A Long Time Between Posts

What a week!

We lost two great Australians this week ... one in-your-face loudmouth who was actually a superb naturalist and conservationist, and one wonderful author who I have loved since childhood.

The whole world knows about the death of Steve Irwin. Presumably the stingray was a contract killer called The Jackal who has now snuck off to South America with his ill-gotten gains, paid off by Australia's much-abused reptiles. Seriously, my heart aches for his wife and children. I hope they have the resilience to remake their lives.

Colin Thiele died aged 85 or thereabouts. One of his best-known books is Storm Boy, though he wrote many others. One of my best childhood memories is lying in bed on a Sunday morning, the sun streaming over me, listening to Storm Boy on the radio and crying copiously over Mr Percival, then trying to hide the fact that I was crying when my mum came into the room. Many years later, George took me to visit the Coorong where it was set, and I fell in love with the bleakness and wildness of it, and the amazing bird life. Definitely one of the most special places I have ever visited.

Since I started writing this post a couple of days ago, Peter Brock has also died, also doing the dangerous thing for which he was famous (motor racing, for non-aussies).

It was also a momentous week for us personally. Wombat's school does a whole school musical every second year, and so far Wombat has totally refused to get involved. It has always been a fraught time for us because he has become more and more autistic as the preparations ramp up, and I have always ended up pulling him out of school for a couple of weeks around the time of the actual production. This year I assumed the same would happen, but lo and behold, he insisted on participating and was JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER CHILDREN. It was extremely emotional for us to watch him up on stage singing along with all the other kids, just like a 'normal' kid. He has had a really great year, except for the appearance of rapidly worsening OCD (but at least it wasn't Tourettes as I had thought - not yet, anyway!) I was as proud of him on Tuesday night as I have ever been of Baby Bear when she was the star of the show - it was an even bigger acomplishment for him.

And I have taken the plunge and decided to do something serious about my future health, and filled in paperwork and got confirmation of dates after much research and great trepidation. I am going to have lap band surgery to help me with my spiralling weight, and hopefully that will help (if not cure totally) my CFS and fibromylagia. Of course the surgeoun does not believe in CFS and thinks it is totally to do with my weight, but then he's a surgeon, isn't he, and if you can't cut it out or sew it up, it can't exist, can it? I am having the op on October 12th and I am terrified, but I know it will be a really good thing to do. In the meantime I have had to have lots of blood tests (I felt like Tony Hancock after they filled SIX TUBES with my blood yesterday) and have to have a sleep study done tomorrow night - at home, but still a nuisance. Then oif course there will be pain and starvation and other icky things, but in the long run I know it will be a GOOD THING.