Then a few weeks ago, I was in the Salvation Army shop in Salisbury and I saw two bread makers, each $35. I didn't buy one that day, but I filed it away for future reference. And then the other day I decided enough was enough, I wanted to make pizza again. So I went back, and these bread machines were now only $25. Even better. So I bought one. It didn't have a manual with it, but it was a more well known brand than the other one, so that's why I picked it.

And then I got it home, and was about to pull out the pan to wash it before I used it, and there's a very essential bit missing - the kneading blade. So no, I wasn't exactly happy.

Went to the Sunbeam website & asked them if I could get a replacement. They emailed back & said to check with my nearest service agent, so I looked back on the website to find the nearest one. Pooraka - only about 10 minutes away. So I emailed them, got a response back in a couple hours, and they had the part in stock, and it was only $16.50. So we had pizza for tea last night. Mmmmmm.

My old machine had five programs, all for bread or dough. The new one has eleven, including all the standard ones you'd expect, plus one for jam, pasta, cake, and even butter. I'm gonna have fun working it all out.

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I have a zillion sewing projects I want to get finished before this baby arrives, including some maternity clothes. Really should get those going, shouldn't I? And my chiropractor has ordered five nappies from me, and she's due 4 days before me. But two are already finished, so I really only need to do three more. I got some fabric to make Caleb another pair of pajamas, and I'm also doing a set of curtains/drapes for a friend (as soon as I have the measurements).

Caleb...just gets better every day. He just put one of his bears on the potty to do a poo. ;) And he's very talkative. He'll try any word except his name. It's amazing how much he picks up without us even trying (i.e. he's saying 'no thanks' and 'thank you' now of his own accord, even though we've never prompted him to do so - he's just picked it up from us saying it to him).

Baby's still in there. I was getting a little worried at one point that I hadn't felt any movement for a while, but Lisa came over & checked with her doppler and worked out that baby just decided to hide behind the placenta for a bit. He/she has shifted again in the last week and I'm feeling a lot more kicks, hiccups, etc. again. Oh, and I'm at the point where I wouldn't mind my very own live-in chiropractor and/or massage therapist. I've been visiting the chiro every two weeks, but I'm thinking I might have to increase it to every week soon. Now that my regular one has gone on maternity leave, I'm seeing one of her colleagues - who incidentally sounds like an American. Haven't yet asked her where she's from (I've only seen her once so far and it didn't really seem like the right time).

Garden stuff now. I've got cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, and celery in the veggie patch. I also had two pea plants, but I didn't water them when I transplanted them, so they died. This week (assuming my body cooperates, and the nursery gets them in) I'm planning to plant some seed potatoes. And last week, I bought a peach sapling and two small blueberry bushes and planted them. So I'm working on the orchard now as well. I have so many plans (including a chicken shed), but I don't think most of them are going to happen till a few months after this baby comes. I was really hoping to get a lot of it done before, but it wasn't to be.

And I actually turned the heater on this morning for the first time this year. It was a whopping 16C (62F) in the lounge when we woke up.

And now...away to the post office!

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If you're in the raffle you have a chance to win TWO Little Para Pants nappies. :)

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Point one: Patty has arrived! Her flight was only an hour late leaving Melbourne and 40 minutes late arriving in Adelaide, but she's here. None of us got to bed till midnight last night. Caleb's having a ball showing off & being cute. He's very good at it. :)

Point two: we have a new photo gallery here. Some of the photos aren't cooperating with getting added, but we're slowly getting there. All recent Caleb pictures are in though, so those of you who need a cute kid fix can get it. :)

Point three: Yesterday was Darrin's official last day at SEHS. And there was much rejoicing (yay). Since he's kinda made himself indispensable there over the last 11 years, he'll still be going back occasionally to work on things that need attention, but for that we'll be billing them through his consulting business.

Point four: still pregnant. Three-ish months to go, give or take. Have baby clothes already set up in a drawer ready to go. Second babies are a lot easier to prepare for - just grab all the stuff you used for the first one and you're ready to go. The only thing we're buying new is another car seat.

Point five: I'm trying to get my garden ready for winter with some winter veggies. But I doubt I'll be getting much done with it for the next couple weeks. The only things left in there are two watermelon vines (pruned down to the bare minimum in the hopes that the biggest two melons actually ripen before it gets too cold) and my capsicum plant, which has ripened its one and only capsicum already, even though it's only the size of a ping pong ball, if that. I'm wondering if it's a mini variety, but I couldn't find anything about it through Google. Also, I've got plans to buy some more fruit trees and plant them around. My list: 2 apple trees of different varieties (because all but MacIntosh need another tree nearby to pollinate), another orange tree that fruits in the summer (so we can have oranges year round, yay!), a new peach tree (because ours died), some blueberry bushes (because Caleb LOVES them), an avocado tree (I don't use them THAT much, but I'd probably use them more if we had a tree, plus I know plenty of people who'd be in for some free avocados), and an almond tree. Maybe another apricot tree as well, since ours tends to have a branch die off every few months and I'm not entirely sure it's going to be here next summer. I was also thinking about a banana tree, but what I've read of them, they take a LOT of maintenance. So not now. Maybe sometime in the future, once I'm comfortable with the rest of my orchard.

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There's much debate about the current health care system in certain parts of the world. Namely, there are many politicians and lay people in the US who want to have a nationalized health care system. And there's a lot of people who definitely DON'T want that. And now, having lived in both types of system, I can see points on both sides.

I don't use the system here that much myself (I've seen a GP a whole 6 times in the last 5 years, and really most of those appointments I didn't need in the first place), but I've got some thoughts on how to make any health care system better. The answer isn't to make everything private, or make everything public, like many people seem to think it is. No, the solution rests squarely on the shoulders of the consumers and practitioners who actually use the system. We can make any health care system we're currently in work better by doing one simple thing.

STOP USING IT WHEN YOU DON'T NEED IT!

Too many people today go to a doctor when they have a cold, to get a prescription for antibiotics. But antibiotics only kill bacteria, not cold VIRUSES. And any first year medical student knows this, but of course they like to play God and be able to write down that they did something for the problem. You're better off taking a high dose of vitamin C (till you start getting the runs - that's how you find out you've had enough) than going on antibiotics. All the antibiotics will do is put some money in a big pharmaceutical company's coffers and strip your gut of all its bacteria, good AND bad kinds alike.

Too many women assume that hospital is the only place you can give birth, and the stories of quick babies in the media, where baby comes out before mum gets to the hospital, are portrayed as 'horror stories.' I just don't understand how it's horrific to have your baby come out the way nature intended, with no instruments, no drugs, on their own terms. Intervention, in most cases (except when medically indicated) only causes more problems, leading to more interventions. The solution? Educate yourself about birth. Even if you're not planning a home birth or freebirth, read up on what to do if the baby arrives before you have a 'professional' there to assist you. It is ALWAYS a possibility. And open your mind to the possibility of home birth, do some SERIOUS research about it, and you'll find that home birth is as safe as OR SAFER THAN giving birth in a hospital (except in extreme life-threatening circumstances).

Third point: prevention. Stop eating crap! And I'm pointing the finger at myself here as well. We have a 24/7 shop across the road from us that sells chocolate, chips, soft drinks, ice cream...you name it, if it's sugared, they've got it. And ever since we moved here 28 months ago, it's been far too easy to go over there and grab whatever it is we're craving. So I know first hand how hard it is in our society to cut out the junk food. But it's gotta be done if you want to prevent yourself getting sick. And who among us likes being sick, except hypochondriacs and those with Munchausen syndrome? Do you know that most of our chronic ailments these days can be prevented? Diabetes, cancer, arthritis - all of these respond well to a fresh food diet. Meat & eggs, fruit & vegetables, nuts & seeds, dairy if you're not lactose intolerant, and the occasional whole grain.

So there you go. Three ways to make any health care system better. But of course it's never gonna happen, because it won't make anyone any money.

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So then suddenly two weeks ago, Darrin got an email about a new job opening up at Bradford College in the city. The position sounds like it was made for him (well, all except the wearing a tie part, but the rest of it is good). And he'd be earning twice as much as he is now, so yeah, big step up.

He thought about it for a couple days, and then decided he'd apply for it. So the next week or so he was writing a resume, getting Josh to check it for phrasing & me to check it for grammar/punctuation, and he sent it off last Wednesday. Friday he got an email from them & he rang them back, and they set up an interview for Tuesday.

Now here comes my part in all this. He got home Friday and found his 'nice' shirt from our wedding, but it's too heavy to wear at this time of year. And he couldn't find his dress pants. So off to the op shops I went on Saturday morning. Found a shirt, found a pair of pants, found a tie, all together $12. But then I brought them home and the mayhem started. The shirt didn't have a collar. I hadn't even noticed. And the pants - the zipper was shot. I hadn't even checked that. (Mental note - start checking zippers on pants in op shops.) So I went off again after lunch to get a new zipper from Spotlight and another shirt from the op shop. So he had a shirt, he had pants, he had a tie.

He went in on the train on Tuesday morning for an 11:00 interview. By 11:20 he'd sent me a text saying he thought it went pretty well. He was home by about noon, and within about half an hour he'd gotten a phone call offering him the job. Which he readily accepted. (I sat here watching him talk on the phone, say a lot of yeses, and give me a big thumbs up.)

So since he's already working only three days a week at SEHS, Bradford is letting him start next week, just working Tuesdays & Thursdays for now. And he's finishing up at SEHS in about four weeks, during the school holidays. As far as I know his boss hasn't had a heart attack yet, but there's still time....

Of course the female half of the staff at SEHS is upset because now I won't be bringing Caleb (and the new bub) in to visit all the time.

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I had a glass of lemonade (what Aussies call stuff like 7-up, Sprite, etc.) sitting next to my computer. I forgot about it. I went off to do dishes or something. Next thing I know is Darrin telling me Caleb's gotten to my drink and spilled it. Of course I didn't think about the fact it was right next to my keyboard, till I sat down later and some of my keys were acting funny. So I tipped the keyboard upside down and banged it, and I got wet. And then more of the keys were acting funny. Argh.

So for the next few days till payday, I had to use a laptop. And when I bought a new one last Friday, I decided to spend twice as much for a Logitech one, rather than the same one I'd bought before (which happened to fall on the floor with the help of a toddler and immediately broke one of the little feet on the bottom, oh, and he pretty easily pulled off the 'enter' key as well). And I didn't notice till I got home that the box said 'spill resistant,' so here's hoping.

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First a little ramble, as usual. All my pumpkins died during the heat wave. As did my strawberry plant. And a little helper yanked out most of my cucumber plants, so I only had one left in the hanging basket. I thought that one died in the heat too, but it's come good again. And when we got new tyres on the back of our car, I kept the old ones and made a zucchini pot. Filled it up with compost, then potting soil, and it looks great. And then the day after our birthday barbecue, Darrin's brother brought over two bales of straw for us. A few days ago I pulled one apart and spread only about half of it on the garden. I've still got the other bale & a half sitting next to the fence waiting to get used for who knows what. I'm planning to eventually get some raised beds built, so it'll be useful then as filler. And I also had to rip out three of my four cauliflowers because it looked like they had something called black rot. The fourth was smaller & looked okay except for some of the leaves, so I just ripped off those leaves & it's still looking pretty good.

Anyway, on with the pictures!

Cucumber

One! One zucchini! Ah ah ah ah....

This is my biggest watermelon. Next year I'll have to remember to transplant them into the ground earlier so they fruit earlier.

And two more growing watermelons.

One tiny green bell capsicum.

My lone remaining cauliflower.

And my broccoli plants. There's 5 there, and I was going to harvest them all & freeze them this weekend but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

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However, I did borrow a friend's overlocker/serger last week, and sewed together all the insides & outsides of the nappies I've had stacked up for months. Now all that's left is the leg elastic, turning them right side out, top stitching, and fasteners. And I've already completely finished one, and aside from some trial & error with getting the snaps all in the right places, snaps are a heck of a lot easier and quicker than sewing in velcro everywhere.

So. Now that it's cooler, I'm hoping to get the bug again and finish off some more projects, especially the ones I can sell.

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I still have no idea whether this baby might be a boy or girl, and it doesn't matter what we get in the end as long as he/she is healthy. The only possible indication of the baby's sex is a dream I had a few weeks ago, where I was watching my ultrasound (which I'm not actually having this time unless something weird happens) and the baby had some very obvious boy bits.

Names? Ha. There's only one that I really like, a girl's name, but there's a problem with it. It starts with C. And if we use it, everyone will think we're doing that trendy (tacky?) thing where you give all your kids names starting with the same letter, which we're definitely NOT doing. Still, we've got half a pregnancy plus 30 days past the birth to decide names, so there's really no rush.

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We've had another poo and a wee on the potty in the last couple days. Slowly getting there.

My pumpkins are all dead. My strawberry plant isn't looking good either. And the cucumber plant is partially wilted & dried out. Everything else is still looking okay though, probably because it's all (except the capsicum) planted in the ground. If the strawberry plant dies, I think I'll be transplanting the capsicum into its spot. Oh, and it has one tiny capsicum growing on it! Yay.

Oh, and this is the THIRD keyboard I've used this week. The first one that I'd been using for months with no issues decided the other day that it didn't want me to have working number keys, including a couple keys I had in my password, so Darrin found a spare in his piles of computer stuff. This was actually one I'd had a couple years ago and always worked well for me. And then yesterday that one started working funny with all the directional keys - arrows, page up/down, home/end, etc. And a couple hours later the space bar and two adjoining keys stopped working as well. I suspect this had something to do with a naked toddler standing on my chair, playing with my keyboard, and a mysterious puddle under my chair.... So once again, I couldn't type my password. I had to get Darrin to kill my screen saver remotely so I could get back into my machine, and then turn off screen locking. So this morning as soon as the shops opened, I went to Big W and bought a brand spanking new USB keyboard, and it works beautifully. But do you think I can remember any of the stuff I wanted to post on message boards now that I have a properly working keyboard again? Of course not.

Baby's movements are getting a lot stronger, and I think I can almost feel them from the outside. He/she was awake & pretty active this morning after I went to the toilet at 6 am. Should be soon anyway and I'll be able to put Caleb's hand on my belly and tell him "that's the baby kicking." No bladder dancing yet though, for which I'm thankful. But it'll happen eventually.

Okay, we've all had our lunch, now it's time to get the ice cream out of the freezer. Mmmmmm....

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Oh, and the next three days are supposed to be that hot too. I hope our air conditioner can keep up.

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I made a purple t-shirt for Caleb out of one of my old shirts. He loves purple, and the holes in the armpits weren't worth fixing anymore. He loves it.

Thanks to my little garden helper, I now only have one cucumber plant left - the one in the hanging basket. I have five broccoli plants still making broccoli. This morning I ripped out a couple of the ones I'd cut down too far, so they weren't getting the side shoots they're supposed to get after the main head is cut off.

We're getting new tyres put on the back of our car tomorrow. I'm planning to keep the old ones and use them for my zucchini.

One of the dead branches on our apricot tree fell off this afternoon - right onto Caleb's sandpit. Lucky he wasn't playing in it at the time.

And...uh...I think that's everything. Now I need to go have a shower so I don't have to do it in the morning.

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• Replaced elastic & made boosters for a couple secondhand Baby Beehinds and 4 Peapods nappies, from someone online. She said they were all useless to her and that she'd give them away for just postage. I figured I could fix them all, and I did. Yay me.
• Put the back elastic on all the pieces for my next batch of nappies.
• Pinned the insides & outsides together for the nappies.
• Fixed one of Darrin's favourite T-shirts.
• Made Darrin a new pair of pajama shorts out of another of his old T-shirts.
• Started picking out the stitching in one of my pairs of shorts so I can replace the elastic. I got interrupted by a little boy who wanted to go to bed.

Still left to do, at least what I can remember:

• Finish Caleb's pajama pants, even though they won't fit him for at least another year or two.
• Make boosters for some more nappies for Caleb & sibling.
• Finish off the nappies for sale.
• Finish off the other wet bags, also for sale.
• Fix whatever other shorts & T-shirts are sitting around in there, and whatever's not fixable, stick in the scrap pile.

Projects to start:

• Pajama pants for Darrin for winter
• At least one pair of pajamas for me over winter
• Some pajama shorts for me
• A few long sleeved shirts for me to be pregnant in over autumn/winter
• Probably other things I can't remember

So yeah, that'll keep me busy for a while....

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Veggie garden is going strong. I've harvested five broccoli heads and have two more (plus one with side shoots) still growing. And I now have heads on all four cauliflower plants, but they're looking yellow. I guess they're not kidding about tying the leaves over the head once it forms.... I also have some strawberry flowers, and I moved all my potted plants over next to the main garden so I don't have to go more than one place to water everything. And on Christmas eve, I went to a nursery and bought some seedlings & plants - 1 capsicum, 2 zucchini, 4 cucumbers. I put one of the cucumbers in a hanging basket and the other three in small pots. The zucchini & capsicum are also in pots, because my little patch is filled up. No idea what's up with my pumpkins & watermelons - they've been flowering for a month or so but there's no fruit that I can see. I've read something about rubbing the male flowers on the female flowers to fertilise them, but I can't tell which is which.

Caleb has another new molar. Well, half of it anyway. This just leaves the last two on top. Would be great if they both appeared before his sibling is born, but we'll see. My last ones came through when I was 2 and a few months, which is about what he'll be then, and he's been teething at about the same rate I did.

Due to interest rates dropping THREE times since our last quarterly mortgage statement, we are now making progress on our loan. As in, our payments are finally more than our interest. Yay. Our statement now says 16 years remaining instead of the 21 it said a year ago.

Tomorrow is going to be the first stinking hot day of the summer. Over the next week, the coolest day is supposed to be 27 (80F) on Thursday, and tomorrow? 41 in the city, 42 (108F) in our area. So yeah, I'll just be staying home with the air conditioner on full blast, thanks. That or camping out in the shower.

Pretty sure that's everything I was thinking to post about.

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