off at a fancy chocolate shop we passed and paid $16 for eight tiny chocolates. They were yummy too.

Something you might not know about me: I love local grocery stores. Whenever I am in a new area, I will stop into the local grocery store just to look around. I love to see what they carry and what people are buying. This is real life, not just the touristy bits. Locals, going about their day buying their groceries, and I think it’s loads of fun. So when we passed a local grocer in Surry Hills today, we had to go in and look around (Adam has come on board with my fascination). To my shock (and guilty pleasure) they had Pop Tarts. Strawberry ones. Adam was pretty surprised that I wanted Pop Tarts. I only want them about once a year, but they are sugary and tasty and nothing like real strawberries at all. They came in the little double-single-serving packs, which is good because I will only eat about two Pop Tarts a year. Tomorrow may be that day. We picked up a couple other random bits and Adam found a yummy granola-yoghurt-pear parfait which he promptly ate.

The young checkout lady asked me where I got my grocery bag. I had pulled one of those tiny reusable bags from the under-carriage of the stroller. This one was a pretty blue with a bird and trees on it. So I told her that the kitchenware store called Plenty in Balmain had loads of them, but that I was sure she could find them around somewhere. She was not disguising her envy at the girls/women who pulled the cute reusable bags from somewhere in the depths of their purses - and their “of course I don’t use plastic bags that will choke the environment” look. (Personally, I just can’t bear the thought of Athena growing up in a world where the oceans are so polluted she can’t swim in them and the birds are all dead because of the plastic bags floating around screwing up their food supply.)

Anyway, it was a lovely day. I’m still not quite over this jet-lag thing. I think it’s because the sun goes down around 5-5:30. So if I get tired and take a nap around 4pm, my body goes into shutdown-its-bedtime mode because there is no sunshine to wake me up again. I think Athena did the same thing today. She cut another tooth today (her seventh) and was fussy and tired so we gave her some Tylenol and put her to nap at around 3:30 but she never woke up. Since I didn’t wake up until 7:30, we never woke her up to keep her adjusted. I fully expect her to wake up at 3am, starving, and wanting to play. This is the price we pay for a trip to California.

Earlier this week I finally got around to looking into day care options for Athena. We really just want her to be in day care one or maybe two days a week so she gets some playtime with other kids her age and I get a bit of a break to work on some other projects, and you know, be an adult. Every place I called in Balmain has a two year wait list. Well, except that one on Thames Street that said they had an opening and I should come in to take a tour, then when I showed up for the appointment and started the tour was told the wait list was 2 years! So really, they didn’t have an opening for Athena. Then I called all the day cares in Rozelle, same thing - two year wait list. Then I started on Leichhardt, no luck. Then Glebe. Well, finally I got some positive responses in Glebe. So today I have an appointment to view a day care in Glebe, which will be a drive across a bridge just to get her to some playtime! Magically, one of the places in Rozelle came up with a one-day-a-week-and-only-Friday opening. They have a two year wait list, but no one on their list wanted just one day on Friday. So we also have an appointment with them in about half an hour. Of course, Athena is still asleep, so I guess as soon as I’m done typing here I’ll have to slap on some make-up, brush my hair, wake Athena, feed Athena and get her to her appointment. On second thought, I’ll finish this later.

I’ve uploaded my first video to Flickr. It’s of Athena, of course. We were having fun at Gladstone Park in Balmain yesterday.

Last week while we were in California, we went to an awesome sushi restaurant with a couple of friends of ours. One of the appetizers we got was some tofu with bonito flakes on it. It was very yummy. We’d given Athena a bottle but she was reaching for the food, so we gave her some tofu. She loved it! So we gave her more. I think she ate more tofu than I did. We’ll have to get her some for meals here in Sydney. She is getting a lot more big-people food these days. Last night, she had pizza for the first time. Not surprisingly, it was Hawaiian pizza.

On another note: I figured out why Athena’s been extra cranky with this jet-lag than she has been in the past. Today while I was giving her her afternoon snack, I noticed she had two extra shiny bits in her mouth. She cut two more teeth today! I swear they weren’t there this morning. Combine that with jet-lag and it’s enough to make anyone a little extra cranky.

We’ve had a great day so far and it’s only 2pm! We went for brekkie (breakfast) in Rozelle then walked around a bike/running/walking path to Drommoyne then back via Balmain/Darling street. It’s a gorgeous warm and sunny winter day.

It’s also the Queen’s Birthday Holiday even though they don’t have a queen in Australia. I really don’t understand the reverence to a queen and a country that doesn’t really seem to give them much in return. There is even a Governor General appointed by the Queen of England that has the power to dissolve the Australian Government. This makes no sense to me because as near as I can tell, the Australians really don’t get anything in return from England. They don’t even get reciprocal work permits. I’m sure I’m missing something, I just don’t know what it is.

I haven’t posted in a while, which you’ve probably noticed. We went to California for two weeks. I was super excited about the trip, because, well, Sydney is nice and all, but I love California. I’ve lived places that sucked, like Detroit, and Sydney is about a thousand notches above Detroit, but I miss California. That’s where my friends and some of my family are; and Adam’s family is just across the border to the north and actually much much closer than my family in Texas (oh, and by “border to the north” I mean the CA / OR border, not Canada).

It was a great trip but I did not get all my “to do” list done while I was there. I had a very packed social calendar and so did Buttercup. I secretly think most of the people who were excited to see me were really a lot more excited to see my adorable baby daughter. I did manage to buy a bunch of new clothes since my clothes here in Sydney mostly consisted of things that were too big, stretched out, faded, pilled, and/or spit-up stained. I also bought some baby gear, like a new stroller for Buttercup since that exact same stroller was more than double the price here in Sydney. We also bought her a new carseat since she’s getting bigger and was going to outgrow her bucket-seat one of these days.

Hmm, that adorable baby daughter appears to be awake - it’s 2:42am and we are all jet-lagged. I went to take a nap at 4pm and ended up waking up at 2am, so Adam is the one who put her down last night. I have no idea what time she actually went down or if she should even be reasonably waking up now - given that her little internal clock thinks it’s 9:43am. But since she’s just talking to herself (or her dolls), I’m going to let her be and hope she goes back to sleep.

My friend Kathy made a post about water usage in California. Wasted water really irks me. Maybe it’s because I was raised on well water. I’m guessing very few of you even know what that is since I’m sure you were mostly raised on city water. Well water means we had our own well and that we did not have pipes that connected us to the city water system. No, I didn’t have to throw a bucket down a well and bring it up (although I once stayed at a camp on the beach in Mexico where I had to do just that). It was a proper well, with a proper pumps and a catchment tank and all. But that also meant that we always, always paid attention to how much water we were using, and if the pump broke, we didn’t have water until it was fixed. This also meant that rain amounts (or lack thereof) and the Edwards Aquifer levels were a legitimate topic of conversation at the dinner table and not just “filler” talk.

Kathy’s post made me think of a couple of my pet peeves about how water is delivered into a house, hotel, whatever and that some cool industrial designer should spend some time figuring out how to design practical & affordable solutions to these water issues - since we all know many of us actually live in the desert.
1. Why do we have faucets that dump so much unused water right down the drain? They need foot pedals or something (but footpedals a toddler or a cat can’t work) since you can’t exactly turn off the water while you soap your face and then fumble for the lever again without getting soap in your eyes; and it’s not reasonable to turn the water off for the 3 seconds you need to scrub each dish before you rinse it - especially if you are holding a soapy dish in one hand and a scrub brush in the other. Yes, a lot of corporate buildings now use the sensor faucets and (when working properly) those are great, but folks don’t use those in their homes.
2. Why don’t we have better water heaters? How much cold (clean) shower water just goes right down the drain? Why can’t we have a customized “warm” option for our sinks? For most things you just want warm water anyway. Not hot, not cold, just warm. How much water is wasted trying to get the right temperature to come out of the stupid faucet?

I saw a really cool contraption at a marina north of Sydney that used the bathroom handbasin water catch to fill a toilet tank. Awesome!

A filly won the Preakness! Go Girl, Go!

This week has been a little rough. It started with Mother’s day being spent with Athena really sick throwing up and taking her to the hospital (in a strange city, in a foreign country, six hours from where we are currently living - and six hours from her regular doctor). Then Athena got better and we had about one and a half good days. Then on Thursday afternoon, I started feeling a little weak and out of it. By Thursday night, it was full on assault from what I’m hoping is a short-lived virus. It’s Saturday night and I haven’t managed the strength to leave the house in two full days. Not even to cross the street to the lovely park outside or even go out onto the patio to water my plants. I am sooooo incredibly thankful that I have a loving husband and father to Athena that could stay home and take care of her while I have been basically laid up in bed.

So, at this point, you might be wondering about the title of this post. Well, that’s because even though I’m sick, I am focused on our trip to California in just seven days and thankful that I got sick now instead of this time next week. In my current shape, I’m not sure they would let me on the plane. But then again, the Aussies might decide it would be better to export this sick American and that once I landed in SFO the Americans couldn’t turn me away - you know, given my American passport and all. Anyway, I am thankful to be going home to see my friends and family. I am happy Athena will get to play in the California sunshine once again (with her sunscreen and hat, of course). And I’m really looking forward to some decent Mexican food! Oh, and Patxi’s pizza. Definitely having Patxi’s.

Highlights from our trip to Port Macquarie (I’ll fill in details later):

1. Saw a wild kangaroo - and had to slam on the brakes so I didn’t hit it with the car.
2. Saw a beautiful sunset followed by some wild dolphins in the mouth of the Hastings River.
3. Enjoyed a beautiful morning at a grassy park near the beach with my hubby and daughter.
4. Walked the Historical Walk trail and explored the old town.
5. Got heavily rained on at the rain forest preserve and canceled our walking tour.
6. Spent my first Mother’s Day with a puking daughter in a hotel room.
7. Took my baby girl to the hospital emergency room for the first time on Mother’s Day night. (She’s getting better now).
8. Skipped going to the rain forest preserve and to Myall Lakes National Park so we could bring Athena back home a.s.a.p.

So much for my relaxing trip to Port Macquarie.

Today I went to Target and bought Athena a new Pack ‘n Play. There is nothing wrong with her old Pack ‘n Play except that it is in California and we are in New South Wales. When we were getting ready to move to Australia, we thought we would bring the Pack ‘n Play on the plane with us, but ditched it at the last minute to make room for another piece of luggage (and by “ditched it” I mean we left it with someone who will be able to use it while we are away). We’ve gotten by without it so far, but this weekend we are going up to Port Macquarie and I think she will do much better if she has something familiar to sleep in. So later today, I’m going to set the thing up and let her explore it and play with it and see how she likes it. Then hopefully she won’t freak out tomorrow night when we try to get her to sleep in it.

When I need cheering up, I just go search for “Innertube Maracas” on youtube. You get a video of my baby cousin playing, you guessed it, Innertube Maracas!

Wines we’ve had lately:

Tower Estate Hunter Valley Shiraz 2004 - mediocre (I can’t even believe that this is the wine we tasted at the winery)
Oakvale Peppercorn Shiraz 2007 (Hunter Valley) - good but not great
Marsh Estate Hunter Valley 2007 Vat S Shiraz - outstanding