Category: family anecdotes

Categories
#blogjune family anecdotes Technology

#BlogJune Day 26

“Second star to the right then straight on til morning”

These instructions, given by Peter Pan to Wendy Darling, are the directions to Neverland. And my Miss16 was given the challenge of animating them. “What would be seen by the children (Peter, Wendy and her younger brothers, Michael and John) as – with the help of Tinkerbell the fairy, of course – they fly there from London?”

And this was what she created. By herself, by hand. No AI here, folks!

Enjoy 🙂

914137D1-A036-42C0-9738-63D80E03C60A

– KRidwyn

Categories
#blogjune family anecdotes momentous events Random thoughts

#BlogJune Day 25

Yesterday was a red letter day. I finally succeeeded at something I’d been unable to do: finish dessert at The Pancake Manor.

Eating there is a pleasure I share with my Mum. Not sure why, but whenever we’re in Brisbane for the day we make a point of eating a meal there. And although I ensure my stomach is growling prior to entry, I’d never yet made it through a meal AND dessert due to the huge meal sizes.

So yesterday, Brisbane bound with Miss16, the challenge again was to consume the entire dessert. And we did it!

(Admittedly, we shared one dessert between us, and both of us were wise enough to only order the ‘entree’ sized meal… but we did it!)

And it was DELICIOUS!!! and so decadent 🙂 🙂 🙂

In case you’re intereseted, I had the Chicken crepe (chicken and mushroom filling on a bed of mashed potatoes) and Mum the seafood crepe, and our dessert was the Macadamia Madness. And even now, writing about it, I can feel my tastebuds watering behind the smile playing around my lips.

It was truly a memorable day!

Here’s hoping yours is as well, dear Reader 🙂

  • KRidwyn

[Also, sorry for the shocking photo quality. But we all know how badly I take photos…]

Categories
#blogjune family anecdotes momentous events Random thoughts

#BlogJune Day 13

I missed a day! Sad 🙁

but a friend I hadn’t heard from in simply ages replied to a tweet and also commented on here (hi Snail!) so: happy!

Reason for missed day: my Mum had had a car accident on the 11th (hence the cryptic post because I was too emotional to write coherently) and – although she’s okay and in fact, better than okay, she’s remarkably good praise God! – I spent hours (literally) on the phone with the insurance company and that chewed up good blogpost-writing time. Sigh.

I *had* intended to post this photo (taken yesterday, when I discovered its existence!) as I found it so amusing:

I guess I’ve reached the age whereupon (ha! Check out that old word!) I receive birthday cards from politicians by virtue of not dying yet. Ummm… not sure how that makes me feel, really, but… okay?!

Have a ‘not dying’ day yourself, dear Reader!

– KRidwyn

Categories
#blogjune family anecdotes Life

#BlogJune Day 10

So my Miss16 has 6 months left of school. And what does she do? Join in with the Senior Assassin game, of course!

Wear goggles? You’re protected. Floaties on your arms? Also fine. On school grounds (school bus seats included in this definition) or heading to or at your place of work? Also unable to be eliminated.

Anything else? You’re fair game for being eliminated (shot by a water gun, the evidence caught on video) and no longer able to win the hundreds of dollars in prize money awarded to the winning team.

My girl’s latest obsession: looking over her shoulder anywhere we go. Oh, and the goggles wearing, of course.

Let’s see if she’s a few hundred dollars richer by the end of the year!

Have a goggle-free day yourself, dear Reader!

– KRidwyn

Categories
family anecdotes

18/52 Thoughts on parenting and creativity

It’s been a week. Hard to really get a grasp on just how much has happened in the past 7 days, however as I said to a friend just yesterday: priorities. Get these right, then everything else falls into place.

When I consider my own responsibilities, my first priority is to my three kidlets. (Hence the ‘parenting’ in the title, btw). They didn’t choose to be born, so I’ll try my darnedest to ensure they have the best life I can give them. Now absolutely, there’s times – many, many, MANY times – when we don’t see eye to eye, but again, I’m the parent and I need to shoulder what needs to be shouldered to ensure that our relationships are as good as they can be.

The way I see it, that means taking an interest. Miss19 in our roadtrip last year wanted to talk ‘The Owl House‘ for 12 hours straight? Sign me up. She convinced me to watch it and was so glad to be able to share her passion with me. And really, who could pass up a conversation about King that cute little Titan?!

Then ‘The Owl House’ finished and interest morphed into ‘Arcane‘ and – via Schnee – Studio Ghibli.

Recently, it’s become ‘Purple Hyacinth‘ with Miss16 – check out this artwork! –

 

and (of course) Fortnite with Master15.

I regret nothing. For realz. Both my daughters want to work in the Art sphere – you know, the one being taken over by AI? – but I don’t care. I’m going to support them and their choices and their decisions no matter what. Because I’m their Mum. And because this post I shared on Fb the other day is *really* how I feel:

Screenshot

Have a great week, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
Categories
family anecdotes

14/52 On social media memories

In spite of my not liking it, Miss 19 uses the BeReal app. For me, it’s the ability to potentially track someone through the app that I hate. I love my daughter, and the idea that someone could be finding her by her location – because she’s telling them! – is just plain ol’ foolish, to my way of thinking. However, she’s an adult, and if she chooses to get and use BeReal and TikTok (which she doesn’t use much, I’m glad to report) then that’s on her.

It *was* interesting though, to hear that she uses the functionality of BeReal as a form of online diary. ‘Where was I / what was I doing six weeks ago?’ Scroll back to that date and ‘bam’, there’s the answer. So that was a less-nefarious way of seeing it, I guess.

And let’s face it, who doesn’t smile when the “Your memories on Facebook” posts pop up. Here’s one of mine from the other week:

 

And reading it took me staright back to that day. Eight years ago, my middle child, determined to find the tooth which she’d just discovered was no longer ‘hanging by a thread’ in her mouth. We were at Kings Beach as a family, and it was farily heavy surf that she’d just been swimming in, with Hubby and the then Master-7.

She was so earnest! She would find it, she was sure…

Needless to say, the tooth was never found.

Have a memory-full week yourself this week, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
Categories
family anecdotes

8/52 On sadness…

Hubby and I have had dogs for many years now. Late last year, we lost our beautiful Aksel, our 14 year old German Shepherd. Like most shepherds, it was his back hips.

Last Sunday, we lost Rocky, our 14 year old Australian Cattle dog. He had cancer 🙁

Meaning we have one dog left, our kelpie puppy Kiya.

It’s been a hard week on all of us…

See you next week, dear Reader. I hope it’s a good one for you!

  • KRidwyn

 

 

Categories
family anecdotes teaching Work

3/52 Final day before the chaos

Yes, that’s right. The 2024 school year starts back tomorrow. It’s been a wonderful holiday… not the least of it due to family gaming time.

Decades ago now, Hubby was an addicted gamer, to the extent that I was a ‘computer widow’. Since I couldn’t beat him, I joined him, and once multiplayer games became a thing (yes, I did mention ‘decades’, didn’t I) we had some pretty amazing sessions, some of which bordered on the truly epic.

Fast forward to sometime in 2021, I introduced our son to Caesar II and the Age of Empires franchise. Fast forward again to the 2023 / 2024 summer holidays: we had our own Mum-Dad-two-teenagers slaughterfest on AoEIV (Anniversary Edition) where it was me getting slaughtered, Hubby barely hanging on, and our daughter (who’d only just started playing two days earlier) just narrowly being beaten by our reigning champion son. Hours and hours and hours of fun was had! And humbling experiences too, I must admit, for me, as well as Hubby…

Seeing my little computer villagers building castles got me inspired to also spend some time re-reading one of my favourite trilogies: The Heaven Tree series, written by Edith Pargeter (who also wrote as Ellis Peters, of the Bather Cadfael series). The protagonist is a master mason who dedicates his life (literally… he gets killed as soon as its done) to building of a castle on the English border with Wales. It’s a magnificent story, and the writing style is sublime 🙂

And then, to bring it all ‘into the real world’ as it were, this showed up in my Facebook feed:

What a simply stunning piece of architecture! Isn’t it inspiring that someone had the courage to design such magnificence – let alone the bravery of the people who built it (and maybe even, who lived there!)

Anyway, I just wanted to share these thoughts with you, some reflection time, just prior to heading into the chaos of this school year.

Happy first week back of school, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
Categories
Blogging challenges family anecdotes Writing

1/52 Memories, from Melbourne, with hope

And so it begins; my first blogpost of the New Year. And I’m in Melbourne, which apparently used to be called Batmania prior to being renamed back in 1837.

(And no, although it’s amusing to think of a black-winged crime fighter controlling the convicts in this area of Down Under, apparently it was named after John Batman, a leading member of the Port Philip Association and the person who negotiated a treaty with the Aboriginal elders to purchase 600,000 acres… so nothing to do with DC Comics, Inc.)

But discovering this fact the other day got me thinking about the past, and how so much of history gets forgotten, both intentionally and accidentally.

I met a lovely lady last night – my cousin’s mother-in-law. It was her 76th birthday party and our conversation had moved onto the topic of tattoos. I related the story of one of my family member’s, who’d faithfully kept a diary – until the day his girlfriend at the time found it, read it, and used it against him. Unsurprisingly, he’d decided to stop journaling, and ink his memorable events onto his skin instead. I’ve always wondered if this second method resulted in lost memories. And this saddens me.

2023 was one of those years which I’m glad has ended. And although I could blithely say “I could happily forget whole chunks of it” I know that, should I *actually* do so? Sure I’d be more free-from-pain than I am right now, but I’d also no longer be me. Our memories are what makes us who are we – and there’s lessons I learned through those painful 2023 experiences that I’m glad I won’t have to re-learn.

So here I am, starting 2024 more despondent than I can ever remember being, but intentionally trying to look for snatches of hope for a brighter year. (They *do* say when you’re down, the only way is up, right?) And hope, after all, is all we need, yes? Aren’t there a plethora of films out there whose entire premise is that hope is stronger than hate, or fear, loneliness or depression?

So that’s how I’m looking at 2024. One day at a time, one hour at a time. Trying to see the good, rather than focusing on the less-than-good of the recent past. Moving on, moving upwards. And recording it in words here on this blog, which I’m grateful to be able to do. Not everyone feels they have the luxury to record their thoughts in text, after all.

So. Here’s to a hope-full week ahead for us all, dear Reader, and I’ll see you next week 🙂
⁃ KRidwyn

PS Just cos I can: the doubledecker bus I rode from Tullarine airport to Melbourne CBD. The last time I rode on a doubledecker was in 1980 in London!

Categories
#Springinyourstep family anecdotes

Puppy!

Mum has a new friend. Her first ever dog. ‘Trav’ – the travelling dog 🙂

Isn’t he just adorable!

Have a lovable month yourself, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn