Create Mystery

Life has been very interesting lately – all sorts of wonderful and amazing things happening. New lessons, opening, expanding… increasing awareness and bliss.

Some of the lessons are challenging, but all are rewarding.

One of my good friends, Wind, and her unschooled daughter Coola moved in to the flat under our house, so there’s been a massive influx of people in and out of the house, lots of friends, and lots of love. And more unschooled kids hanging around :)

One day down in the village I finally ran into Hellena Post – it was so awesome to get to meet her and her crew, and see her fresh kidlet earthside.

Littletree connected immediately with Hellena’s daughter Tiger Lily, the two of them played with all the kids for ages.

While hanging out with Hellena, I noticed a flyer up on the wall that said “Are You Creating History Today?” Luckily, I had a black marker on hand to fix it:

ARE YOU CREATING MYSTERY TODAY?

Well? Are you?

Gluten-Free Pizza

Ariad came over for a visit, and since she commented about wishing for a gluten-free lactose-intolerant pizza, I set about making one. I’m just that awesome. And I love Ariad :D

So I made up a huge batch of regular pizza dough, and a smaller batch using organic gluten-free flour. I made a yummy pizza sauce, and instead of cheese I put crumbled up fried tempeh, and topped with mushrooms, garlic and olives. Heart-shaped, of course!

Yum! And the pizza was delish too!

Of course, I made loads and loads of pizza, so we invited all the neighbours in to join us with all the left-over Guinness from the weekend’s party (yes, we are aware that we’ve let the Irish side down by having beer left over)

Super-awesome fun :) and Ariad was even polite enough to not mention that gluten-free cheese-free pizza kinda sucks LOL

Irish Night

Our downstairs neighbours (who happen to be Irish), Pixie and Elf held an “Irish Pub” party, to celebrate a friend’s 30th birthday. Naturally lots of Guinness was consumed, and a yummy Irish stew was cooked, and lots of Irish people were invited. Elf even got an old beer keg from the tip and cut it open to make a fire to sit around outside – Littletree toasted marshmallows.

I wore green especially for the occasion

The Irish stew was super-delish

And it was great to hang out with good friends

I made up a batch of Chocolate-Guinness Cupcakes with a Kahlua Ganache icing for the birthday boy (recipe from Cream Until Fluffy)

They went down so well!

Seriously, the best cupcakes EVER

Twas a most fun night :)

Bunya Nuts for Australia Day

Sadly, my computer power cable broke, so I'm temporarily crippled without my beloved laptop. Thankfully, I was able to borrow an old one from Purple, which is great, but it's a bit of a crap computer, even compared to mine.

Anyways, our wonderful Bunya Nut tree started fruiting and Purple managed to find a big store of nuts

 

The cones were really well camouflaged at the bottom of the tree, but in the end he found about 20 of them

We hadn't had any plans for Invasion Day (aka Australia Day), but our neighbours dropped by spontaneously, and it seemed like an appropriate moment to sit together opening and shelling the nuts

We had a great time, pulling them apart - it's a bit tricky to get them started

But then it's just a matter of pulling the segments apart to find the nuts. Of course, they're sharp and prickly, and filled with very sticky sap, which makes it all the more fun

At the end we were left with a whole wheel barrow full of empty shells and the stalks from inside the cones

and best of all... a big bowl of bunya nuts! YUM

We roasted a bunch of them, and they're so good.

I thought Bunya Nuts are totally appropriate, being that it's a traditional Australian food, and a symbol of peace for the local tribes who used to put aside their tribal differences and fights during Bunya season so they could all come together to harvest and feast on Bunyas :)

Healing from the Barefoot Doctor

You might remember about a month ago I had a bit of a flu... well, after four weeks, I was still coughing, and nothing I tried offered any relief. Eventually I even broke a rib from coughing so much!

I had been to see a doctor to be tested for whooping cough, that came back negative, as did all the other batch of tests the doctor had done on me just to see if they could find anything wrong with me - even tuberculosis!

It was getting ridiculous; I just couldn't stop coughing and my life was basically on hold - I missed one birth and had barely been out of the house. The broken rib was just adding to my misery, since it made coughing excruciatingly painful.

My new neighbour, being a Chinese herbalist, acupuncturist and homeopath offered me a treatment. How could I refuse? Especially when the treatment room looked like this:

It was a beautiful, warm sunny day, and I got my first ever acupuncture treatment, as well as cupping on my back and some other Chinese herbs while lying in a tropical garden.

The result was that I haven't coughed at all since the treatment and my rib feels much less tender! :)

I even have cool marks from the cupping:

Or maybe that's just where my wings are growing in ;)

Say CHEESE!

For about a year I've been getting into the Weston Price dietary recommendations, in an effort to stop my teeth from decaying. This involves eating raw dairy products, lots of dark leafy greens and things like bone broths and organ meats.

Raw milk is fairly easy to get most places around here - you can even get organic, unhomogenised milk in the supermarket - heck the major supermarkets have their own brands of it! But raw cheeses are a little harder to come by.

Lately I discovered Fromart. It's a small company run by a Swiss guy who makes cheese by hand in the traditional way, and also imports cheeses from Switzerland.

They were having a special deal last week, so I ordered the 1kg deal as well as a 300g sample pack of raw cheeses. It's pretty pricey, especially compared to generic brand cheddar from the supermarket, but I think it may be worth it for the sake of our health. And it's definitely cheaper than a root canal ;)

Anyway, my package arrived, and I opened it up excitedly... inside the post bag, on the bubblewrap, was a hand written note, "you were lucky". I didn't know what that meant, but it was exciting.

When I got through the layers of bubble wrap I found out why - they had run out of the special deal cheese, and in it's stead, sent me a 2kg selection of 9 different kinds of cheeses!!! Woohoo!!

It was like cheese heaven. So we invited a couple who just moved in down the road to come over and enjoy a cheese tasting with us :)

mmmm

Littletree liked the Mont Soleil best, our new neighbours (whom I will call the Barefoot Doctor - BD and M) liked the Gruyere, Purple's favourite was the D'alpage. I couldn't pick a favourite. The Truffle one was good (it has shavings of truffles in it and truffle oil!) and the Jura Mountain was yummy too.

Strangers in the Night

This evening I saw a car drive up our street and stop just past our driveway. I saw the brake lights flash on the car, and then it reversed as if it was backing into our driveway. I figured it was someone who had taken a wrong turn and was trying to turn around.

Only the car had missed our driveway and fallen into the drainage ditch! We could hear the car's tyres spinning out as the driver tried to get out. We grabbed a torch and went out to see if we could help.

The car was clearly stuck; no way he could drive out - the ditch is deeper than the clearance on the car. The other interesting point was that the right side of the car was smashed - both doors ripped apart and windows smashed!

The driver got out and had a look. He was an elderly man, who seemed to be very confused. We pointed out that it would be impossible to drive his car out of there, and he said that he'd left his wallet back at the pub, and asked me if I could give him a lift down to get it!

He didn't seem entirely sure where he was, and he couldn't quite remember the name of the town he lives in (which is about 12km away from here). He said he'd been in our village to have dinner at the pub.

It was all very strange, in a comical way, and he kept fretting about his wallet. Then I noticed a wallet half out of his pocket, and asked him if that was it. It was.

I offered to call the man a tow-truck, and went into the house to make the call. Purple invited the man inside for a cup of tea while he waited for the tow; about ten minutes.

The tow truck operator said to call the police, as it sounded like the man might have been drinking, not to mention his car most definitely should not have been on the road, and in any case, the man's car was totally blocking our road.

When the tow truck came we all went out side. The tow truck operator was having a hard time getting a straight story from the man, since he was quite befuddled, but it turned out that the damage had been done by a semi-trailer smashing into him a couple of days before, and apparently it was covered by insurance and would be repaired on Monday by Max in town.

The tow truck guy, who is also a smash repairer said that there was no smash repairer called Max, and he personally took all the work from the man's insurance company. His name was Matt. So they arranged that Matt would drop the man at his home, and take the car straight to the smash repair lot to be fixed on Monday. Small world!

A couple of minutes later, Littletree came running out to tell me the police had called. Twice. Assuming they were waiting on the phone, I went running inside, only to see that the phone had been hung up. After questioning Littletree a bit, it turned out that the phone had rung, she'd answered it. The police officer had said "can you please get your mummy" and Littletree said "sure" and hung up to get me. Then he called right back, and the same thing happened! I explained to her about putting the phone down, but not hanging it up in such instances.

Anyway, the neighbours also came home just after the police arrived (congratulating Littletree on her phone skills), and since they couldn't get past, we all milled around watching as the tow truck pulled the car out of the ditch.

In the end, the show was over and we all went home. And who ever said living in small towns is boring!

Ring Ring... Feminism Anyone?

Today we had to stay home to wait for the telephone guy to come and install our long-awaited phone line. They say they will come between 10am and 2pm. Last time the guy arrived just after 3.

And (when it was just Purple here) the phone guy said it would be impossible to get the line put on in our cottage. We would have to pay thousands to have a contractor come and dig trenches for new cables.

Obviously that wasn't going to happen, but our current situation wasn't really working out for us (if you recall my recent dramas with the phone line and a narky neighbour). So the landlord agreed that we could have our own separate phone line installed in the neighbour's house, with a new and uninterrupted extension cable out to our house.

Amazingly enough, the Phone Guy came just past noon, and he was very friendly. I showed him where the new line was to go, but he pretty quickly clued in that we were planning on putting an extension out to the cottage - something the last phone guy said was impossible.

This Phone Guy was very sweet, and said we should be able to install the cable all the way over to our house, no problem, and he could give me the cable to do it!

This somehow seemed connected to the fact that I was wearing my "around the house" dress today - a very short green number with a flattering low neckline. Well, I realised this was just a friendly guy who could easily bend the rules a little for a pretty smile and batty eyelashes, so 'feminism' went right out the window.

When it looked like there was a fault in the cable, I just gave him "the look" and my cheekiest grin, and he promised to get it fixed. Even went off down the road to the Exchange. He gave me about 80 Metres of good quality external cable, and spent 3 hours to hook it all in. He even left me with 2 rolls of electrical tape and a massive stack of about 100 Chux Wipes!

So the end of the story; we have the phone line on, I don't need to mess around with installing a new extension cable, no more dramas with the neighbours (well, at least not over the phone line)... and what's more; I learned something!

Women are incredibly powerful creatures, and there is nothing wrong with using every ounce of the power available to you to create the universe you want to live in.

Not only that; I'm freakin Beautiful! :D

Online again :)

Finally!

We got our internet connection back on yesterday afternoon. I feel like throwing a party.
For those who missed it, I did mention our woes with a nasty neighbour and a pair of wire-cutters that resulted in the loss of our phone line.

Naomi's antics only got worse; she unilaterally demarcated an area of the garden we share as "hers" and shouted abuse at us for crossing the line into "her" area. Without any warning, of course. We had no idea that garden paths that we had previously been free to use (not to mention the steps down to the pool) were now out-of-bounds.

anytime we approach her, she starts shouting abuse; swearing in front of the children, and basically being horrid. We've tried talking to her calmly and civilly; she's not interested in any discussion or negotiations.

Though the landlord and the real estate agent were both telling her to re-connect our phone line, she flat-out refused. The landlord agreed to have the phone company come out and install a separate line for us, for which we had to wait 2 weeks. And of course, when they finally got out here, it turned out they can't do it without first having a contractor dig a trench for the cables.

Our landlord ended up coming here from Sydney to sort out the mess. Naomi showed herself in true form; dug herself into quite a deep hole, and showed herself to be very childish and petty, not to mention caught herself out in several lies.

The landlord told her off for cutting our phone line, and insisted that she has no right to do so and must leave the connection as it is until we can find a better solution. She grumbled and complained, but since the Landlord was basically saying that if we can't work it out, then he will evict the lot of us and start with fresh tenants, she caved.

So the landlord went and re-connected our phone line! only we still didn't have internet. There was a big hassle with the service provider, and it took another week to get it back online. I'll bitch about Blitz, the ISP from hell later.

For now, we're online again, Purple can work from home, which is a huge stress of us, and we are connected to the outside world :) Ironically, He leaves for Israel tomorrow.