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Pat turned 70 and the whole family got together for a succulent Chinese meal in Boronia. It’s always nice to have the family together (only missing Michael and Luca), and I think Pat really liked it because he teared up a bit when he thanked us all for coming.

We had the girls over for a sleepover before Ava and Jess’s flight back to Sydney. We played some games and watched a movie and had snacks. I heard a lot of thumping and bumping coming from the living room over night!!

An elder millenial giving up her skinny jeans (for now). Ava is my style inspiration.

Geared up for an excursion into and onto the roof. A lot of the insulation had been thrown around during the renovations so we spent some time nestling them all back in place. It felt like doing every single hip mobility exercise in a row. I think it’s worked though (along with some of our other draft reduction projects) because this winter hasn’t felt quite so miserable as the last few.

Michael and Gina had us over for an excellent lunch. I felt like we were at a Japanese restaurant! We played Critter Kitchen and Nekojima. Critter Kitchen is really fun! Lucky that we won that from Sonika’s raffle.

Dumpling dinner in the city. Scott was very brave wearing his brand new hoodie, I definitely would have dropped something on myself.

Scott organised for us to do a printmaking class in the city for one of his #SMAJ activities. It was fun, although I felt very rushed, but maybe that is good for me, to not try to perfectionize every activity.

Scott and I did a pickleball tournament at Eastern Indoor Centre and managed to come second! The tournament ran very far behind schedule and we had to wait AGES in between games so it was a weird evening of warming up and then getting cold and having to warm up again. We only finished second in our pool to make it into the semi finals, but played very well in the semis to make it into the final! And then we got smashed in the final, haha.

We had a family birthday dinner at Jemma’s. Myles and I made lots of origami shuriken, which he later combined into a ULTIMATE SHURIKEN. Love it.

Tiny bit of progress on the cable knit blanket.

Unpictured stuff:

  • So much pickleball. Social sessions, drills, and private lessons. I also did a DUPR session at Eastern Indoor with a random old man partner to try and get used to the courts/balls before the tournament. Good thing I did because I was hitting everything out of bounds that day. Sorry partner.
  • Scott worked hella overtime running exams. Very long days for him. He has a lot of TOIL.
  • I went to a Discord meetup. Was nice to see everyone again and meet a few new people as well. The highlight was the apple caramel slice that one person brought. Delicious.
  • I started doing Bodypump classes at the gym near my house. It’s a bit silly and I spend a lot of time flailing around, but it’s also fun and at least I am doing something. Gym motivation is very low these days.

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    A busy month, but I mostly only took food pics? Oops.

    We went out for gnocchi for my friend Jen’s birthday. Our group took up almost the whole restaurant. I had vegan gnocchi and it was a fun and delicious evening.

    One of Scott’s #SMAJs was to take us to the Werribee Open Range Zoo. We walked around a lot and saw lots of stuff, like the elephants, hippos, zebras and gorillas… but we didn’t go on the safari bus! Which is apparently like the best part of the zoo!! Because we didn’t know that it was free!!!

    (The key part of SMAJ activities is that Scott is supposed to do all of the planning and research and I just get to show up, so I had not talked about the zoo with anyone ahead of time because I didn’t know we were going.)

    So a little bit of a SMAJ fail. We still did have a nice enough time, but maybe didn’t see everything there, and definitely not as close. It did make for some funny conversations at work the next day when they told me that the bus was free. I guess we have to go back some other time.

    We went to see the Crash Test Dummies! I thought it was funny when they asked “Who listened to us in the 90s??? Who are the adult children of people that listened to us in the 90s???” (Me.) The dude still has a super low voice. They are one of the few bands that I know most of the words to their songs.

    I voted in the Canadian Election. At least I think I did. The envelope has one of those Postage Paid printed stamps… I don’t know how high priority that gets sent through the postal system.

    I woke up on a Saturday morning desperate for a cold cut sandwich. So we headed to Saul’s Sandwiches for lunch and had a lil picnic in the sun. It hit the spot.

    Damien cooked up an epic Easter lunch for the whole family, with lamb and potatoes, and we all brought salads. Jemma made a delicious carrot cake. I feel spoiled.

    Another #SMAJ! This time he took us out to try Burmese food, under recommendation from his new Burmese coworker. We just ordered things that we hadn’t heard of before. Everything we tried was tasty!

    We had a very spontaneous afternoon games sess with Michael and Gina. Maybe it’s better to do it this way? Short and sweet and no pressure to clean and prepare everything perfectly. We played Finspan.

    KNITTING UPDATES:

    I started a pair of fingerless gloves because I wanted to try knitting with mohair, and finished the pair of slightly tweedy ribbed socks. I really like how the mohair looks, and how the socks turned out.

    I nearly finished the drab sweatshirt, and then ordered a bunch more wool for a blanket and a cardigan and realised that maybe I am always drab.

    Unpictured stuff:

    • Between Scott and I, approximately one million medical appointments. There was some concern that my heart was going too slowly but turns out everything is fine, I am just healthy.
    • I went to Hawthorn to watch the Oceania weightlifting comp. Enjoyed how supportive (aka LOUD) the Samoan team is of each other. Nice to catch up with a few of my old weightlifting buddies, but they did not manage to convince me to start weightlifting again.
    • Scott started working!!!!!!!!! He is enjoying the job and they seem really good and organised!
    • We planted 50 bulbs of garlic. If they grow properly, you may receive garlic as part of your Christmas gift.
    • I started going to pickleball drill sessions where we just do drills for two hours. Some might find it boring but it’s been really helpful for me and it’s very physically and mentally challenging. Ana is very strict about technique. I now do 2-3 social sessions a week and one drills session.
    • We went to watch the movie Sinners which I enjoyed quite a bit! I think it was good that I went in blind as well.

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    And yet again I am months behind in blogging. This will be a pretty short post though because we didn’t that much and apparently I took even fewer pictures.

    I didn’t stay up for New Years Eve, like usual, but we did drive down to the beach for our traditional New Years Day polar bear swim. It was windy and cool so we just dunked and left.

    I felt like we were wasting away our whole summer so I booked us an Airbnb for a long weekend in Warrandyte to trick us into thinking we were on holiday (when really we only had to drive 30 minutes). It actually worked, the Airbnb was up in the trees and really spacious. We went out for a few meals, swam in the river, played games, and watched movies. It was very relaxing.

    I started a new project, a sweatshirt.

    And I finished these jellyfish socks with that much navy yarn to spare! Just enough to kitchener stitch the toe and weave in the ends. I won yarn chicken that day.

    January unpictured stuff:

    • We saw Rufus Wainwright at the Melbourne Recital Center and it was very lovely.
    • Big dumpling dinner in the city. Always good.
    • We went to a Middle Eastern restaurant for a #SMAJ activity and ordered a huge platter.
    • I played a lot of pickleball.
    • Scott’s procedure got postponed.

    The power went out on a very very hot day so we decided to slow walk to Chadstone for fro yo instead of roasting ourselves at home. The fro yo was great and by the time we got home the power was back on. Mission success.

    I got a new phone so now I can take good pictures from a lot further away haha.

    If you’ve ever traveled with me you would have seen my suitcases that I painted 20ish years ago. It really does make it so much easier in the airport. My skills have improved since then… very happy with how my new carry on bag came out. There are sprinkles on all sides for 3D identification.

    February unpictured stuff:

    • After months of waiting, Scott finally got his blood patch done!! He felt better about a week later but had to be very careful with his movements.
    • Helping prepping as much stuff as possible so that Scott would be OK when I left to go to Malaysia.
    • A work dinner to celebrate Leon finishing his placement.

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    It was a busy month, this is going to be hella long!!

    Carrying on the gingerbread house tradition with new friends. :) Carrying on the tradition of having WAY TOO MUCH candy! Building gingerbread structures in very high humidity is not ideal.. there were some struggles. It took a while to figure out which icing would work. But in the end we got there, mostly. Fun was had.

    Poor Ash’s house already collapsed by the next morning due to moisture issues.

    Scott and I decided that instead of getting each other Christmas presents we would finally get ourselves a stand mixer. I did some extreme couponing and we ended up getting a great price on a fancy Kenwood mixer on Black Friday. It is AWESOME. It has a scale built into it!! I made strawberry cupcakes to break it in.

    We had our work Christmas lunch at the Espy this year. There was so much food this year it was ridiculous. I screamed when they brought out an entire dairy free pizza for me as a substitute for the little pieces of deep dish pizza, hahaha. We all brought so much stuff home.

    I went to SO MANY Christmas parties. They were all great! Christmas BBQ at Sonika’s, Christmas pool party brunch at Naomi’s, Christmas dinner at Scott’s bowls club, and English Christmas lunch at Maz’s. So much eating. So much fun. I especially liked playing in the pool with Sonny’s kids, and duck fat roasted potatoes at Maz’s.

    Some delicious party meals.

    Pre-Christmas crochet time with Ava. #summeroflyingdown

    Maybe a new Christmas tradition… cinnamon buns for Christmas morning. Next time I’ll use yeast that didn’t expire 4 years ago. They still turned out pretty delicious though!! I stood next to the dough being kneading in the mixer in awe for the entire 8 minutes.

    Luca seemed to like the mimic that Scott made for him! He was going around chomping everyone’s limbs.

    Christmas Day was the usual in Boronia, an insane amount of presents, an insane amount of food, backyard cricket, chats with family, pictures. No waterslide this year as Shaun’s family had gastro and no one wants that combination. :D

    Our December #SMAJ was going to Day 2 of the cricket with Da Boys. I did enjoy the Boxing Day Test this year but I found it hard to see the ball and follow what was happening in real life. Plus it was very crowded. Scott did bring us thermos hot dogs though! We lasted four or five hours before both of us really needed to leave, and we got to see both teams batting and several wickets, so overall a successful outing.

    Still playing heaps of pickleball all around the city. I checked out the Eastern Indoor Sports Centre which has actual pickleball lines, for a drills and structured play session. It was good!

    Churning out Lake Reed cable knit hats. Fun to learn a new technique! I finished the pink/burgundy one in 2 days for a Kris Kringle gift.

    Lake Reed cable knit hat, before and after blocking. Makes a big difference, doesn’t it?

    Rosemarie’s sweater, finished! Before and after blocking. Really pleased how this one turned out.

    Vacuum packed Bingo and sweater for travel to Squamish. I don’t think Bingo has fully recovered yet.

    Unpictured stuff:

    • Scott has had many MRIs and doctors appointments. The good news is that he’s not concussed and at least we know what the problem is now, and it’s fixable, the bad news is that it’s going to take a little while to get through all the steps, and he might need surgery. He’s still uncomfortable but I guess he’s learning more how to balance lying down time and doing some activities. We’re hoping that we’ll get some updates this week or next week, after all of these public holidays.
    • We went to trivia at a new place, which is always a novelty, but it was very loud and the seats have no backs and my (vegan) pizza was very wet.
    • Our belated November #SMAJ was going to see the new Wallace and Gromit movie at the theatre with the Lonard’s. Ava was giggling the whole time. I loved it too.

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    We started the month with a belated #SMAJ. He took me to the Accidental Wes Anderson exhibit in the city, which is an art exhibit with lots of people’s pictures that look like Wes Anderson. Like, wide angle, colourful, symmetrical. It was cute. I was really really tired that night for some reason. We had ramen for dinner.

    We went to the one year anniversary Palestine rally, which had a nice big turnout. Can’t believe it’s still necessary. At least we get to catch up with some friends at the same time.

    I went to the Finders Keepers Market and spent too much money on cute things. I got an olive oil bottle, some bird pins, a beeswax sandwich bag, a patch to put over the pepperoni oil stain on my favourite hoodie, and a bunch of random stickers.

    I was really craving a big ass sandwich (BAS) afterwards. It took me a while to find somewhere that was open for lunch on the weekend but eventually ended up with this rare beef sandwich from Hector’s Deli, which really hit the spot.

    I was planning on competing in the Ian Laurie Cup in November, but it ended up being cancelled and instead I ended up doing Victorian Championships. Normally I wouldn’t even have qualified for this competition, but this year they decided to not have any entry requirements so it was kind of a special opportunity, which made me feel excited and nervous and also awkward. They were running quite behind schedule so I had a really long time to wait after weighing in before my session would start so I lay outside on the grass for a while. The ear of my headphones broke off, which was annoying.

    Anyway despite having a shortened prep and a week or so off while I was sick, the competition ended up going well for me, nearly perfect really. My friend Pitty came to coach me and he was great. I didn’t really care how I performed in the snatches so of course I got all three attempts easily (45, 48, 50). Not a PB but very happy to get 50kg again.

    I clean and jerked 55 and 58 pretty easily but missed 60kg for the millionth time. Frustrating. But that’s still a 1kg PB total so yay. And I got to have these cool photos taken so that’s neat as well.

    The next day I went back to volunteer/watch Steph/help Nic. Big weekend.

    I actually haven’t been back to training since the comp. Instead I’ve been playing tons of pickleball and swimming and doing some quick squat sessions in the garage. Still just as busy as before but it’s really nice not to have to be so strict with everything, and it’s feeling fun.

    I finally cooked the frozen garfish that Doreen gave me a while ago. They were already cleaned so all I had to do was roll over them with a rolling pin, pull out as much of the spine as I could, then I breaded them in flour and panko and shallow fried. They were delicious. It’s great that you don’t have to worry about the small bones, they’re soft enough to eat. Served with some dense bean salad.

    This is my lunch time knitting project. Jellyfish socks! I usually get to do about 20-30 minutes on it per day and it’s a nice calming part of my lunch break. Socks are the best portable project.

    Two of my coworkers have the same birthday and we ended up with three cakes at work!! Best day ever.

    Unpictured stuff:

    • A few of my coworkers and I went bowling one night. It was something ridiculous like $42 for 2 games of bowling or $44 for unlimited bowling so of course we picked unlimited and REALLY tried to get our moneys worth. I think I played 7 games? And two of them stayed for ages and played 15 games hahahhaa. I was truly terrible at it, like mixing up which arm is supposed to swing with which leg.. but it was a good chance to try and work it out. We were all very sore the next day.