Congratulations-Happy couple

Those of you reading my blog know of my daughter Chloe and her struggles,so I would like to share this really happy moment in her life with you. I was in on the surprise, which was soooo hard for me as I can't keep a secret ,so had to keep off the phone or I would have given the game away. As it was she drove everyone around her nuts as she always has around birthday and Christmas trying to find out her presents and such.

We wait for Chloe,she has sussed that there is a birthday gathering ,but even after the 670 questions she didn't twig to the real goings on.to her surprise.....

Jess Pops the questionChloe says yes :)

A picture speaks a thousand words



Chloe ,my middle daughter Gemma and myself.

Books -are you a big reader?

The very first chapter book that saw me hooked on reading was this one. I read it in grade 2.I forgot everything other than the plot and that it started with a j sound and I could never find it again. I named my daughter after this book..........and got it wrong ....she is Gemma the book is Jessamy. Close but not .

searching the internet for plots helped me to find it when my children were little and I found a copy and read it to them,they enjoyed it aswell even though the writing is so old fashioned now, compared to say Morris Gleitzman.

The book isn't on this list,but it's on mine.

Jessamy written by by Barbara Sleigh in 1967 is a children's book that sendt Jessamy through a timeslip into the time around WW1 in England.Through a series of events during the timeslip Jessamy solves a mystery and saves the reputation of an elderly man in the present.

”The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

I counted 49 and couple I dipped into and never finished. Have found a couple on the list that look interesting that'll I find and read, and a few I've forgotten and would love to read again.



Instructions:
• Copy this list.
• Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.
• Italicise the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.
• Tag other book nerds.”


Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The King James Bible
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four (1984) – George Orwell
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
Emma -Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Atonement – Ian McEwan
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Dune – Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
On The Road - Jack Kerouak
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Inferno – Dante
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt
Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

some aussie speak

tough cookies = bad luck

brolly = umbrella

chook = chicken
I have chooks in my backyard, they give me an eggaday if i'm lucky


shot through = done a bunk = done the bolt = dissapeared....

thats a bit hot = thats a bit ripe = thats a bit steep = unfair or expensive

a bit more choke and you would have started = u should be flyin around the room = who let the dog in? = something crawl up there and die? =fart

carked it=died

a good few =lots

having a squizz=just looking

talking nineteen to the dozen= talks non stop

face-ache = an irritating person--------- (theres an oldy i havent heard since school in the 70's)

buckleys chance=buckleys and none=no chance whatsoever

uggh boots=sheepskin boots

rooted=just had sex or very very tired

buggered= very tired

turn it up= stop it

suck eggs = ha ha serves u right ...


mad as a hatter.......nutty as a fuitcake........bats in the belfry...sandwich short of a pcinic.......2 cents short of a dollar.......a bit thick...thick as a dunny door....thick as 2 planks...........a fruit loop......

going to rats= doing something really really fast.

bit rough around the edges........>>>>>>>>feral = a person who lives differently to the rest of us
scrubber = female of the above species

I reckon = my 2 cents worth


bloody oath=too right=i agree

Your gotta be kidding= i don't agree

he'll run rings around me= someone u cant keep up with in speed or conversation.

prawn=shrimp

ohhh on ya.... sarcastic thanks NOT


Yanks and Poms= Americans and British.
PERGOLA
had a funny chat with some girls from Canada and US yesterday and they
didn't know what a PERGOLA was. I'll clear it up for you

Pergola = outdoor entertainment area
Its basically a patio, but it can be attatched to the house or
freestanding. A patio is always attatched to the house. A patio can be
without a roof, just a concrete slab or pavers. A pergola always has a
roof of some sort ,might be just beams open to the sky, or covered with
shadecloth or might be very upmarket and have a clorbond steel roof. A
pergola is is always "open ' where a patio can be screened. LOL clear
as mud???


when i go swimming I wear my cossies if I'm in NSW and my togs if I'm in queensland



Randy=horny=feel like having sex


root=have sex


Pissed= very,very drunk..there are stages of pissed ...just pissed, heaps pissed, way pissed,paraletic pissed,passed out pissed.


If you are wondering why soembody is in a bad mood try asking them "whats up with you, you got a hair across your arse???"


to get people to go away, you can tell them to "rack off" ":get lost" piss off""f*** off" or "buggar off"


"dead set"= as a question = really? or as an answer=yep true


if you "get agro" you are really, really cranky and about to hit someone.


"going somewhere this arvo" youre going there in the afternoon


"airy fairy" nosense = talking about religion or can also be talking about someone seen to be "snobby" puting on "airs and graces" thinking a lot of themselves type of person.


"fanny" is not the bit you sit on over here, rather its the female "private parts" so when you talk about "falling on your fanny" or "sweet fanny apples" or something it makes for a "bit of a shock."

oh and we wear thongs on our feet =flip flops

g-string= thong




One time i said Hooray (goodbye cya later) in depression chat room and the person leaving got most upset, they thought I was cheering because they were leaving .....ooops





on that note I'll say hooray
ok that'll do, okey dokey, enuffs enuff,


cheers,

Do I???

I kind of like taggy things, it's a bit like filling in forms, fill this space. I just like talking really, you can't drown me out ,even on paper.

Here are some answers to the what is and do I questions.

Do I remember?.....my first memory.

My earliest memory must be when I was less than 12 months old, I don't remember seeing anything, but I can still evoke the taste and feel of a rubber teat and rosehip juice.

I have short memories,little glimpses into what I was like as a toddler,demanding and playful.

Having a tantrum,because the batteries ran out while vacuuming with my 1960's toy vacuum cleaner,sitting in a highchair,singing loudly for my supper while banging on the tray,being pushed along in the pram and stopping to pet a donkey and getting roused by my mum for chewing a hole in the satin border of the cot blanket at my nonnas.

What is....the dish you most often eat?

at the moment that would be home made pizza. Once a fortnight ,we buy all the bits and pieces,a few packets of lebanese bread for the bases and sit down a make a couple of dozen and freeze them. They have come in pretty handy since daylight saving,I forget to look at the time, so at 8pm,they've given up waiting and we have pizza cos its quick.Method in my madness?......maybe...

Are you a runner? Jebus..No...I can barely walk without falling over...............

First and last band you saw live...........ohhh now I'm going to show my age. First band was The Angels at the gorgeous Enmore theatre.....I think it"s gone now,burnt down,but anyhoo,it was there when I was. I won the tickets on 2sm radio.......remember Ian McRae and disco chook?

2sm was THE radio station of the 70's,with the Top 40,and Frank Hyde calling the footy.

The last band I saw were actually 2, The Reels and Mental as Anything. It was in a smallish club in the days when you could drink and smoke inside. They packed the place,it was hard to breathe, and I'm a smoker, I remember worrying about fire and leaving early...heading somewhere else to see a band that never made it...The Singles.

Looking for photos,I can't believe I found ANYTHING about The Singles.They ad one indie single out in 1980 that I and about 17 others actually bought.The did play it on JJJ...twice....It was called Someone that I knew ,I probably still have it in a box in the shed.

do you ever wear bike pants?

you will thank me when I tell you...no.........having been on a bike maybe twice in my life...theres no need....thankfully!

about me

Totally self serving blog today.

I've entered a comp to win a holiday to Ireland.

Only problem is ,it needs votes. I had a quick look a the first few pages of entries and there was only handfuls of votes, I think 21 was tops...then I looked at the leader board....I have to beat 327 votes somehow.

I don't have this many friends even on Facebook!

This couple is about 200 votes ahead of the next highest, they must be harassing friends, neighbors and all and sundry...........so I thought I'd give that a go,

Consider yourselves harassed and BEGGED .

Here is the link, if you have a spare 3 minutes PLEASE vote for Bernadette and Les.You need to signup to the websiet to vote but yu can leave the email box unticked so the leprechauns wont clog up your inbox. We don't deserve to go to Ireland any more than the next person...but it would be fun to win ...and dammit I want to beat someone who has 327 friends :)

here is the link http://www.romance.discoverireland.com/profile/2476/Browse.aspx

Thankyou !Thankyou!..if I win I'll send you a postcard ^.^

Whats a girl to do?

Being born with parts of anatomy that don't match the chemistry in your brain is not a personal choice, not only is there a public stigma but it seems a beaurocratic one as well.

As you know my daughter is a transgender girl. More than a year in now and it's a pleasure to see her so happy. What would make her happier though is to have the surgery to give her the rest of her female body, this doesn't even take into account that she has long had a medical problem that this surgery will end once and for all.

Herein lies the problem. Money. It costs at least $10,000 dollars to have the surgery presuming that some item numbers are covered by medicare.

It seems there is only one doctor in Australia at present ,Proffessor Bennet,who is capable of this surgery and has retired from the Public Hospital System.

He recently offered to do suregery on a young biological woman born without a vagina, but NSW health will not allow it.Apparantly she can go through Sydney Childrens hospital as a public patient but the doctors really don't have the expertise for this surgery.He has treated 130 girls in the past 5 years, the birthrate is 1 in 5000.

If this is the case for bilogical girls with genital problems, where does this leave the transgender community male or female?

There is a 2nd doctor,Ass. Proffessor Grover who is away o/s training and will not be back until 2011. Even if he operates in a pbulic hodpital there is still the high cost of surgery because of medicare and what is covered and what is not.

I cannot find statistics for transgender numbers , the statistics I did find are grim ,suicide 1 in 5. The turmoil this group of people go through is incredible.They are fighting what their society tells them they should be and look like, discrimination, ridicule, families who feel personally affronted.

Why is it so hard in our society for people to get their head around the fact that some peoples brain and body don't match. Especially men, I don't understand how they are threatened by this.There is not some secret enclave of transgender girls out to trick and shame them somehow and funnily enough the type of male that is so offended is the guy these girls never wanted to be let alone hook up with.

Discrimination for being transgender is illegal in Australia, but in day to day living and getting on, it doesn't seem to matter, try finding a job, accomodation , giving your female name out with a male sounding voice , the 2nd and 3rd looks etc.

There have been some wins in our story though, very early in transition, just after Chloe had changed her name,she had to go to Canberra hospital for surgery.I have to give Kudo's to them,they were so professional and understanding,no raised eyebrows ,funny looks,they addressed Chloe as Miss and used all the right pronouns,that put me to shame at the time...I was just learning, and it's soemthig I will always rembember.It was extrememly encouraging for both Chloe and I, esp considering the nature of her problem and how early in transition she was. Her employers have been excellent,one would wish all employers so enlightened.

But back to surgery. It is about time that in this country SRS surgery is covered in its entirety by Medicare. Just recently Young Bridget Clinch appeared on SN and Sunrise and highlighted this issue. Bridget is in the Aust Army and had to fight to have her surgery covered my medical , she fought them and won as she will be a good Captain male or female. Thats a very simplified sentence describing her journey as it is her story to tell, but Bridget does highlight that this surgery is free in the Defence Force and in the Prison system in Australia. And borrowing from Bridgets reasearch several other countries fund SRS the UK, Canada, Iran and Cuba.

Its about time Australia follow suit.

So this is my bandwagon, feel free to jump aboard, I've started letter writing to the Health Minster ,the PM etc If enough of us write and mention the Australian Human Rights Commission report 2009 's reccomendations for transgender ,then we might be able to force changes.

I must be getting shorter, it's taking me longer to jump down from my soapbox lol

We, being me ,Les and Gemma left home the day before our flight out as we live 5 hours from sydney and stayed at the formula1 in St Peters,Sydney.This is where Les grew up,so we took a snapshot of him outside the terrace house he grew up in.
We flew Pacific Blue as we got such a cheap flight, but ,it's a bit like going to Bali on a bus, not very comfortable and Les's back was screaming by the end of the flight,other than that uneventful and boring as you have to pay for entertainment but we arrived half an hour early.
We had booked the contraversial VIP service with worldsafarisbali and probably didn't need it, as being early ,we seemed to be between flights and it didnt seem as awful as last time. Getting off the plane on the tarmac and bussed to the terminal is a novelty, but it beats how it was 23 yrs ago when you had to walk across to what was a tin shed surrounded by machine gun weilding polisi.
We were to look for a person with a sign with our name on it once we got to the terminal, no sign, but we looked confused so they found us anyway. We were out in about 10 minutes into the sea of smiling dark faces and name cards. Again we had to find a card with our name on it and pay for the vip service........and..... I saw a card with our name and off we went....with the hotel driver. I completely forgot about the VIP people until a knock on the hotel door about 8pm that night........sooooo embarrassed and gave them the extra rp they asked for to cover petrol.

We stayed the whole 2 weeks at LumbungSari in Legian. Its a small quiet hotel, one of the older ones, it needs the rooms refurbished but we didn't care. Our requirememts were comfy bed, clean, airconditioned with a pool and to house all 3 of us on a budget as Miss Gemma was on a tighter budget than even we were . We did have intermittent hot water during the day and the foods not the best but the staff are lovely and I enjoyed it here just as much as the brand new All Seasons .It's very "Bali" in architecture and friendliness compared to the modern hotels where you could be pretty much anywhere in the world.
The first night we went to Goodies for dinner, its my favourite place for pizza. It was exactly the same as last year, frienly and great pizza. We decided to walk along the beach road home, and thus began the quest for vegemite for Gemma as we stepped into all the little supermarkets.
Every other step we took brought us another hawker, by the time Les got back to hotel he had half a dozen light up toys and a wallet that bursts into flames.
The quest for vegemite was like finding the holy grail.

We ate a lot of the time at the warung kartini, in three brothers lane,it doesn't look much decor wise, but the food is freshly cooked,yummy and cheaper than chip sandwiches at home!

We had a nice chicken curry at Je-Jes jsut at Padma Utara end of the lane, love their banana pancakes and a take away milkshake in a plastic bag is a hoot.good value for money and nice staff. wish they would bring back the music,to get the place busy again.


WE did the Rick Stein thing and went to IBUOKA.. well I can say I've done it.I found it too spicy to taste the pork really, but leaving our shoes in a pile with all the others and sitting on the floor was a novelty. Thing is after eating here, a few hours later hubby got sick, really really sick,vomiting, temp,runs etc. we both ate here,luck of the draw? its the only place out of the ordinary that we ate at,only one with out a "proper" kitchen and food out in the open up until that time.And you have to sit on the floor so you're using your hands on the floor, we do use the hand sanitiser....but... luckily we had some of those new specific for travellers belly antibiotics with us and he recovered in about 2 days.

We went out to the Beach Shack at Canguu, its lovely out there,pretty rice paddy scenery on the way.
We had arranged to meet a girl I went to school with from way back in 3rd class ,when she was the new kid. Her husband and 2 of her children were with her as well. It was absolutely amazing to catch up with her after all these years and it must be something about us Heathcote girls that we can just pick up where we left off and none of us seem to worry about who's got what. It's great.
We ate the tables just above the beach, shame we had cloud cover as the sunset would have been gorgeous.It was still pretty the little bit we had. The food was ok, nothing spectacular, but it was a great night until it rained.
Going back to Legian we had need to use their transport which is a set rate, it was 100,000rp back to legian.........funnily enough a faster trip back than getting there which cost us 85,000 after we got lost twice lol
.

We went to Pizza hut of all places but its so different to australia. we all really enjoyed the meal here and went back for takeaway lol pastas are scrummy, pizzas are very different esp the choice of crusts...i had one with chicken sticks,tasted better than it sounds. They also make nice mocktails and fruit smoothies.


why oh why do we not have JCO donuts in australia instead of donut king???? so light so fluffy, like fairy floss with icing lol i won't tell you how many i bought :O

In our room somehow the the bathroom door had locked from the inside we told the staff and they scratched their heads as you have to actually turn the lock to lock it,theres nothing loose that can just fall into place. So lots of balinese chatter and the boss sends 1 guy to have a look. Theres no gap where the door joins the wall so their first thought of knife or credit card didnt work. Are you sure theres no one in there?,they ask. nope.. all 3 of us here.
Another guy comes along. There is a brilliant idea to do the equivalent of the coathanger in the car door trick. The door itself is on the front right of the bathroom as you walk in....so walk in face left and about 13 feet away is the wall with the cement brick window up high. Theres two up on the ladder with a long pole which they poke through the window and wave about trying to open the lock. The door is 13 feet and to the right of the window away and a target of about 10cm. We're hearing chatter, cheers and dissapointed sighs...............2 hours later, they decide to take the frame off the door,which left a gap for them to slide the lock open, remove the lock and put on a new one which took about 15 minutes!
Enough entertainment ,we headed off to Mataharis........Caught a taxi to Mataharis.....who knew there were two? so we caught another Taxi to Mataharis...

Lots of shopping to be had here, DVD's clothes etc......helps if you don't leave the shopping in the tax and wave it goodbye! I lost 13 DVD's leaving the bag in the taxi.luckily they're only $1.20 each.

We went out to tahna lot, ubud, the safari park this trip, we saw these things last time, but it was great to show Gemma.

I hope Gemma had a great time, she said she did,even though it was with us oldies , she did get one night out at Apache for her 21st, came home tipsy on the obligatory motorbike taxi .

we had too much shopping and had to get my friend to post some things back for us.
flight back wa uneventful,boring, though they did give gemma whatever she wanted to eat for free as it was her birthday. long wait at the station for our train and finally home....long 24hr trip.





Things I noticed this trip :you can a get a cab down to the bottom of jn 66 to legian beach for those restraunts BUT try to get one back!!!! There are several there waiting all the time and they refuse to put the meter on and want anything from 50-100k to get you back to legian. We just walked till we found a blubird or jumped straight into one where someone else was getting out or just hoof it.

it rains when its not the rainy season lol

there is no vegemite in bali.......trust me, we looked!!!



Now saving for the next 2 yrs to get back again