Canteen

At the Rodeo in Warwick, I was volunteering at the canteen for two of the busiest days. They gave me a volunteers wrist band so I could get in, a blue ticket so I could park and sore feet so I couldn't sleep that night.

I was my usual cheerful, probably annoying self, and there was a lot of laughing at my expense, like when I went out to give people their meal and called 89 about ten times before looking at it properly and then calling 98. There was a lot of laughing and chatting, they were mainly women in the canteen, and I wondered if they would normally be that happy at the end of a long week, or was it just that I was happy. I remember mentioning to my brother once that a friend of ours was always smiling and laughing and Matthew said "not really, only when your there." Maybe one of my gifts is to help people laugh at themselves and me. This is a good gift to use, all I need to do now is learn when to use it and when to let people be sad.

That was an odd post and did not turn out at all like I expected. The other thing I learned is why I don't work in hospitality, it is fun for a one off but every day would be stressful

Rodeo

This weekend I went to the Warwick Rodeo which is apparently the biggest one in Australia. I have now seen calf roping, where a man on a horse chases a calf and tries to lasso it. Of the 10 I saw, one bloke managed it. I have also seen competition barrel racing, the fastest time was 17 and a bit seconds. It is so close and so contested that they have a sensor to measure the time and it goes to 3 points of a second, so for example 17.429 seconds. I also saw camp drafting which is when a man on a horse chases a cow through around post and through a gate. I also saw Steer wrestling where a man jumps off his horse onto a running steer with long pointy horns and pulls it to the ground. I also saw bronc riding and bull riding where the aim of the exercise is to not fall off if you are the rider, and toss your rider if you are the mount.

I have thus decided I will NEVER let my children (if I ever have any) do Rodeo things, except perhaps barrel racing and even then.

Dogs

Usually it is Friday the puppy who is in trouble for being a pest, this is because she deserves it. We leave anything out there for any length of time and she will swoop in a steal it. She used to put everything in the garden nearby but now she is going further afield. There is a definite sense of knowing mischief in her behaviour, today I saw her look round and then quickly jump up to grab a horse brush and run away. She was extremely quick as I was standing about 2 meters away at the time.

The old dog though, she can usually do no wrong. Her name is Simba and is usually good and is too old and slow to cause much damage anyway. However, if left to her own devices for long enough, she will engage in a bit of trouble making. This is like great grandma playing a practical joke and only being suspected because she is the only one around. Yesterday I went to collect the kids from school and as I left I thought "I should kick Simba outside or she will mess up the bin." I didn't and when we got home one of the kids said "what happened to the bin?" I said "If it is spread all over the place, Simba came in a riffled through it again" She was lying innocently in her bed.

Today is a nice day and there is no reason for her to be inside but she barged past my leg and went trotting through the house to her mat. She is deaf as a post so if you want her attention you need to touch her. I caught up to her and she looked round then went faster and stood on her mat. I opened the door and indicated she should vacate but she pretended to obey then hurried back to her mat. This behaviour in a younger dog would be like "Ha ha you can't catch me" While dancing nimbly out of reach. Simba is so old it is just funny though.

Chickens

We have 6 chickens here. They are purely eaters of scraps so the dogs don't. This is fine, though my least favourite job is emptying the chook bucket. Today however I noticed an egg lying on the ground, then another one. I looked n the box and collected 17 eggs all up. Now the question of what to do with these eggs looms up. I don't think we can eat them because we have been feeding the chooks incorrectly. Now we have 17 eggs to deal with ????????? Who knew chooks lay eggs :)

pools

I went swimming today and one of the difficulties I have is remembering how many laps I have done. This is irritating enough in a 50 meter pool but in a 25 meter pool it is down right frustrating. I counted in 100 meter blocks and still managed to lose count. However the upside is saying I did 40 laps of a 25 meter pool is far more impressive then a mere 20 laps of a 50 meter pool, even though they both work out to be 1 kilometer.

Heather and I both have this counting problem and I reckon they should put a sensor across the middle of the pool and then give you a watch to wear and each time you pass the sensor it ads a lap on so that it can keep count for you.

Swimming

As you may have noticed, the weather is getting warmer (finally in my case, it has been cold enough for a jumper till last week). This, in turn, brings on a desire among the children to go to the pool. I also enjoy the pool and will hopefully use it a lot in the coming weeks.

The children have assured me all year that they are not good at swimming, my theory then, is that they practice. When we were little, we lived within 5 minutes walk from a pool and we would go there every day to swim. Mum set up a lap/lollies system so that every lap of free style earned 5c and every lap of form stroke earned 10c. I decided to steal this genius idea and use it for these kids. Unfortunately the pool is only 25m long not 50, so I changed it to 5c per lap.

We went to the indoor heated pool one day when I had the kids and they earned 40c 35c 80c and 30c. I was really proud of the 10 year old who swam 400 meters to earn 80c. We spent it at the corner shop on the way home and they are keen to go again. I capped it at $1 for the moment, which is 500 meters.

Pointing out the obvious to people

Today I went swimming, then I had to go grocery shopping. You can't do this the other way round because of the dairy products, and melting-ice-cream-in-car, and similar difficulties. The difficulty with swimming is that you can never manage to get completely dry if you wear your swimmers under clothes. This drew the comment of "your butt is really wet" from onlookers. I didn't really mind but it got me thinking of replies when people point out things you clearly already know.

1) "yep, it is raining a lot where I come from."

2) "what gave it away?"

3) "I accidentally sat in a puddle on the driveway" (this would only work if it has NOT rained in days.

4) "oh THATS why it feels so cold. Thanks"

Another obvious point people mention is red faces. I am NEVER pale so when I went to karate my teacher would often greet me with "Hi Julia, your face is red today" This was said in the same voice dad uses when he says "your acne is looking better, except for that bit". Heather and I discussed responses to the red face thing and here is what we came up with

1) I am terribly embarrassed to be here

2) I got sun burnt while I was out last night

and my favourite

3) I am slowly turning into a lobster.

Organisation

I am not a terribly organised person. I am not a complete slob or anything and I show up to things on time and rarely forget events, but I am not very organised all the same. I don't keep a diary because I never remember to write things in them and I am not busy enough yet to make it worth while. I prefer weekly routines, church on Sunday, bible study on Tuesday, babysitting on Friday, that sort of thing.

My main organisation strategy is ticky lists. These are the best and I inherited this from my mother, my sisters also like ticky lists. We use ticky lists for packing, shopping, running those annoying errands that take all day and you get home and realize you forgot the most important thing. I also, when writing a list, write down things I have already completed so I can tick them off and feel a sense of accomplishment. I am not alone in this, my sisters and mother also do this. My boss reckons I have too much time on my hands if I have time to sit down and write lists about what I need to do, but it helps me stay on track AND see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Weak Preaching

I moved to a place where the bible and Jesus death and resurrection for our sins is not taught well or faithfully. I did not realize how blessed I was at home with strong, Jesus focused, biblical preaching until I went home for Easter and heard our old pastor preach. It was like a long drink of cool water after a really long hot walk. I had slipped back into the numbness of shallow preaching for a while until I started listening to Mark Driscoll in the car.

I was at church on Sunday and realized what everyone was missing out on as the preacher talked about God speaking to him using even pictures. The example he used was helping him find keys in a pair of pants. I am sure it was true and probably God but it occurred to me that maybe pointing people to read the bible for guidance might be more helpful. I talked to him afterwards, as politely as I could, and during the conversation I said that the bible is the same bible for everyone. He said it wasn't, what the Holy Spirit/Bible said to me would be different to what it said to you. That may be true to a point, for example, the sins I struggle with will be different to the sins other people struggle with, but it is dangerous to apply it too much. I got into the car to go home and the very next part of the Driscoll Sermon said that when people begin to "interpret" the bible to suit themselves you can get some whacked out ideas.

I thought of an excellent example, Romans 6:1 actually says "sin more that Grace may abound" The fact that the bits around it indicate that we should not, in fact, do this, these bible words give us licence to do anything.

Romans 6:1-2 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? By no means.

For those of us blessed to have access to strong preaching, make the most of it and support it because it is NOT everywhere.

Reading to children

Reading a friends blog called Women Bible Life, and her blog about literacy in community, I was thinking about the reasons people don't read to their children. They assure themselves they are too busy, while having time to watch hours of tv every night. They reason that they don't have many books, when there is a perfectly good library where you can get them for free. They think their children are old enough to read to themselves and it is not MY reading that needs to improve.

Reading to children is only slightly about teaching them to read. It is far more about teaching them the love of reading, and of spending one on one time snuggling and chatting together. Yes you can snuggle while watching tv, yes you can chat while driving in the car, and you should. But books have a special place in your relations with children. The other thing about reading to children is that the child usually chooses the book where as other times the grown up usually chooses the entertainment or program they both share.

Last year when I was looking after a single four year old, I read to him every night at bed time, we went to the library every week, and he quickly grew to love both of these activities and found a favorite book called "My daddy is a GIANT". One day he asked his dad to read it to him but his daddy said no. The little boy came up to my room and cried and I read him the book we cuddled for a bit.

Clothes

Those of you who have known me for a while know that I prefer jeans and a polo shirt as general wear. This is because they are comfortable, and practical, and it usually doesn't matter then if a horse wipes black make up all over it. Black horse make up does not, apparently, wash out. Ever.

This style is fine for house and farm etc. but on the occasions when I am going somewhere like... the shops, or a restaurant, or in fact anywhere not associated with horse muck or water, it is considered normal to wear clothes that do not have unnecessary speed holes in them.

I do not like "posh" clothes much, they are not terribly comfortable and, people used to comment every single time I wore a skirt. Heather, my sister, said I just needed to practice wearing nice clothes at home. This goes against everything I was brought up to understand, good clothes are for special occasions. Unfortunately the 2 or 3 times a year, that said special occasions occurred I was so uncomfortable that I couldn't sit still. Also I attracted undue attention from the people who know what I usually wear.

Since Heather gave me the advice to practice, I have started wearing shirts that require ironing, jeans that are not stained with dirt from the puppy jumping on me, shoes that retain some of their original colour and hair done up other then a pony tail. The advantage of moving to another state is that nobody comments when I wear nicer clothes then I would normally wear.

Pride

The other day, and older lady said to me "come here and I will show you how to clean a toilet" She then proceeded to show me a very sensible way to easily remove dried on muck from the bowl by resting a bit of toilet paper over it and half in the water. The water soaks up and the next flush removes it. I said thankyou very politely.

Yesterday I was cleaning the loo and noticed that there was an opportunity to try this method out, however because of the perceived sanctimonious delivery of the message and the indication that I was unable to clean toilets properly, I chose not to use it. I was using the brush to scrub, like you do, and I considered that this was a weird kind of pride that had me scrubbing a loo in defiance.

Interestingly I kept going and did not feel remotely silly (though I do slightly now)