away from rain (hopefully)

its been POURING down most of the night and raining most of the day (except for 5 min before i left for work when it was barely spitting so i put my rain gear in my bag instead of on me only to be drenched 1/2 way to work). hopefully in just over an hour we will start our trek away from the rain (unless it follows us). we're heading up to rockhampton this afternoon!! i'm glad melbourne is getting all this rain (finally) but i'm happy to leave here while it's happening.

lap dog

poor dog has spend the last hour or so (seriously!) sitting next to me, barking, whining, jumping on me..... everything she can think of to alert me that she wants my dinner that's been sitting next to me while i'm working (i'm not hungry-- i had a big late lunch and forgot to mention that to zac before he cooked an amazing stir fry). she finally decided the best way was to sit on me. then she got tired and just layed down on top of me (staring at my plate of food on the desk). for a while she just had her head nestled into my shoulder like a baby and i think she was almost asleep. i asked zac to quietly grab the camera from the end of the desk and get a photo. she woke up before he even got off the couch and she just stared at zac while he picked up the camera and moved next to us-- zac's photo of us ened up with her staring at him. how cute is she? she layed back down with her head on the desk (staring at the food after zac walked away). i finally made her get down so i can finish typing up her routine for denise and loading all new songs onto my mp3 player. she tried just standing on her hind legs to look at the food on the desk, she barked at me (and got yelled at for that), and now she's FINALLY given up, moved to her bed on the couch and is curled up sleeping next to zac.

stressed parents

we go to queensland in 5 sleeps. wombat is booked into a kennel (one she went to before) for the first half of our trip and then staying with denise for the second half. we were all fine with that until last week. we realized that not only would wombat not be getting daily walks or LOTS of play time (she will be getting play time and extra belly rubs-- we paid extra for that) but she won't have anyone to wrap her up in her blanket at nite. she'll be cold and lonley. she won't be able to crawl under a doona with her people in the middle of the nite. we paniced and called everyone we could think of that would possibly want to dog-sit for a few days (until denise could take her). nobody could. we're coming to realize though that she will be cared for and happy and warm (hopefully a heat lamp or heater by her bed) and even though she'll miss us, she'll be ok. it'll be good if she gets used to the kennel though cuz she may need to go in it more often when we go away (unless we can get her to be friends with our friend's dog sophie, then she can stay with them when we go away--- and sophie can stay with us)

still cold!

the last few days (and especially the nites) have been soooooooo COLD!! there's something wrong with having to sleep with thermals on in your house to keep warm at nite (especially when you share a bed with another (warm) person and a dog. 11 sleeps til we head to sunny (warm) queensland!

hoodwinked

i watched the movie hoodwinked this afternoon (it's been a lazy day). it was sooo funny. like the cover of the dvd case says "the funniest animated movie since 'shrek'" (shawn edwards, fox tv). its basically little red riding hood all twisted up.

sooooo cold!!

its not even 4C outside right now!! zac said everything is covered in frost out there (he walked the dog-- the dog is now curled up under the doona in our room). our poor heaters (both the central heating and the space heater) are having trouble even keeping the house warm (usually the central heating will heat it up quickly but because houses here aren't properly insulated it gets cold as soon as you shut it off. the space heater does really well in the lounge room and it usually stays warm for a while as long as the doors are closed and the blinds are down). it should hopefully warm up during the day (15C-- 4 layers, scarf and gloves weather in the shade) but i think the next couple nites/mornings are gonna be cold like this again (13 sleeps til we head to queensland!!)

almost finished

i'm almost finished my quilt (its actually gonna be a doona cover-- easier to finish and easier to wash when the dog puts her dirty feet--or bum-- on it). the sqares are all sewn together. now all i need is a sheet to stitch as a boarder around the edge and then as the backside. i think i mentioned it before but all the fabric is from cut up pillow cases and a couple fabric scraps i found at op shops. i think it cost me about $6 (plus several hours of cutting and sewing) to make. i'm hoping to either find a high quality sheet from an op shop this week or i'll get a cheap sheet from warehouse or somewhere (but those tend to pill and then they aren't very soft).

"cheese"cake

my first attempt at a vegan cheesecake turned out great. first it took me ages wondering around the supermarket looking at ingredients on biscuits to find something that resembled graham crackers. the graham crackers that i'd use in canada have honey in them (not vegan) but here i can't even find the equivalent. i did find some kind of biscuit that was vegan and sounded like it would be good as a pie crust. then i wondered the baking isle (for a 3rd time) and found some pie crust crumbs that had pretty much the same ingredients as the biscuits and stated "great for cheesecakes" so i got that. it ended up being pretty similar to graham crackers. the recipie is from vegan planet cookbook. i'll be making this one again (there's also about a dozen other "cheese"cake recipies i wanna try in our 3 vegan cookbooks).

keep your eye on the red and the blue

the other morning one of the kids came up to me and said "hey shawna, listen to this" and he started singing "its a grand old flag, its a high flying flag..." and i was thinking its cute but why does he know this american song. he continued on and i realized what he was singing "its the emblem for me and for you. its the emblem of the team we love, the team of the red and the blue....." he did the entire demons song!! sooooo cute. i told him he'd have to do it for my co-worker when she came in (also a demons fan) and he did. then at group time he got up infront of the group and did it for everyone. i was a little disappointed though when my co-worker asked the kids what team that song was for they guessed at least half the footy teams before someone finally said melbourne.

not impressed

i started making a quilt last week-- no idea what i'm doing exactly. i've never done this before and i'm not following a pattern or even a set of instructions. i'm just making it up as i go along. i cut 225 squares out of pillow cases and fabric scraps i picked up at op shops (i decided to go out and spend the money on a rotary blade and cutting mat-- so glad i did that. the job was sooo easy that way). last nite i was at the point where i'd sewn 4 of the 15 rows together. i'd layed out all the other squares in lines on the lounge room floor so i could get a good random non-pattern (we had a discussion at work yesterday when my co-worker was talking to a kid about the "random pattern" they were doing--- can it be a pattern if it's random? random and pattern are opposite). anyway, i layed the 4 rows i'd sewn over top of the non-sewn ones so that if wombat walked over them they wouldn't get messed up. i have trying to keep wombat off my work completely (really hard when i'm on the floor) cuz she sometimes has muddy paws. i was sitting on the floor near the quilt and zac and a friend were standing talking. wombat was jumping around excitedly at the new person in the house. all of a sudden she gets down and starts doing her doggy butt scoot-- right on top of my quilt!!! and she left a streak!!!!! couldn't really yell at her for it though. she had no idea what she'd done. as far as she's concerned her ass was bothering her, she cleaned it the only way she knows how. i was more annoyed at zac who thought this was the funniest thing ever (he was still laughing 3 hours later!!). i washed that bit of the quilt but i'm a little disgusted though cuz she did the butt scoot on the carpet earlier in the evening and again right after i pushed her off the quilt. there's probably dog poop on the carpet but our carpet is brown so the only way to find it is sniff (and i'm not doing that). i might just clean the whole general area where she was butt scooting around (how many other times has she done the butt scoot and left steaks that we don't know about-- we always assume she's got a hair or something stuck coming out cuz that's happened a couple times. i think she eats my hair when i'm asleep).

my little demons fan

after spotting some dog footy shirts a few weeks ago i knew wombi needed one. the largest size would have been too small for wombat so i decided to make her one (much cheaper too probably). i found a plain navy blue youth shirt at an op-shop, chopped the sleeves, ordered some transfer paper for dark t-shirts, found the demons logo, printed it up (that was by far the most time consuming and frustrating part of the process-- lots of issues with the printer, the ink, the feed......), ironed it on to the shirt and now wombi is a melbourne fan too.

here's the little princess taking a nap (she's sitting there now except she has her teddy tucked under her head)

more napping. this was the other morning in bed.

she crawls in with us usually around 4:30 or 5am. we're too tired to do anything about it. she knows the routine now. she gets up, goes in between us (she'll use force if she has too) and then dives under the doona head first. she's finally started to learn that when you sleep completely under the covers you get too hot (she kept waking up panting) so now most of the time she'll either stick her head out the bottom end (if we don't have a sheet tucked under the mattress) or she'll put her head on (or under) the pillow.
she's sooo lazy!

she's beautiful-- warts and all

actually its a button tumor. we took her to the vet a week ago to get it checked out. apparently its fairly common among dogs her age and isn't serious and should go down on its own (she had some little ones behind her ears a couple months ago and they went down). she's also got a small one next to her eye and a tiny one on the tip of her nose. this one is big and ugly though. it also is right where her gentle leader and muzzle sit so it gets rubbed a lot. it doesn't seem to hurt her-- it just gets really itchy after walks and sometimes just when she's laying around. if it doesn't go down on its own we will have it cut off in a couple months (and she can get the cysts in her ear and on her back hip cut off too)-- yea for pet insurance. the vet gave us some cream for it that i think is just to help the infection (it was REALLY red when we took her to the vet and i think it had been bleeding from being rubbed). it is looking much better colour-wise now. its just big.