Just Nicky

The List December 24, 2004

The other day, while waiting for some other people to arrive for a meeting, I started writing a list of the things I wanted to do around our garden. Here it is:

Sth side of house (blind side)
Put up frame for hardenbergia to climb on, instead of the fence.
Take out hydrangeas and clivias and put in pots under pergola (urgent)
Get more caesias to plant along there
Weed & mulch

Backyard
Plant out geranium, lavendar & rosemary I have in pots
Get miniature peach tree
Put up frame outside dining room window for deciduous flowering creeper to grow on (shade in summer, light in winter)
Put trellis on wall outside Foozley’s room for deiciduous non-flowering creeper to grow on (thinking a virginia creeper or a grape vine)
Plant something deciduous in front of Foozley’s window
Put trellis on fence for white rose to climb on
Tidy up cat run - put plants & stones in gaps between pavers.
Get a male kiwi fruit vine (the female is getting lonely)
Do SOMETHING with the back part of the yard!!
Maybe - get chooks next year.

Front Yard
Pull out gauras (they’re becoming weeds)
Dig up kangaroo paw and see what’s salvagable
Get a banksia to put in between the trees on the nature strip
Weed and mulch

It’s a longish list and I can see Mark already feeling tired at the prospect of all that work, but for most of it there’s no major urgency - particularly during the hot weather. There’s really no point in buying any plants before autumn next year because anything planted during summer would need too much watering to keep it going. The only things that are urgent are the hydrangeas and clivias because they won’t survive the summer if I don’t move them.

I like having a list - even if it is long and daunting. It gives me a sense of purpose.

3s (aka major procrastination) December 23, 2004

from Danya & Gigglechick:

3 Names you go by:
Nicky
Nik
dear

3 screen names you have
nickyp
puppydeluxe
fatboycosmo

3 things you like about yourself
I think I’m pretty smart (but no genius)
I have good taste in most things
When I put my mind to a task I can do it well

3 things you hate/dislike about yourself
my nose
having flat feet
lack of self-discipline

3 parts of your heritage
English
Scottish
German

3 things that scare you
things that go bump in the night
confined spaces
the thought of something bad happening to foozley

3 of your everyday essentials
tea
tea
tea

3 things you are wearing right now
red & white top
black linen skirt
red sandals

3 of your favorite bands/artists
DC
Cat Stevens
…ummm…

3 of your favorite songs at present
haven’t been listening to any music lately

3 things you want to try in the next 12 months
flyball with Emmylou
staying positive
getting interested in my job again

3 things you want in a relationship
intelligence
friendship
certainty

2 truths and a lie
I love my boys
I love my job
I need a sleep

3 physical things about the opposite or same sex that appeals to you
a crooked smile
being taller than me
a cute bum

3 things you just can’t do
take those pills
finish a course
clean my house

3 of your favorite hobbies
knitting
playing with puppies
gardening

3 things you want to do really badly right now
leave work
hold foozley
go to sleep

3 careers you’re considering
gardener
dog washer
psychologist/counsellor

3 places you want to go on vacation
the great ocean road
the grand canyon
far north queensland

3 things you want to do before you die
live in the bush or near the beach
own a red sports car
grow my own food organically

Stay on track, stay on track… December 22, 2004

Reading tim’s post prompted me to think of someone I know.

E had what could best be described as a fairly disrupted beginning to her life. Her parents together, apart, together again, apart again. Her mum overseas for a bit and E living with her dad, then her mum back and living with both of them, then E & her mum on their own and her mum sick. Then E & her mum living with her grandparents, then on their own again, then the arrival of her stepfather. Schools changed regularly, lots of friends came and went. So, in hindsight, it wasn’t all that surprising that she ‘went off’ at about age 15.

She shaved her head, got a nasty tattoo, ran away from home, moved in with a local drug dealer and started thieving and hanging out with some generally pretty nasty people. Her mum and extended family did their best to help, but the more they helped, the worse things seemed to get. For a couple of years it all looked fairly dire and everyone despaired to think where E would end up - jail or dead were looking pretty likely.

Then, seemingly out of the blue, E woke up and decided to get on with her life. She moved back home, enrolled herself at high school, completed her VCE and got the nasty tattoo covered by a flower. After VCE she went on to a Fine Arts degree in sculpture.

Things went up and down a bit. She moved in and out of her mum’s place a few times. She never really got on with her stepdad (neither did her mum), but she repaired her relationship with her dad. A trip to Scotland to study and get to know her dad’s family didn’t go particularly well, but she got through it.

A couple of years ago she decided that sculpture was never going to pay the bills and that she wanted to do something useful, so she enrolled in a Social Work degree. In spite of being terrified of writing essays, and her dad’s death earlier this year, she completed her course and, although I haven’t spoken to her, I’m pretty sure she’s done OK.

It’s perhaps taken her longer than some to get to somewhere near where she wants to be, but that’s not important. What matters is that she’s getting there. And, I believe, one of the really important things has been that she has had family support all the way through. That doesn’t mean that bullshit has been tolerated or that she hasn’t had to deal with the consequences of her actions. It means that, through all the ups and downs, she has known that her family - particularly her mum and grandmother - love her and will do whatever they can to help her. That, no matter what she does, they are there for her.

So, I suppose what I’m trying to say is, make sure she knows that you all care for her and that you’re there for her and she’ll be fine. It might take her a while, but she’ll get there.

So over it December 21, 2004

That pretty much sums today up.

Just hanging out for Sunday.

Somebody remind me about this before next Christmas December 20, 2004

I saw this article in The Age this morning and it started me thinking.

Every year it’s a bit of a struggle to decide what to buy people that falls within our price range, isn’t crappy and that they will actually like. I suspect our strike rate isn’t all that good, although we do really try. Also, pretty much everybody is drowning in too much stuff - I know we are - and finding places for more stuff gets tougher all the time.

Earlier in the year I had thought of knitting everybody a pair of socks for Christmas - one pair per person, but it seemed a little cheap really. Especially so since some of the yarn I’d use is acrylic and cost me about $1.50 per ball.

I think for next year, though, I will knit something and give something to charity on behalf of each person to the equivalent value of what we would normally spend. Much as I love wrapping presents, I can’t help thinking that this is a better way to go in the long term. Of course, this won’t apply to wee munchkins or to Mark as they should all be showered with gifts at every opportunity.

Check back with me 12 months from today and see whether I’ve gone through with it…

The Scarf December 19, 2004

So here, finally, is the finished product (modelled by Mark).

And the detail:

The pictures don’t really do it justice.

Vital Statistics - I knitted it in elle Galaxy, which is 10 or 12 ply 100% acrylic yarn I found at Lincraft a while ago. I used larger (7mm) needles than the pattern called for because the first effort using 4.5mm needles was too stiff and I didn’t have enough yarn to make a long enough scarf at that density. I also did it on half as many stitches, again because I didn’t have enough yarn to make the scarf long enough on the correct number of stitches.

Christmas Socks

Here are the socks I’ve knitted for my dad. I finished them off yesterday while Foozley was making my life hell.

Dad’s hard to buy for, but he seems to appreciate the other 2 pairs of socks I’ve knitted him so I’ve decided to stick to a winner. He’s going to get a pair of handknitted socks for every birthday, christmas and father’s day until either he dies, or I get sick of knitting them.

The scarf is on its third attempt. It’s not that it’s difficult to knit. Stuff just keeps going wrong. No. 3 is going OK thus far so it should be done tonight or maybe tomorrow night.

Relaunch and resolution December 17, 2004

So here’s the new site.

Mark has done a spiffing job of the redesign. I’m not so sure about ‘Send Needles, Plants and Puppies’, but I couldnt’ think of anything better so I shan’t complain. Besides, it does describe what I want it to be about.

There will be little, or no, discussion of life at the monolith. I have a different job from the one I used to have and I’m not sure I could adequately describe it here, if I was going to, which I’m not. Instead I want to focus on stuff that’s much more interesting and a helluva lot more fun. It’s part of my new year’s resolution to make more of an effort to do the things I enjoy doing.

First, knitting and I’m not hopping on the trendy bandwagon - I’ve been knitting compulsively for years. I want to knit more interesting stuff, finish more projects, and reduce the my yarn stockpile, so that I can buy more. Most of the stuff I knit will, of necessity, go to other people because I usually don’t like stuff I’ve knitted for myself by the time I’ve finished knitting it. In the next couple of days there’ll be photos of the socks I’m giving my dad for Christmas and the scarf I’m going to make for my neice from this pattern.

Then there’s plants, well gardening actually. I love gardening. It’s good for my soul - not that you’d know it from looking around our place. I need to get back into it - that you’d know from looking around our place. I have plans and ideas running round in my head that I can start to put in place now that the drought has eased a bit. There won’t be many new plants until autumn, but there’s plenty of prep I can do.

And puppies. Our girls are active, smart dogs and they need to be treated as such. I’m finally going to get the PuppyDeluxe into Flyball next year. I’m certain that she’d love it and be good at it and I really can’t leave it too much longer. She needs to lose some weight and gain a bit of fitness first so that she doesn’t hurt herself. The PaddleDog seems quite happy engaging in constant adoration of Mark, but I suspect she could also do with some diversion, so I’ll need to work on that as well.

So that’s my story. New site, new year’s resolutions. It’s all go here at snooze central…