The Stubborn Grandma

Grandma: “Look at this stinging nettle I got out of the back yard.”

Me: “That’s a thistle.”

Grandma (grumpily): “No, it’s a stinging nettle.  I’m just trying to help you so Hannah doesn’t get stung.”

Me: “Regardless of what it’s called, I know Hannah shouldn’t touch it.”

Grandma (getting increasingly annoyed): “It’s a stinging nettle. I’ve lived my whole life in the bush, I know what a stinging nettle is!”

Me: “Well growing up, my Mom told me that those were thistles.  Stinging nettles are the ones that don’t look like they’d hurt you, they don’t have spikes on them, but then  you touch them and they sting.”

Grandma: “They both sting.  Touch this.  Come on, touch it, I promise it will sting you.”

Me: “I know it would hurt if I touch it, it’s spiky! That doesn’t mean it’s a stinging nettle.  It’s a thistle.  Maybe I’m wrong, maybe my Mom was wrong, I’m just going on what my Mom told me.  Maybe you’re wrong.”

Grandma: “It’s a stinging nettle.”

Grandma went outside and then came back, bearing non prickly, leafy, harmless plant.

Grandma: “This is a thistle.”

Me: “That’s not a thistle.  I don’t know what that is, but it’s not a thistle.”

Grandma: “How do all the rabbits eat thistle then?”

Me: “They don’t.”  I don’t know if they do or not, but I can’t imagine that they’d want to eat something that would likely poke their eyes out while giving them a lip piercing.

Me: “I’m going to look it up.”

Grandma (thoroughly annoyed): “Fine, but this is a thistle”

A few hours later (I hadn’t told Grandma that I looked it up hours ago):

Grandma, bearing a large spiky plant: “Look at this big…we’ll just call it Thing…that I found in the side yard.”

Me: “It’s a thistle.  We looked it up.”

Grandma (stubbornly): “Whatever.”

Then there was silence.  I wonder if Grandma will ever speak of said plants to me ever again, if she will still call them stinging nettles, or if she will now call them thistles???????????  Only time will tell….

UPADATE: Over a year later and she still refuses to call them thistles. She gets all flustered and says “You know, those stinging things…” HA!

This is a stinging nettle

This is a thistle

Quest for the internet

Yay, finally the blog is back!! The only reason I didn’t (couldn’t) write it sooner was lack of the Internet. We moved in the middle of April, and have had the worst time getting the Internet since then. You’d think it would be easy to give someone your money in exchange for a service, but, as we have found, it is not.

The quest began when we first moved. Aaron signed up to get Internet with TPG, a provider that for some reason has twice the download limit for half the price, just what we wanted. After a while, they notified Aaron that they could not provide us with the Internet unless we switched our phone line to Telstra. Seemed like a bit of a hassle, so we decided instead to do some research and find someone else to provide us with the Internet. Unfortunately there are not very many providers in this area, so after much thinking, we decided we would in fact switch to Telstra and then get TPG.

I called Telstra, went through all the hoopla needed to sign up to switch to their company, and was told it would be done on or before 2 weeks, and we would get a letter in the mail when it was done letting us know so. So we waited. And waited…and waited…. After 2.5 weeks (I would have called sooner, but was laid up with food poisoning which saw me puking more in 1 day then I have in all my life combined, followed by an injection to stop the puking, and my refusal to ever eat chicken from Chicken Man ever again), I was sufficiently annoyed and phoned Telcrap (I mean Telstra) to find out what was wrong.
“Your application was denied,” I was told.
“Ok, why is that?” I asked them.
“I’m not sure. Do you want me to put the application through again for you?”
“Um, I would like to know why we were denied first. What if we put an application through, wait another 2 weeks, and then find out I was denied again?”
“Oh.”
He gave me another number to call to find out why our application was denied.
“The sales person filled out the wrong form. She filled out the form for a new number, not the form for transferring a number from another provider.” I was told by huffy customer relations officer.
“So why didn’t someone call me and tell me that rather then just letting us wait and wait and wait, thinking the whole time that a phone line will be installed?”
“Sorry, but that was not my department, it was sales. Do you want to put another application through?”
“Would I have to wait another 2 weeks?”
“Yes. It would be like filling out a whole new application, the whole process would start again.”
“So let me get this straight, because your company stuffed up and filled out the wrong form, and then failed to notify me, I have to go through the whole process again even though I should already have a phone line.”
“Um…yeah.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Click. I could feel myself getting flustered, and I really didn’t want to yell at random unsympathetic customer relations dude, especially in front of Hannah, so I just had to hang up. Of course there was no way we were going to switch from Telcrap after that. Seriously, if they said something like “we’re really sorry that happened, if you put in a new application, we will have someone connect your line tomorrow (or even the day after that would have been fine).” But no, that would have been too hard.

The quest began again. Aaron called another Internet supplier only to be told that we’d have to switch to Telcrap. This company, however, actually told us why (if only someone would have told us sooner!!): we have the privilege of having a fibre optic telephone wire. We thought all this time the reason we had to switch to Telcrap was because we had some geriatric decrepit phone line that was incapable of providing broadband/ADSL/ADSL2 Internet. Oh how that changes things! That really only left us with one choice as most companies don’t provide for such high speed fibre optic cables. We had to go with Optus, the provider of said high speed phone line. Yeah, they are more expensive, but you know what? They have wonderful customer service (when I signed up for their Internet, they sent someone 2 days later to connect it and give us the little box thing, and they even told me beforehand what time and day they were sending someone, and they were super friendly and obliging), and the fastest Internet in Australia, so it’s worth it.

Finally, we have the Internet. Insert sigh of relief here.

Mum Mum

“Achoo!” Aaron called me from the bedroom “Boo, you have to come see this!” I went in and looked at Hannah. A giant snot bubble was coming out of her nose. Poor baby. At the same time though, I had a little laugh, and got out the camera. I had to document her first grossly hilarious snot bubble. Hannah has been a bit sick since last Saturday. She got a cold, probably from one of the kids in creche. I took her to the doctor last Saturday just to make sure it wasn’t an ear infection or anything (I can never be too careful with my little baby!), as she also had a fever. They said it was just a cold. She woke up numerous times every night since her poor little nose was blocked. Babies only breathe through their noses, so they get quite distressed when it’s blocked. Needless to say, I’m in a state of zombie-ness. I didn’t write last week, due to said zombie-ness, and well, I really couldn’t be bothered. Hannah gave me, Aaron, Grandma, and The Jess her cold, so when she was sleeping, I was sleeping. Blogging just seemed like entirely too much effort. She still has her cold. I think it’s getting better though. She doesn’t seem to be coughing as much, and I haven’t had to wipe her nose all the time. We borrowed a vapouriser from someone at Church (thank you Beth!!!!!!), which really really helped her night sleeping. The first night, she only woke to feed once, which was a vast improvement on the 5+ times she had been waking due to a blocked nose. I think I need to invest in one of those. So worth it!

I was supposed to take Hannah to Tresillian (place to get help with baby sleeping problems http://www.tresillian.net/) on my birthday (hey, I wasn’t about to turn down the earliest appointment they had, even if it was for my birthday), but they called one morning and asked if I could come in. Sure I had to hurry and shower, get Hannah ready, get our lunches ready, nappy bag, toys, sleeping stuff, etc., but I wanted to nip this non napping crisis in the bud asap, so I said yes. I won’t lie, it was really hard. The whole idea is controlled crying; teaching Hannah to put herself to bed. Sometimes she does the “I’m gonna die” cry (where it certainly sounds like if I don’t come in right then, she will die), which rips my heart out. They told me that if that is what gets me in there, then that is what she has learned gets me in there. She isn’t hungry, hot, cold, wet, etc when she does it, so it’s not anything to worry about. The plan consisted of first waiting 15-20 minutes after I put her down for her nap to let her try to put herself to sleep (even if she is crying, I don’t go in), then if she is crying, go in, lay her down (she is usually standing), pat her back (she sleeps on her tummy) and settle her down, and stay for a while, then go, and come back every 5 minutes or so. It took her 35 minutes to sleep the first time, and she slept for 1 hour. Much better then the 15 minutes she was doing before. Oh, and I can’t feed her to sleep anymore. Ok, this time, I really won’t give in, I will not feed her to sleep anymore. For her second nap of the day, she didn’t nap at all. We tried for an hour and a half, but got nothing except ear piercing cries. Poor Bubba.
I also had to make a bedtime routine, and stick to it every single time. Our new routine is: put sleeping bag on, give her a cuddle, sit her in her cot, read her a story, lay her down, put the blinds down and turn the sleepy music on, stroke her hair and say “sleepy time,” turn the light off and exit the room. The first couple of days were pretty hard, but they are supposed to be. Now for her naps, I’m happy to report that she goes to sleep within 5 minutes, but usually within 1, and if she cries, it’s only a weak little protest cry, then she is out. Sigh of relief. Nights aren’t going so well, but I’m pretty sure that is just because of her cold. It has been taking an hour or more to get her to sleep at night then she has been waking and waking (except for the last few nights when we borrowed the vapouriser). As I said though, I’m pretty sure that is just her nose giving her grief. Why is it that when you have a cold, the stuffy nose seems way worse at night??

Hannah would like everyone to know that she is a little Aussie (for those Americans reading this, that is pronounced Ozzy, like Ozzy Osbourne) girl. Aaron was eating vegemite toast one morning when, as usual, Hannah crawled over and looked at him with those “Daddy, you know you want to give me what ever it is that you are eating” eyes. I said she could try some vegemite toast. I thought for sure she’d absolutely hate it, but to my surprise (and bewilderment), she loved it. I think she would have eaten Daddy’s entire toast if he let her.

There is one thing that all moms can’t wait to hear – when your little one says Mum, Mama, Mum Mum, or the like, for the very first time. I was feeding Hannah her lunch when out of the blue, she said Mum. clear as day, not a “what did you just say” kind of thing, there was no question that she said Mum. I don’t know if she knows what it means (I would like to delude myself to say that she does), but she certainly knows it gets my attention. If I’m in the kitchen and she is in the living room, she will crawl over to the makeshift barricade I made (two blown up thermarest mattresses across the doorway, one side held in place by the couch, the other with a vacuum cleaner, reinforced with a chair in the middle of the door way to prevent the bust ins that were happening), stand up, look at me, and yell “Mum!” How can I not give her a cuddle or a smile or play with her when she does that? Every time she says Mum I’m pretty sure my smile gets a little wider. I better watch out or I will end up looking like a demented clown or something. She also said bum this morning. I suppose that was bound to happen when she says Bubba and Mum all the time. Put them together, and what do you get? Bum. Hahahaha, bum is so much funnier when it’s a baby saying it!

And yes, it is my birthday this week. Happy birthday to me. I’m getting old.

To finish off, here is a little rant, as it annoys me every time.
Dear newspaper publishers: Why must you put staples in your newspapers? Do you like to unnecessarily contribute to depleting the worlds steel supply? I can’t figure out the purpose to using staples to bind together your newspapers which already stay together as they have a nice fold right down the centre. Do you like to spend money unnecessarily on staples? Pay for unnecessary machines to put said useless staples in your newspapers? “Can I read the sports section?” someone asked me. “Sure,” I wasn’t reading it, and sharing is caring. “Oh wait, sorry, I can’t pull out the sports section because this silly newspaper is STAPLED TOGETHER.” Why don’t I just pull the section off? I would, but you use unnecessarily large staples which fail to free sections of paper when you pull at them. Instead, half of the page is torn away, the other half still sticking unnecessarily to the big stupid unnecessary staple. Why don’t I just pull the staple off? Sounds easy enough, but we’re not talking about normal easy to pull off normal sized staples, we are talking about unnecessarily large nail breaking, finger poking, don’t want to unbend staples. “Hey, want to put some newspaper through the shredder to make some guinea pig bedding?” “Great idea. Oh wait, we can’t, it will kill the shredder because it’s STAPLED TOGETHER!” What were you thinking newspaper publishers?