Self defense

Hey where did Monday go?  I'm posting on Tuesday instead!

We had a very cool, if tiring, weekend. Schedules with the coms brigade on Saturday morning were up at Wooroloo, which is a nice little town at the eastern edge of our shire.  We were parked under some very nice old pine trees.  I love pine trees.   Well I guess that's a given since i love all trees, but I love pine trees extra!  

      
This little fellow was rustling through the leaves near our post.  i didn't disturb him, but did get a dirty look for taking a photo.

I am not here.  

Saturday night was a bonfire with some of our favorite brigade people.

Andyroo with Tuppy on lead ready for guesty arrivals, pre-ignition.

It was a lovely evening  It's nice to have all your guests know and like each other well because you can be socially lazy and let them look after themselves, which is exactly what I did! 

 

   
The raging fire soon settled into a more mellow glow and we all sat around it and chatted very pleasantly.

Sunday morning, Jen and I took the two youngest kids to a women's self defense class. We decided it was time. We've both had experiences in the past that made us wish we'd learned this stuff much earlier in our lives, so we made sure the girls didn't miss out.  It was a GREAT class, held at the Bayswater home of Perth Wing Chun, so if you are local and want to do a class, I heartily recommend it!

This is me breaking out of a choke hold.

Why is everyone so much taller than me?  :D  I genuinely hadn't noticed at the time!

And this is me grabbing my partner so she can have a turn at breaking loose, with the nieceys in the background.  They loved it too!

And here we all are doing our "Back off!" signals.  Rarrr!

    
The scariest and most useful bits, were the scenarios.  I'd never done anything like that before, but am glad to say I didn't freeze.  I managed to talk myself out of one with a 'nutty lady' in a bathroom, and totally flubbed the other one by attacking my knife-wielding alleyway assailant while yelling, "I don't know what I'm doing!"  I do not recommend this as a self defense technique!  :D 

I think it's time I went back to martial arts class.  Too much of what I learned has gone from my reflexes. 

On a less physical level, I also did a few sessions on a painting, for the youngest niece, of Jerry the angel pony.  It's far from finished and I don't want to spoil the surprise, but I thought this pic of the part-done painting with the shadows across it was very interesting.   

I wasn't sure what to dress Niamhy in, so I asked her yesterday, "If you were dreaming you were riding Jerry, what would you be wearing?" and being a fairy-child she just thought about it and answered perfectly seriously.  You've got to love the arty ones!






   



   
  

Introducing Rosie and Tuppence

Well, I'm still sick and currently feel like the boringest person in the world, so here's an early post from when my blog wasn't read by many people.  It's about my Rosie and Tuppence and was firs tposted in Dec 2014, only my second post ever.    



So I say in my label up there that I'm a dog nut. I must say I'm not exaggerating.  All my life I've loved dogs and needed a dog by my side to feel 'normal'.  It seems as natural to me as breathing.

I've had some amazing dogs in my life, and I still miss every one of them.  Maybe I'll do a post about them one day. In the meantime, these two darlings are my current companions.

This is my sweet Rosie.  She was bred by my mum who is a registered breeder but only has a litter very rarely. The pups were born into my hands as the mum, Tess, wasn't keen on lying down to have her babies!

Rosie decided she was my girl from about four weeks old and who was I to argue? We've done lots of fun stuff together and she is always by my side.

Then when Rosie was three and a half, we bred her to a very nice boy called Punch.

  We kept a girl puppy called Tuppence.  She is rather different to her gentle mum.  She's lively, a bit twitchy at times, but super smart and great fun to train.

     She and her mum are great friends, which is lovely.  This was painted from a photo I caught of them snuggled together on the bed.   

They're peas in the pod, to the point where it is a bit hard to tell them apart at night or in dim light.   :)

Mum calls them my Black Watch after the Scottish troop of the same name,  because wherever I go there they are, trusty and true!




           

Life Goes On, Mostly Without Me!

At day six of the fun flu, I am actually feeling vaguly human this afternoon, but it is a shallow thing.

Andrew has done a great job of holding the fort, while i laid around and sweated and coughed and groaned.

Sickies get to watch with a cup of tea while the last two bonfires of the season get burned.

Sickies are very boring for their dogs.

But the cat doesn't care as long as there is someone to give him kitty smooches.

Luckily daddy was available to take them up the block for walks, at least on the days when he wasn't out fencing with a fellow brigade member.  

 While I've been busy dying, the spring has been arriving. 

Our little oak tree up the block is poised to burst into leaf.

I hope I'll feel the same way in the next few days!



     

Fireys, rainbows and slouch beanies.

It's been an an odd week.  I've been a bit distressed about a schism that has been happening at our fire brigade, and it has affected both my thinking and my health.  Why do people desire power to the point of destroying the thing they want power over?  I don't know. It is not in me to understand it.

Ah well, am trying to let go of that and just enjoy the people I enjoy, keep the ultimate goal of the brigade in mind, and hope that it all resolves itself. It is sad, though, to think that you are part of a team and find out that actually there are two teams, and sometimes they pull together but mostly they were pulling in different directions with different agendas.

Meh.

We did go out to one call out this week, another car fire, this time a wheel on a semi trailer that had a seized bearing. The efficient young truck driver had already got it out by the time we arrived. 

It was a bit of a non event, which, when you think about it, are the best kind when you are in a fire brigade, but since it was me, Nikki and Andrew in the 1.4 and Angus and Paul T in the Light Tanker, some of my favorite people in the brigade, it was actually a fun night.  We had a nice chat back at the station and it made me feel a lot better about everything.

Last Saturday, for Schedules, we split into two teams (Ha!  Ironic!) ) and took turns cleaning out the old station and doing a driving exercise.  I went out in the Light Tanker with my Bro-in-law Craig driving, so that was nice.  It rained pretty heavily so the tracks were fun.

My youngest niece, Niamh, came along to help and got to try out some of her mum's gear.

How adorable is she?

There was a lovely rainbow the other morning when we went out for our dog walk.

We got a silly selfie with it. Interesting to see that one of my eyes is drooping a bit there. Not surprising since my body has not been happy this week.  It used to be quite marked in the Lyme days, and this might be a sign to up my salt a bit more in case the dreaded bug has taken a stronger hold.  I called it my Aughra eye, (a Dark Crystal reference for those fellow fantasy geeks out there).

 

I think this was the best ever photo I got of my Aughra eye.  This was a very nice Percheron called Guinness who belonged to the people who were selling a horse that I didn't buy, though I sometimes wish I had. 

This pic always cracks me up.  :)

Writing is back on track, thank Brigid!  It took me quite a few 'blood on the forehead' days to get back into flow.  Yesterday I went over the 50 000 word mark.  Hardest 10 000 words I've written in years.  Not so much because of the story, as too much else distracting my brain and dragging me down.  Let that be a lesson to you, grasshoppers!  Don't let people and their machinations distract you from your true life's purpose!  Go sit in the sun and play a musical instrument instead, and when your mind is peaceful once more, then go in and write like there's no tomorrow.

Speaking of which, I've been messing with Jethro Tull's, "Cup of Wonder," for my next song on the lyre.  It has always been one of my faves of theirs, though in truth it would be hard to pick an utter fave.  Still not sure if it will work, or be pleasurable to sing with the lyre. As I found with "Gay Bar", which I really did begin to work out, some songs just feel boring when sung on the lyre.  Since I kind of have to keep practicing every song I have in my lyre lexicon, or I forget them, I only want to stick with songs that give me a frisson of pleasure every single time I play and sing them.

"Cup of Wonder," for, as a Fb friend of mine would say, the happiness of the people.  :)

Crochet at the moment is two projects.  One is a slouchie beanie for me made from that beautiful hand-painted yarn from my friend, Marigold and dog, plus some red that complements it nicely.  It's a bit of a slow one since the fingerling weight/4 ply yarn is so fine, and the half double crochet stitch is one I always find a bit awkward, but the result is pleasing.
 

The other one is the new 'flowery pasture' afghan for my middle niece.  So far I have this many squares and it looks like it might be quite nice.  Sometimes you get to a certain size and realise that the design isn't working and have to change plans.  So far so good. We'll see!

Interesting how the colours change under flash or lamp light. Lamp was even worse. Those are all different greens in the background, no purples or navy blues, I swear to you!   

We have a few fine days in a row forecast here.  Glorious sunny cold days of middle winter.  I plan on making sure I get out into them as much as possible! I'm sure the dogs would be glad to hear it.  They're loving their crispy cold morning walks!

This is dear little Skila, who I got to give some pats to yesterday while mum and I were visiting a brigade friend for a cuppa.   Always love an extra doggy fix! 

           
She is a lovely gentle family member.  Dogs are so cool!  Aren't we lucky to have them, in all their varied forms?
   

   


            

Woah! Busy Thursday!

Yesterday was busy, but in a varied and therefore good way.

I got my words, which pleased me because I've had a bit of a lull in motivation this week. Not usual for me when writing, but there is a lot of other stuff going on and I have 40 000 words down and have been writing steadily for eight weeks, so I am ok about having a little break.  It was good to be back at the keyboard yesterday, which I guess shows that my rest from writing was useful, but is now over.  

We also went out for a picnic lunch, sans dogs, and videoed my version of Follow the Sun by Xavier Rudd.  Have to get it off the video camera and onto youtube and I haven't seen it yet myself.  We did it beside running water so the sound might not be good enough.  We'll see. For now I only have a photo.

By the way, this image came by my Fb feed via Paul (thanks for sharing it, Paul) and I thought it might be useful to others like me who are bad at reading times signatures in musical notation.

Then in the afternoon my youngest niece came over for another art lesson and she finished her big project portrait of herself and her pony Ollie.  Phew!  It was a long and complicated project for a ten year old, but she stayed keen to the end and is very happy with her final result.

I love these shots of her concentration as she works.

Here she is doing the signature!  The final proud flourish!

Finished!

The whole thing required much discussion, experimentation and even over-painting, so I think she learned a lot.

Then it was time to cook dinner, but just as we started, we got a call out to a car fire down on the highway.  Off we went!

It was pretty exciting getting the 1.4 down the highway though all the stalled traffic.

But Elton did a good job.   Good on you, Elton!

 
The smoke was horrible. Our masks don't really protect us enough from it, so we aren't supposed to be at car fires. You need full breathing apparatus for it really.  We get the calls though and then we help with traffic and make sure the fire doesn't get into the bush.

Directing traffic was interesting. Amazing what speed some people think is going to be slow enough to get past this sort of thing safely!

I felt very sorry for the poor people, who were off on a holiday with their caravan when their car caught fire. The car was pretty much a pile of char by the time it was fully out.  They had a dear little apricot poodle who was safely held in the arms of one of the owners.  And that is why you slow down going past accidents and fires.  Who knows if that dear little dog, or a child, might not act oddly due to being frightened and dash onto the road?

Here's my dear little dogs safely inside our not on fire car.  :)

Got any yummies for dogs in that shopping?

Come on, when's the walk?  This shopping thing has knobs on!