Archives for April 2009

Blogging stories

April 29, 2009 by Jen

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that I’ve been blogging at Semantically driven for just over five years now. If you’re new here, now you also know.

As part of my five year blogiversary I came up with the idea to collect people’s blog stories, I call it ‘my Blogging quest‘ and share them here. So far three people have joined in and I’d like to thank them for participating and share an outline of their stories here because they are all so diverse, but yet have some commonalities.

She from She became a butterfly started blogging before I did in 2000 and eventually moved from hosted to self-hosted as so many of us bloggers who want more options than hosted blogging systems do. She calls herself ‘She’ as she wants to stay anonymous because of some issues from a stalker in the past. She also likes the community found during blogging which is so far becoming a common theme. It’s hard to not write the word She here when it’s both a proper noun and a pronoun.

Margo from Writer Mom at Home has also joined in and is a relative newcomer to blogging starting in September last year but similar to ‘She’ above, started with a hosted blog and has now moved to self-hosted and can’t imagine giving up blogging any time soon. Margo’s gone from writing a journal type of blog to realising that blogging offers a whole lot more than that. I can agree with that.

Trish from My Little Drummer Boys has been blogging for nearly four years and started blogging to write about infertility and IVF and continues to do so to keep a record of her and her family’s life and she also learns a lot by reading others’ blogs. I love this quote fromn Trish, ‘Blogging isn’t just about daily dribble’. Trish also likes the community that blogging offers.

I’m an impatient lass and I want more stories please. I’d love it if you spread the word. I just need two more people then I’ll choose one to win a little prize – but a very practical one.

It’s raining again

April 27, 2009 by Jen

I don’t want to jinx anything by writing this but it’s been raining here for the last few days. I don’t know exactly how much rain we’ve had here but it was the type of weather over the weekend where nothing would dry on the clothes line outside because of the rain.

JJ loves going outside in the rain and if it was warmer I would have let him do it without clothes on, but as it was a bit cool I made him put my rain jacket on, his rubber boots and use his umbrella. This shot was taken when it was a really heavy downpour which is why the background is so blurred.

We’ve got showers forecast for the next few days and there will be no complaining from people in these parts.

The Footy Club

April 25, 2009 by Jen

Eating out with children is fun isn’t it? There’s nothing like trying to make them sit still when all they want is their fish and chips NOW. Then when they do finish they want attention and you can’t chat to your adult friends. And watch out if you’re out with friends who have kids the same age – it just gets a whole lot harder. But you’ve made do over the years and know what to expect so it’s not too bad most of the time – really.

When we were kids we grew up in the country and a great Saturday night out, for us kids anyway, was to go to the Footy Club for dinner. The town we lived near had a pub and the Footy Club so there was a choice of two places to hang out for drinks and dinner. But going there was an exciting outing and it was the main place we went to.

There were always other kids there and because the town was small and you went to school with all the local kids you all knew each other so you had someone to hang out with. The Footy Club was always overrun with kids running around, hanging out and playing a video game.

There was a foyer that everyone walked through to get to the main area. This foyer was fairly large and you had to walk through another door to get to the main area. So the kids had this big room all to ourselves, apart from when people entered it as they were arriving or leaving.

As a parent, I look back at this and think what a bonus that would be. You go out for dinner, you catch up with your mates, you just have to buy your kid one bottle of Coke or a raspberry and lemonade and you won’t see them until you’re all eating together. Meanwhile your kid’s running amok and if something happened someone would come and tell you because everyone knows who everyone is.

As a kid then it was great especially as we grew up on a farm so socialising with other kids our age out of school was fantastic. The video game I mentioned before was Space Invaders and as time went on, Pakman and Froggy. I didn’t play them much as there were always other kids there who were way cooler than me and a lot better at the game. I was content to watch, interact with the others, and listen to the music like Split Enz through the loud speakers.

We probably went to the Footy Club once every two months or so for dinner and the nights would finish with car rides home in the Kingswood. The car would just get warm 15 minutes later as we pulled into our driveway and if Dad had had a few beers, the car would be filled with the smell of his burps. I’m sure quite a bit of drink-driving happened when we were kids – a lot more so than these days as it’s rammed down our throat how dangerous it is to drink and drive.

When JJ and I go out for a meal in a public place I have my eye really closely on him just to make sure he’s not fighting with other kids but the more I think about it the more I want him to interact with other kids even if it does mean a fight and I don’t mean a hitting fight, I mean an argument.

There’s not many places I’ve been to eat around where I live where I would let JJ run off and muck around with other kids because those places aren’t conducive to that. And that’s the difference, perhaps, of growing up in the country compared to the city. Although in some places there are kids areas with video games setup but it’s different because they’re playing with kids you don’t know and you need to keep a closer eye on them.

Having said all of that, JJ gets his mixing fix with other kids at kid-friendly functions I go to where I do know most of the other people there and he does have the opportunity – within reason – to go off and play.

When I talk about footy I mean the Australian Rules kind. It’s like a religion to a lot of people in Australia.

Quest of another kind

April 21, 2009 by Jen

It’s school holidays here at present and I haven’t taken the whole two weeks off. In fact I’ve not taken any time off except for yesterday which meant, with Easter, I had two – four day weekends.

I used to only work three days a week and it’s much more civilised than working a four day week which is what I presently do. It allows time to do those chores around the house that probably normally wouldn’t get done. Therefore yesterday morning saw me out in the little front yard we have sweeping the little front porch. I realised I’ve never ever washed the stained glass window next to my door which I still didn’t do yesterday but I’ve put it on my mental to-do list along with painting my bedroom door which has been waiting five years for me to do.

Yesterday was also the day to head into the city to buy JJ’s scout uniform. As I forked out for the shirt, scarf and hat I told him that he was staying with Scouts. None of this I’m bored with it after ten minutes.

Before we even got to the scout shop we walked past a shoe store. This one had a sales rack out the front and I can never walk past a sales rack. I found this pair of Birkenstocks and it was the only pair like it and it was in my size. So I bought them. Nevermind that we’re moving into winter here, I’ll still have them when it gets warmer and they were too much of a bargain to pass up.

birkenstock

Actually it’s been an expensive weekend. My vacuum cleaner finally died this weekend and it pretty much worked out that it was just as economical to buy a new one, so I did.

JJ’s boots are on their last legs so I bought him a new pair.

I stocked up on tights, undies, singlets and a pair of tracksuit pants for the coming winter.

As mentioned I bought the scout uniform and the Birkenstocks.

My credit card will be staying in my wallet for a while.

After our shopping expedition yesterday we walked down to Cold Rock and bought an icecream. JJ had a bubblegum flavour with freckles mashed in. I had rum and raisin and boysenberry with nothing mashed in.

Eating icecream

It was a good day.

I’ve had one person do my Blogging quest with some others saying they’ll do it. I’d love it if you do it too.

As the sun sets on Easter Sunday

April 18, 2009 by Jen

Usually at Easter time I don’t go away with the masses for the four days. Last weekend we went to some friends holiday home for the Sunday night. We stayed about one day overall and it was lovely just to do that one day.

Their house is near Lake Albert at Meningie. Lake Albert’s water used to go all the way to the reeds you can see in the photo below. Now, due to the drought the water levels have gone right down.

We took our chairs and a couple of drinks to the shore level and sat down in readiness for the sunset.

The boys went for a swim in the water.

I noticed this rusted out 44 gallon drum and couldn’t resist taking a photo of it as the setting sun shone. This drum had rusted out because it used to be submerged in water. We also found a couple of empty beer bottles.

Who can resist having a mud fight?

The result of the mud fight.

And when some has a new camera (ie me) sometimes people can’t resist having a go with it so I end up in a shot. I’m the one standing up at the back.

And I love this photo of JJ and his mate. JJ’s on the left.

I managed to get the sun just as it disappeared. Ever notice how quickly this actually happens? If you look away for a moment, it’s snuck down behind the horizon all ready to greet our northern hemisphere friends for their morning.

Celebrating my 5th blogiversary and you’re invited

April 16, 2009 by Jen

On this day five years ago I wrote my first blog post and Semantically driven was born. Normally I don’t celebrate my blogiversary but this year I’m going to and you’re invited.

My idea is that I’d like to find out how your blogging quest has gone for you. You write about it, add a link back to here so I know you’ve done it and then I compile a list of them all so there’s a central repository. I reckon there’s some interesting stories out there.

I’m even offering prizes to kickstart it all off. Please visit the my Blogging quest page to read all about it. I’d love it if you participate and Tweet about it, Stumble it etc – to spread the word.

I’ve no idea if it will work but there’s only one way to find out. Come on, help make my blog’s fifth birthday special.

Blog bits and bobs

April 15, 2009 by Jen

My linky love posts are too few and far between because I have no easy way of compiling them, or they just slip my mind to actually do them.

A couple of bloggers I read are really good at them. Stand up Shai and Kikolani. So below are a few things I’ve come across this week.

Toni from The Happy Housewife has just had her seventh child – somewhat early – and she still remains happy and she still manages to update her blog just about every day. Luckily baby Cora is now home and being adored by all her siblings no doubt.

Jayne from Our Great Southern Land has a blog full of interesting back-in-time facts. I now know that in 1985 Australia was the first country to test blood donations for HIV.

And I’ve come across a couple of stories about breastfeeding your doll not being allowed at kindergarten, and a teacher telling one of her pupils she was pathetic. I think both these situations could have been handled a lot better and it’s these situations we don’t really want to deal with as parents but make us stronger.

I’m still reading the daily tasks for Probloggers 31 days to build a better blog but until now I’ve lapsed in actually doing anything.

Participating in the challenge has enabled me to find some new bloggers that I probably would never have otherwise come across. Below are a couple of them. For some reason I can’t actually get into the forum as it just keeps on asking for my username and password, grrrrr.

One blog I found was MyMarketer – Understanding Internet Marketing. The author of this is also participating in the challenge and he extended the list challenge to create a list of all the lists created as part of Problogger’s task in Day 2. There’s 603 lists there all in various categories. Imagine how much time you could spend just browsing them and then think how much time it must have taken to collate this list. Apparently he’s a new dad and is having sleepless nights. How I wish my sleepless nights as a new mum could have been spent in front of the computer, but they were spent pushing a pram back and forth.

Michelle from Retarded in Love – although she’s shortly getting married so she can’t be too retarded in love but like most of us has been in the past.

Stay tuned for my fifth blogiversary special tomorrow.