Self-helping dog

One awesome thing about living where we do is if the little ginger, or the dog, or both (usually both) are driving us bananas, it takes less than 10 monites to throw one on a lead and the other in the buggy (lets assume it's the dog on the lead and the kid in the buggy) and get to the beach for them to burn of as much energy as possible so peace can reign once again.

On Saturday that plan went slightly pear shaped when I took them down but within minutes the dog had done something to himself which left him lame.  Thankfully I'd driven down so I could take them further up the beach than I would've gotten by walking, because it would've been an interesting thing trying to get him home.  There are people who actually recognise Al around town because one day the dog went lame, and he got him home by balancing him on top of the kid's buggy.  Heh.

Months ago (it was when we were first putting our Taita house on the market, so maybe 5 months ago? He's just coming up 10 months old), while Kep was still growing pretty fast and therefore pretty fragile with it, someone stood on his paw (admittedly while he was bouncing around them like a maniac desperate for a pat and to be allowed to lick them to death).  He reacted by wrenching his paw out from underfoot, as you would, but in teh process it wrenched him through leg and shoulder and seems to have left him with a permanent weakness.  We keep him exercised which seems to keep it strong adn the beach is great because the sand is softer for running/jumping/falling on his head, but every now and again he must get his footing wrong and it flares up.  Usually he's back to hobbling within a few hours to a day.

Sunday though, he still wasn't/couldn't put any weight on it and that continued through to yesterday morning.  So I caved and rang the vets.  We had had it all checked out really thoroughly previously - firstly by an orthopaedic vet and secondly with extensive xrays, but there was no damage evident at all.  But of course if you want drugs (anti-inflammatories) to get him over the hump, you need to see the vet.  Curses.  So I made an appointment for this afternoon (Tuesday arvo). 

Then yesterday afternoon, he suddenly got a bee up his butt.  No idea how to describe what dogs do, but you have a dog, you'll likely know what I mean.  If I can ever get a video of it, I'll post it.  Out of nowhere they suddenly tuck their back end right in and run around and around like they're possessed.  It's incredibly funny to watch.  Unless of course said dog has barely been able to move prior to that, and then it's concerning as to how expensive he's going to make the vet bill.

Weirdest thing though - after 10 minutes or so of bahaving like a demented fool, he did a couple of circuits of the house, then on the last one leapt up on the deck on one side of the house (it'd been raining so it was pretty slippery), lost his feet as soon as he hit it, slid up the deck, off the step onto the next level of the deck and then slid the rest of the way until he smacked into the (sold wood) fence, landing on his bad side.  It was one of those moments you wach through spread fingers.  Ug.  But then, he got up, shook himself off, and walked inside perfectly fine. 

I told him I could afford to buy hom more dog bickies now that I don't have to fork out for a whopping vet bill.  He wagged his tail.  Good dog.  He doesn't realise that this means he won't be getting drugs rolled up in luncheon sausage though.  Blissfully ignorant.

(I do feel slightly guilty though that this tends to indicate that it wasn't his usual injury playing up, but possibly something out of joint. Woops. A+ for animal parenting)

Word at the coffee cart

There's about a week and a half to go.  Happiness is knowing where I'm going for brunch weekend after next.  What I wish I'd gotten a picture of, which I only spotted as we were driving away (incidentally, with coffee that was even better than last time - I am a ginger filled with much hope and happiness I can tell you) is that to the right there was another set of tables, and behind those were two labs, crashed out fast asleep, very happy in the sunniest spot in Raumati I'd hazard, and even better, their parents had even bought their blankets down to sleep on.  Heh.  Dog bowls at cafes make me happy - blankets is joy beyond words.

Short blog on the basis that the not-ginger kept me awake until the wee small hours, and the ginger was awake before 6am.  I can tell it's going to be one of those days where I'll only make sense in short bursts so I'm quitting while I'm ahead.  I need coffee. 

pistachio & white chocolate chunk cookies

I, the Ginger, am going to have to take up running. 

These cookies are amazing, but I earned a big ol' F on product for this one.  Really disappointed.  I'm not sure what went wrong, or even if only one thing went wrong - I actually suspect there are multiple fails going on.  Damn, damn, damn.

There was a delay between preparing the ... is it dough or batter? ... and it going in the oven.  The not-ginger gets the blame for it sitting aside for about 15 minutes.  I did them in 3 batches too because I really wanted to honor the 10cm gap between cookie-balls so I played it really safe with just 6 to a tray for the first lot until I could see what they did.  The result was uniform though over all batches.

The recipe stipulated a small egg - I used the smallest egg I had, but I think it was too big.  I have a memory pinging in the dark depths of my brain memory that egg acts as a raising agent too, which brings me to my next problem - I think they rose too fast, and possibly too much.  See how they're wrinkly out to the edges?  I'm pretty sure that was caused by the sinking. They came up, and then sunk, and I swear that the middle is actually uncooked.  Whether they're supposed to come up, I don't know, but looking at me vs Dean in pic 3, his cookies have cooked perfectly evenly, so I'd hazard to say not. 

And my pistachios all rolled off when I scattered them over the top of the dough balls, so I tried to really lightly press them in.  I shouldn't have done that.  It said not to flatten them, and I expect that that means not even a little bit. 

So, product fail, but I did learn and as much as I want to nail awesomeness out of the starting gate, I'm doing this because I want to learn.  And today's lesson is .... and I'd just like my honesty to be noted for the record here because I really don't actually want to say this ... I can't believe it never occurred to me before ... if you weigh your spoonsful (spoonfuls? spoonsful?) of dough, you get a uniform sized cookie (head......desk).  And I think paying more attention to ingredients (the not-small egg) will serve me well.

Onwards and upwards?  Absolutely.  Awesomeness awaits.  Over the weekend I'm going to break out the mortar and pestle again and make up some chinese five spice for macaroons next week, hunt down a mini madeleine tin and find some jars for bread starter.

Intervention therapies

Fair warning - this could be disjointed and sketchy (and long, and make little sense, so I promise the next post will be a picture of cookies).  Yesterday was a huge day.  I think it's going to take me days to process it.

I think I said at some point that the other reason I'm doing this baking project is that baking is my therapy.  I love baking, and I love writing, but I'd gotten lazy and rushed with one and abandoned the other completely, and embraced stress a little too much.  I'm trying to slow down and make time and these are two of my ways.  I need to do this as much as I want to - I think and move too fast, and the little ginger gets lost in that.  He thinks differently and I need to slow down so there's time to think about what is going on with him at any particular moment.  If I move too fast and don't think enough then that in turn causes stress - for him, for us, for the not-ginger, and the end result is no good for anyone.  This is my battle because usually our crappest days happen when I'm moving too fast - I'm unpredicatable (to the little ginger) because I'm trying to do too much and I don't listen as well as I need to.  So, slowing it down.  Stopping to smell the flowers.

Which bring me to the other thing that it's all about - Wellington Early Intervention Trust (WEIT).  I need therapy because the little ginger is having therapy.  Heh.  (Well, you do have to see the funny side)  Yesterday was our first session day with WEIT.  For now we have a fortnightly place which may increase to weekly in term four if we need more intervention.  I'm not sure whether that depends on progress, or whether he'll need attendance to be regular to keep him focussed. 

I was exhausted by the end of yesterday's session and I expect the little ginger felt the same because he fell asleep just a few minutes after we left.  It was more stressful than I thought watching the sessions (he starts and ends with a group therapy session, then moves on to speech language, music and physical therapies and another therapy that I'm not sure about - how awesome am I? A+ for attention) and seeing him being placed in situations where he would be out of control and stressed.  He hated physical therapy and came closest to panic and meltdown during that session.  The first group session he was all over the place, and by the last he'd pretty well shut down.  I think the drives to and from the Centre (around an hour from the Coast to the Hutt) are going to be really good - it's time to think what we need moving forward before we get there (in theory - the little ginger managed to talk the entire way yesterday), and then to reflect on what happened in session when we're heading home and for the little ginger to recover.  It's a beautiful drive too.

Yesterday was a lot about the therapists talking to me, starting to learn where our particular challenges are, and pushing Cuinn out of a position of control to see how he would react.  I guess also they were looking for confirmation of some of the things I had advised them in our paperwork and interviews, and also taking things in that I hadn't told them.  It's the tricky thing with him being our first child - he's our scope of reference for normality.  We don't know if something is significant or not.  That's been a hard thing to process for us, because we don't know whether it's the ASD or normal psychotic 3 year old behaviour sometimes, and you have to make a call which is sometimes wrong.  We started questioning absolutely everything.  Also, there was a fair amount of control taken away from him yesterday in session, and of course that meant trying to regain it when he got home which was hard work.  Probably made harder because it took me a while to realise that's likely where it was coming from, but I'm wise for next time and it's a good thing to talk to the therapists about (dealing with it the best way) because I want to ensure I'm carrying on what they're working towards with him. 

Probably the biggest thing I got out of yesterday was that both the husband and I worry about how much TV he watches, or how much time he spends on the ipad.  He doesn't sit there for hours, not in that way, but he is brought back to base fairly often when he starts to lose it and starts to overload for whatever reason.  It re-settles him.  We restrict his watching/game playing hugely to gentle cartoons (like Franklin or Wild Animal Baby Explorers (whatever it's called), Dora ... Peppa Pig is his absolute favourite) or things like Monkey Lunch Box or Lego on the ipad.  But he ends up having quiet time with them a lot and that concerns me.  Actually, I'm more concerned about whether I should be concerned. 

Our Speech language Therapist said not to even worry about it.  We're right at the beginning.  See?  Moving too fast.  She explained to me how tiring it is to be him.  I knew that, but she really brought it home to me with an example showing where meltdowns can come from.  She told me how when we walk into a room and see four chairs and a table, we know them to be and log them as a table and chairs without even thinking about them.  For him, he walks into the room and thinks - that has four legs, a seat, a back.  That's a chair.  That has four legs, a seat, a back. That's a chair.  Times four.  Then that has four legs and a top.  That's a table.  And he's doing that, cataloguing everything, all the time.  Then if something changes, a chair moves or disappears, it's not only that that impacts on his catalogue, but he questions what else may have changed - if that has changed, the whole world could have, and the catalogue has to be done again.  You can see where meltdowns and freak outs come from.  I would.  Yeesh.

It's good for us to understand the why.  I knew that it was important to him that things have their place and I know he can clock that something on his radar (that something I'm curious about - why one thing would be important, but not another - I'll find out, I'm sure) has moved even when you'd think he couldn't possibly, and an example of how control was taken away from him yesterday in relation to that was the music therapist took gym ribbons (no idea what they're called - ribbons on a stick?  Whatever.  You know what I mean ... the Olympic sport that doesn't make any sense) out of a cupboard to work with.  Afterwards, she asked him to put them back in a bucket.  It's nothing to us, but massive to him.  They go in the cupboard, not a bucket.

One thing that happened that was really significant, although I don't know how or why, is that the little ginger has been speaking about the other boy who was at his WEIT session (there are two boys including the little ginger and two girls - two autistic spectrum (ASD) boys and two Downs Syndrome girls), and this morning has been using his name.  It seems a nothing thing, but actually it isn't.  It's a connection he's made that's strong enough for him to remember the boy's name. Usually he'd have referred to the boy or that boy or that other kid.  There's only really one other kid on his radar at the moment and that's the wee girl that the not-ginger goes to play with on Wednesdays while we go to therapy - he's clocked her because she's important to the not-ginger who is important to him.

So, lots of learning.  I'm a bit relieved it's only fortnightly for the moment though - I think I need to build myself up to it as well.  Amazing team of people - we're really, really fortunate to be working with them.

Now I need a coffee.  I've probably forgotten a whle bunch of interesting and important things, but this big ginger is in overload herself just now.

fig & aniseed scone twist

I've started!  Heaven knows how long it's going to take me from here, but I have started! Yay!

This scone twist was pretty confidence-building.  It doesn't look as beautiful as it should (see me vs Dean in pic 2) which is annoying (very annoying, but I have to remember that the purpose of this is to learn, and learn I have), because it tastes amazing.  The scone was perfect.  Seriously!  Perfect (at least, it seemed perfect ... if it wasn't perfect, then that means a scone can be even better and the only thing I can say to that is - who knew a scone could be that good.  Not I, for sure).  I didn't half follow it to the letter after reading the recipe about 6 times though. 

What I should have done is paid more attention to the dough once I'd twisted it (and I think maybe my idea of finely chopped and Dean's are a bit different after comparing filling distribution - lesson learned) - knowing how it would develop in baking - and I should have made sure my swirls were more uniform.  You can see where a couple have stuck together in baking and left a gap on the other side.  Grumble.  But, hindsight.  I uploaded pic 3 to show how it looked inside, and I was a bit disappointed with that too (mind you, I also cut it about 10 seconds after the glaze went on.  That was bad, and I know it, but I swear that no mere mortal (and certainly not this mere mortal, who is weaker than most when facing down a baked good) who could smell that thing baking, or was in the immediate area when it came out of the oven would have been able to resist), but a couple more slices in and you could actually see the swirls, so I was pleased with that.  I just can't show you because between me taking a couple of slices and un-covering the swirls, and me getting back to it with a camera, the husband had at it and there are no swirls to be seen. 

The thing I'm most proud of about this is weird - it was my first step in my project and it tasted awesome, but I realised two handicaps too late.  Firstly, we didn't have any cinnamon (oops!  the box in the pantry was empty. There was some swearing) so I had to pound the hell out of a cinnamon stick in the mortar and pestle.  Yay me!  (ok, and yay the husband too because as I was staring glumly into an empty box of ground cinnamon, he was waving a cinnamon stick at me with raised eyebrows and inclining his head towards said mortar and pestle)  Secondly ... it came to the egg wash part of the process and I realised that the little ginger had at some point relocated the pastry brush out of the utensil drawer to an unknown destination.  So, there was improvising.  Maybe you can tell, maybe you can't.  Maybe I shouldn't have admitted to that.

And on that note, I think I need to go and find out what it tastes like lightly toasted and buttered.



A few of my favourite things

It's so tempting when you move into a new house, to collect lots of cool stuff to fill it up with.  Well, for me with no self-control.  Although, sadly online window shopping doesn't go wrong (depending on which end of the Visa bill you're standing) as often as it used to.  I blame the beach house mortgage which is almost half as big again as it used to be, and the addition of the not-ginger.  I had to put my sensible pants on (well, maybe just one leg of them).  Plus, we don't have a fire here and I really don't want to have to resort to eating the Visa bill.  Nothing looks as awesome as it did when you're standing in front of it eating 10 pages of transactions.  I swear the husband is getting smarter too - he seems to be able to look at something and work out how much I spent on it.  Useless. 

The other thing is that this really does feel like our forever home, so there just doesn't seem to be any rush at all (except temptation) to quickly load it to the gunnels.  It feels like we have all the time in the world to get it right.  This home has a much more colourful vibe than our previous homes though - maybe it's the beach thing - so we have caved and splashed a few bits of awesome colour around, just to get us started.

Here are a few of my favourite things.

Cushions by Little Fine Day - I bought the one on the right when we were selling the Taita house, but with this house in mind.  The flags cushion on the left was all this house.  I love them.

Tea towel by Tom Polo for Third Drawer Down.  I saw this and loved it.  It made me laugh and for that, it needed to be on the wall.  We're tempted to get it stretched onto a canvas in due course, but for now, it's fine and happy where it is.  It was perfectly starched for presentation when it arrived, but unfortunatley the little ginger got to it before I managed to get to drawing pins ... and blew his nose on it.  Ergo, I had to wash it.  I'll have to confess to weighing it up though ... it was perfectly starched.  Perfectly.  If he hadn't just had a cold ... No, no.  I wouldn't've ... maybe. 

Happy, bright mugs.  We've been using a selection of Crown Lynn circa 70s mugs for the last couple of years, and we love them, but the handles have started falling off.  Fine if they're in a drawer or in the sink being washed, not so fine if they're full of a hot cuppa.  I've had a thing for these since I first saw them in Askew years ago, but we've always had a reasonably neutral colours around us and although you can get them in neutral colours, they just really did seem the sort of thing that needed to be bright.  So, we splurged!  Well, I splurged, but since they went on the husband's tab, I'll call it a joint effort.  Ahem.

And my plate wall.  I love my plate wall, which is done by my friend Niki at Odd One Out.  I'm just sorry I couldn't take a decent photo.  If I stood dead on, the light seemed to bounce off my Super Fly plate.  Grumbles.  Still, you get the idea and these have their own lounge wall.  I love them - I've been collecting them since she started.  She's a genius.

These are figs.  They are awesome because they are in a paper bag, and I love stuff in paper bags.  That one's been with me (the thing, not that particular bag) since I was a kid.  I can't wait till I can start getting the little ginger into decorating them and making puppets, like they used to on Play School.  We'll use the old cellulose tape too.  That always made an awesome noise on TV.

Also with the figs - today or tomorrow I'll do my first baking item out of Global Baker, so the next time you see these, they should look exceptionally yum, encased in a scone twist.  

Very Good Charlotte indeed

There's a dreadful case of both-lateral-incisors-cutting-at-once related miseries going on in this house today.  The not-ginger is not happy, and she's sharing the joy.  Loudly.

So ... what do we do?

Not bonjela.  Oh, no.  Certainly not.  We laugh at bonjela.

Pamol?  Pah.

No, we rock it out to Good Charlotte baby!  And that, apparently, makes everything all better. 

Raumati Social Club

I'm quite excited about this.  Maybe a little too excited, but we're talking coffee and food which are two of my favourite things.  And I love this place too, so anything breathing new, very cool (I hope), life into it is on my radar.

One of our favourite coffee/brunch/lunch spots on the Kapiti Coast was Lembas.  It holds a special place in our hearts because we've been going there since we first started looking for a home on the Coast - we went there on one of our flying house-hunting visits down from Auckland, we went there after moving to the Hutt just because, we went there when we came searching for the beach house, and then we just went there once we moved here because it was 5 minutes down the road (sweet!).  It was one of the first places that really got us thinking about the culture in the area, and how we might fit into that lifestyle.

Change though, is going around, and we saw in one of the locals a while back that Lembas was to change hands at the end of last month (so then we had to go for goodbye brunch.  Twice).  It's a bit poetic and awesome that our spot (because it really does feel like our spot and always will I think, as long as there's coffee there.  No coffee = no spot though.  Unless I end up taking my own and sitting on the roadside. That's do-able, and then it would still be a spot of sorts. Just possibly a bit of a weird spot.  We won't think like that though - definitely not. Not about the weird, about there being no coffee. I'll do weird till the day I die) is starting a new life at the beach as well.

So, it's become a bit of a thing to sneak past and check in - see how it's all going, if we're out that way.  Although you can't see a damn thing because they've done a really good job of covering the doors and windows.  Very unsporting.  Not even a crack to peer through if no one's looking (although how you'd know that no one was looking before you peered through said not-there crack, I'm not sure).  It's reassuring though, to know they're in there, busy, giving our spot a new beginning.  And we're counting down too because the indicative time frame for renovations was 4-6 weks from memory, and that means end of the month or so, the clock will be ticking.

Just to keep us on our toes though, on Saturday we drove past and there was - GASP! - a coffee cart outside!  Woop!  It would've been woop-woop if anyone in law enforcement had been in the immediate area - the husband hit the brakes and did a 180 on the spot so we could get coffee.  Bless him, he didn't even see it I don't think, I just started banging on the window yelling coffe cart! coffee cart! and his caffeine-seeking reflex kicked in.  So, we got cofee, and damn them if they didn't have a heavy blanket over the door, so that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't see a thing except dark and feet.  I think we're going to be great mates though, us and Raumati Social Club - I like their style.  Their new coffee machine arrived, so they banged up a cart out of recycled timber and did what they appear to do very well - coffee. 

There was food too, so obviously I had to try that as well.  The husband and I went halvsies in a berry friand (beautiful) and, taking a stab, a chocolate/coffee fudge cupcake.  Awesome.  You see, the tricky thing for us is that the husband makes a pretty good coffee (and he's doing it on a baby class Gaggia too - me?  my coffees taste like crap) and I make pretty good treats (I think - definitely as good as some of the cafes I've been trying (and good enough that I can see when a cafe has not done well, so I just leave - snobbish much?), although I'd much prefer they were awesome, so I'm working on that too) so we kind of require not to be disappointed. 

So far so good - on a cart in front of a construction site, with reggae cranking and the sun shining, I had good coffee and I can't wait for them to be done.  And then, I'll have an eggs benne I think.  And another one of those cupcakes ... holy moly.

(I really wish I'd gotten a shot of the cart - it annoys me that I dropped the ball like that)

Market Day

Yesterday, but I was so excited about my engine shed pic, I forgot to post these up as well.  Yum.  I have to find a recipe for the sesame seed thing - it was beautiful. So good, I even had to make it last 2 days.  The croissant was also amazing but that didn't even last as long as my coffee.  I had a sample of the Baklava at the market, but the husband wasn't letting me near the one he bought home.  Funnily enough.

Kids on the train.  Cuinn seems to be getting to the stage where he doesn't want his picture taken - he yells and carries on and hides.  So I pretended he was being a complete menace getting in front of the camera while I was trying to take a picture of the seat, and that, apparently, is a different ball game entirely.  No doubt he'll catch on eventually, but no need to rush it, hmm?

Sweet

There are moments in life, if you're paying attention, that strike through you for any number of reasons.  Sometimes you catch those moments on camera, if you're really lucky, to keep forever.  This is one of those moments for me.  I love this picture, and I seriously high-fived thin air that I captured it, exactly as I wanted to capture it (at Steam Inc. engine sheds, Paekakariki).

Go to YouTube. Search The Duck Song.

My mission to making sure everyone in the world can't get that song out of their head is running parallel to my project just now.  And, you're welcome.

I found my start point yesterday, while sitting at the hairdresser with possibly an entire roll of tin foil in my hair. 

Fig and aniseed scone twist. 

I don't like figs, but I'm on a journey here and I'm trying to be open minded.  There's actually only one thing in this book that I'm going to have to make the husband eat and that's the watermelon, citrus and vodka granita.  I couldn't care less for watermelon, and I have a Pavlovian response to vodka.  Evil stuff.  Actually, I've just noticed while scowling at the page that it actually says that if you don't like alcohol you can use extra fruit, and you can change your fruit.  Probably should've read that a bit better, and avoided anyone wondering how I came to develop such an objection to vodka.  As you were then.  Fig and aniseed.

After that it's five spice, chocolate and almond macaroons and then pistachio and white chocolate chunk cookies.  With a bit of luck I'll nail those to the wall (or pictures at least. Heh (I know - it doesn't really take that much to amuse me). Actually .... that's an idea - a picture board as I go in the kitchen would look really funky. I think. Could give it a whirl anyway. No harm done if it doesn't) and then I'll probably have hopefully tracked down moulds for a fondant (and mini madeleines too - that's proving tricky. As is hunting down a copy of The New Zealand Baker: Breads, Cakes and Pastries, which is out of print).  I'm a bit nervous about fondant - the road to Masterchef is littered with the corpses of a thousand fondants and all that.  Then I think at that stage possibly curiosity will have gotten the best of me and I'll have to know what a sweet potato and blueberry creme brulee tastes like).

But for now, I'm missing important ingredients for everything, so I'm going to go and hang the washing out.  Glamorous.  And think about the market tomorrow where there'd better be more rocky road.  I think.  The husband and I nearly divorced over the last piece of the last rocky road during the week - he really is very weird about rocky road.  I'm also going to hope that the coffee beans I ordered this morning turn up while I'm faffing outside.  I'd be interested to know what the good folks at Havana Coffee Works thought this morning when two separate orders pinged up on their screens from two separate locations, beore 7 am - one from the husband at work, and one from me at home.  Heh.

Speedy post

It's been a full couple of days so ... bullet points.

- I just ate half a tub of The Collective's rhubarb and strawberry yoghurt.  Yum.  Seriously, seriously, yum.

- Last night, the husband cooked a roast dinner, took it out of the oven and then announced we were going to the beach to have fish and chips in the dark.  So we did.  And it was awesome. And the kids conked out good and proper once we got them home. And that was really awesome.  I love living by the beach.

- I really want a bike.

- I have not worked on my project much at all this week.  Useless.

- Tomorrow, I'm going to a new hairdresser.  A multi-award winning salon that takes months to get into, postitioned in the middle of nowhere, taking whatever appointment I could get, to fix a major hair fail.  I'm really looking forward to the drive to get there because I have to take the Coast road, and it's always beautiful.  Since there will be colour involved, I'm taking Global Baker.  No Vogue for me tomorrow.

- Cuinn was visited at kindy on Tuesday by a WEIT assessor.  From here, they and the kindy will come together to work on and develop a plan for him so that everyone is united in what they are working towards.  It's an excellent system.  I have no idea how the visit went though - the husband did the kindy run and didn't twig to who/what until he was leaving.  Oops.  They're back next week though, so we'll be more onto it.  Hopefully.

- I tried on some new jeans today.  I didn't buy them because I didn't really want jeans.  Some would question why I tried them on in the first place.  Because.  OK, fine, the brand is one of the biggest selling brands in the world - Not Your Daughter's Jeans.  I've been curious about them for ages - they have the most horrendous name, and yet sell well.  Why is this?  Are they awesome?  They must be awesome.  So I had to try them on and see (and I didn't have kids with me - the novelty of the situation made me lose my head).  They're not awesome.  I don't get it.  Although, to be fair, the pair I tried on were a size 8 which is a bit hilarious.  I don't think my arms are size 8.  Maybe that's it.

- I'm going to make a cuppa.

-   :-)

Shhh, I'm reading

This morning while I was reading Global Baker over breakfast (because the reading is the start of the doing, although it's going at a bit of a slower pace than I anticipated - it's providing a little difficult concentrating on yeast, enzymes and bacteria while the little ginger say, transfers a cup full of juice into an egg cup, overlooking the volume of the former vs the capacity of the latter. On the couch. In the lounge. All over the carpet. When I'm hardly awake. And still warming up so as to be able to move anywhere, nevermind in a hurry. Little treasure), I found a recipe for les caneles de bordeaux.  I, the ginger, may possibly in short order make something that has also been referred to as "portable cremes brulees".  Portable, people.  Cremes brulees.  Hello.  (This is where I lost my high ground with the little ginger too - I spilled my honey puffs all over the floor while I was drooling. Hate that)

I am enjoying this very, very much indeed.

I just need to finish reading, and then I'm into it.  Is it still illegal to tie kids up?

The things you learn

I have a fan-assisted oven.  How embarrassing.  Not embarrassing that I have a fan-assisted oven - I don't think - but that's exactly why I've had a major crash and burn rate with my baking (Literally, although in the reverse - the burning tends to lead to the crashing into the rubbish bin).

I've spent a month with either burnt or undercooked baking (or, on the odd horrifying occasion, both at once), all but standing on my head trying to get a bead on it, and it turns out I have a fan-assisted oven.  It'd explain the fan-like noise it makes when it's on bake, to be fair, but seriously, who knew such a creature existed?

I am such a muppet.

Happiness is a Farmers' Market

I love farmers' markets.  Love, love them.  When we lived in Auckland we used to go out to the one at Clevedon as often as possible (not often enough, for sure) - there is (was? it's been a couple of years) a stall there that did the best lemon sugar crepes ........ (Homer Simpson drool).  Breads and cheeses are my thing though - I swear I could live happily for the rest of my life on nothing but awesome bread and cheese (perhaps with a bit of vege soup to fight off scurvy).  I almost feel inspired to cook when I've been to a market (not really.  I do feel inspired to make the husband cook though - does that count?).

You have no idea how exited I was to find an amazing market just down the road from the beach house.  There are so many things I love about living here, but being able to pack up the kids and walk to the market on a Saturday morning?  Happiness is. 

I guess it's more of a community market than a farmers' market - although I'm not entirely sure what defines a market as a farmers' market - but there are all the essentials ... breads, olive oils, fruit and veges, meats, the fish truck (I'm pretty sure we're paying that guy's mortgage, not so quietly), sweets (you should have seen the rocky road we picked up today - it was a beautiful thing to behold.  I can't show you because we ate it (sorry about that), but it really was something.  I'll get another one next week, just for you guys.  A funny thing too - I've been married to the husband for nearly 11 years and I had no idea that he was completely incapable of not eating rocky road.  I found this out to my great shock this evening, because when I say 'we' ate the rocky road, I was largely not accountable for its demise.  True story.) .... actually, I don't remember seeing cheese.  There must've been cheese.  Surely.  It's Kapiti.  You can't have a Kapiti market without cheese.  That's just ridiculous.  I'll pay more attention next time.  And maybe take photos.  We were a little unprepared on our first visit so I didn't take as good a note as I could have - we stumbled across it, almost literally, leaving a cafe post-brunch and I went into a joyous overload about 10 seconds in.  And we got there late today, so missed pretty much everything (except the rocky road, obviously - sweet!).

The husband found me, quite literally, hopping around the room one Saturday morning maybe a week or two after we moved in because I'd spotted people - people, multiple - walking up the street, with bags of veges.  It screamed market, but better yet meant that it had to be close because they were all walking.  And it is - it's literally 3 turns from the beach house.  I was of course praying that it wasn't just veges because ... well ... veges ... and yay that it's the full she-bang!

It's just ... good.  Life's good.  It's hard from day to day and I find myself challenged on so many levels, but there's something about things like a morning at a good ol' kiwi market that just brings you back to base, and helps you take a breath.

The shelf that made itself

A recent issue of Your Home and Garden (I've been reading back issues over breakfast, unfortunately in order of whichever I grab first while balancing a cuppa and cereal and dodging the little ginger, so I can't be more specific than to tell you it's one out of the stack) suggested taking the doors off cupboard fronts in the kitchen and displaying the contents as a kitchen feature. 

I liked the idea a lot - particularly the thought of hunting down a whole cupboard full of cool stuff to display (a colourful stack of Pantone mugs ...) - but I wasn't convinced it'd work in our kitchen and we don't really have that many cupboard-contents-on-display options with the little ginger and the not-ginger being ... a little ginger and a not-ginger.  Plus, on a practical level, there's a certain risk in taking a screwdriver to cabinetry.  You can never be entirely sure how it's going to work out.  My luck, the whole damn everything would fall down because it was somehow all held up by the one screw just removed.

Then a few days ago, rather in the spirit of things I thought, one of our cupboard doors fell off.  It'd been hanging, threateningly, by one hinge since shortly after we moved in, but it seemed like it'd balance there long enough for the husband to get around to fixing it. I have a feeling it must have been a cupboard never used by the previous owners, because it seems that when we moved in, we shocked it into life, and that shocked the life right out of it.  Anyway, it turns out that it looks cool as shelving - YAY!  Except that it was a cupboard full of absolute crap that will need to be jammed into another cupboard somewhere else (one that has a door), pronto.  And it's white, in a grey on grey kitchen, so it looks a little like the distant cousin who got the dress code horribly wrong at a family wedding.  But we have paint from when the previous owner redecorated and if I'm lucky the (charcoal) base colour for the kitchen will be out there.  Problem solved.

And FYI - I was right (that's really the important bit to note) to hedge on taking it down too it turns out, because once the cupboard door was on the floor we could see that the hinges had been screwed into and through a patch which had been glued on to the internal sides of the cupboard.  Joy.  One patch fell off, the other patch stayed on and will have to be chiselled off or something, and there's the matter of the other cupboard door to detach as well which could go any number of ways.  It's attached to a wall too actually, now that I look at it.  Dear universe, please, please don't let the wall fall down if we take the cupboard door off.

But anyway, that aside, tonight's project, as soon as I'm done here and I've suck a hot chocolate, is to transfer my baking equipment out of a low cupboard and up onto the newly-revealed shelves.  And that'll get me into the groove of thinking about this, which has made it to my doorstep.

Dean and me

I have negative time available for any kind of project just now, and probably forever, which really makes this the perfect time to take one on, don't you think?

A while ago, and well after the rest of the world, I watched Julie & Julia on TV.  It's the sort of movie that makes you think that buying the book might, just this once, be a good idea. It wasn't, just like it never, ever is, but I enjoyed it that much.  The idea, if you discount the cooking, which I hate, and the eating of horrifying things, which I also hate, has appeal. From a never-doing-that-myself-but-yay-for-you-high-five perspective.  That's about the sum total of my dwelling on the idea at the time though.

Then a few days ago, while I was looking for a particular chocolate cake recipe online (I have the book, I was just being lazy about copy-typing it out), I came across a blog that was doing a similar thing with a Natalie Oldfield book.  I think.  I didn't actually read the blog, but what I saw gave me the impression that's what the blogger was doing.  Interestingly, her cake looked nothing like mine do when I make it, which means one of us is probably doing something weird.

Anyway, whatever - that re-surfaced idea stayed with me, kicking around in the back of my mind on and off all day for a few days, giving me a poke every now and again, because the blog was about baking.  I love baking.  You know this. Everybody knows this.  But I'm not that good at it.  Not really.  I realised this while watching the last season of Hottest Home Baker, and it hurt a bit. OK, fine, a lot. I was wounded.  But, I have to be honest - I don't do bread.  I've never done a cheesecake.  I have no idea about pastry, or jam, and I only made sugar cookies for the first time the  other day, and if you put me on that set I'd be fried faster than something that fries really fast. Like fries, even. Heh.

And, everything I turn out of the oven at the beach house turns to crap.  That oven has something against me.  Sometimes, I swear it's deliberately screwing with me.  I burned the ass of a gingerbread loaf a couple of weeks ago.  No one burns the ass of a gingerbread loaf.  You burn the TOP of gingerbread.  Honestly.  And now post-Hottest Home Baker I find myself looking at texture and how close something is to what it should be and whether my muffins are awesome, which they most certainly are not, and all manner of other things technical and damn if I don't want to be able to turn a raspberry bun out of the oven because I want one.

What's more (is that better than 'furthermore'? because I had a furthermore there, but I felt like I should be drafting a document on the back of it - not good ... especially when I'm blogging while I *should* to be drafting a document), I found myself watching Hottest Home Baker to watch Dean Brettschneider, and I was watching him because I wanted to see how he reacted to what the contestants were doing, what they were turning out, what he thought about what they turned out.  His face says a lot, and you can see that it's because he loves his craft - he wants them to do it well. My interest in the competition was secondary. 

So, I thought about the programme, and I thought about the blog, and I thought about having a project, and about not having the time and being too stressed and stretched and unable to have a project, and I went for a walk on the beach and I came home and I ordered Global Baker by Dean Brettschneider, and I'm going to bake my way through it.  From start to finish.  Probably not in that order.  And heaven knows how long it'll take me, but I'm going to learn, and I'm going to love it.  I could've done another book, sure, especially one that I've done more (anything) from, but you know what? I wanted to work hard to show someone that they inspired me, even if they never know and I wanted to feel like I didn't want to let them down, all the while learning and doing and enjoying. It'll keep me going when I want to hang myself by my own pinny.

And you know why else?  Because life got too serious there for a while.  This is going to be AWESOME!

(And I missed writing.  You have no idea how much I missed writing.  I need to write, and I needed something to write about.  Plus, baking has always been my de-stress thing, but it's been getting less and less and less of my time and love.  Ergo, you can listen to all my swearing about burnt asses on baking. Thanks for that in advance, by the way)

(Also, if someone, or multiple someones could please list on Trademe all the baking equipment I'm going to need that I don't have so I don't go bankrupt, that'd be much appreciated)

v2.0

I did wonder if I was done here.  The not-ginger turns one in a few weeks, and I've had nothing to say for nearly a year.  It's been so long in fact, that I'm not entirely sure how to work blogger any more.  They've changed stuff, and I could barely use the last set-up. Anything could happen. Anything at all. I'm flying by the seat of my pants.

I started this blog as I journeyed through infertility, and it was awesome.  The blogging, not the infertility so much.  It did have it's moments, but generally ... you know?  Then, when Antonia was born, I realised that infertility was over for us.  It was done.  We'd done it.  We had two crazy little munchkins, and we were sorted.  The fight to have them was over, and the fight for them was underway.  The next bit was to get them through life (and survive sleep deprivation a second time).  It did seem so ... annoying ... to pull the plug, and that's because I knew what it was like to follow a journey and to want to know what's happening forever (I'm looking at you getupgrrl - I think of you often), but I had nothing to say.

And a few really crap, really sad, really crazy other things happened along the way.

Just as I was due to have Antonia, we discovered a lump on our beautiful Jack-dog's shoulder.  It was a tumour.  We fought hard and spent a fortune, and enlisted the best team this side of the world to try and save him, but we lost him fast when Antonia was about 3 weeks old.  That was crap beyond belief.

Just two months later, our Jess-girl, who'd only known life with Jack, died suddenly.  Also crap beyond belief. 

I miss them every day, and I still haven't stopped looking out for them.  Ridiculous, noisy animals.

I didn't do well without a dog.  I said I'd never have another one after my heart broke twice in such quick succession, but Kep the Blue Merle Border Collie is 9 months old and just farted under my desk.  It's the companionship, as well as the stupidity. Kep is supposed to have a white tip on his tail, except he keeps chewing it off.  He sees it out of the corner of his eye, chases his tail till he catches it and falls over, then eats it.  It never grows back. First glint of white and the whole thing starts over.  He has a permanently stubby tail-end.  But he's there, all the time, adding his own something special to life.

We moved.  Again.  I know!

We decided we weren't happy.  It wasn't right.  For a lot of very uninteresting reasons, and one which turned out to be very interesting, but which we will get to later.  That one is our new journey, and the one that really leaves IVF behind.

Anyway.  We tried to convince ourselves that it was good, we were happy, we were making the most of it, this was good, that was good, but sometimes you just have to step back and say, crap. We made a mistake. We made a mistake, and if we kept going with the mistake because we were trying to do the right thing (ergo, we'd sunk a lot of money into the house and we knew we wouldn't recover it at this point) when actually we just need to throw our hands in the air and do-over.  So we did. Over.  The Taita house was a whole lot of do-up still to be done, so we gave ourselves a year to do it. In the meantime we did some market research.  What was out there? What did we want and need? How much would it cost us to get it? And I think it was our second lot of open homes we found the home we'd been wanting for the last year and a half, and within 2 weeks we'd tendered for it and bought it. Quite the heart-attack inducing situation really on the stress-front. 

But, we made it.  We did the do-up, put it on the market, sold it, lost somewhere in the region of a hundred thousand dollars, and now we're living on a Kapiti Beach, happy, settled, in our forever-home and thinking that life is pretty bloody good all things considered.  It's where we first wanted to be, but couldn't find a house (seriously - the first house we looked at when we first started our move down the Island was number 50, just up the road. No kidding).  I'd like to think that the inbetween served a purpose, whatever that was - I have some ideas, but it doesn't really matter.  It got us to here, and here is awesome, so here we'll stay.  Plus, the buy/sell/do-up with two little kids was horrendous and I'd rather shoot myself in the head than even think of ever doing that again. 

And almost looping back to the beginining, in that it's a little ginger journey again, we start a new chapter. When Cuinn started kindy, it was picked up by the incredible team there that he displays a wide range of markers for the autistic spectrum.  We took him to his Dr, and he confirmed that for us, though we're dealing with the very high functioning/mild end of the spectrum if that's in fact where we are at when a full assessment is completed. We took him to Wellington Early Intervention, an amazing team of therapists that we will start working with in a couple of weeks, and they feel confident that they can help us and help him navigate his way of viewing the world, and we're on the waiting list for full assessment by the Child Development team of our DHB.  It makes sense, even though it took us by surprise - he's our first child and we had no comparitive scale ... who knew? We started employing a few basic strategies for our own understanding, and it made a difference.  I think they're right and we're onto something. I think we'll find he has Asperger's, but we'll just wait for that.  I'm focussing on learning and understanding - about him, and about myself because there's a big personal journey here too that's just starting and which will run beside his journey.  Crazy little ginger - he's an awesome kid.

So, I found myself looking at Needle Mountain the other day, thinking that it felt like time to say goodbye (incidentally, how does one dispose of a large number of hypodermic needles?).  There's a new journey starting here, a new life underway, and it's time to do more too.  Part of that is trying to make more time, more peace in the day, and I miss writing so much, so I really, really hope there's more of that too.  I'll see you soon.  I hope.