I know this is mostly a great picture of my hand and camera, out reflected and out of focus, but check it out! That’s real live frogspawn right there. Wooo hoooo. That lonely little froggy down by the pond has managed to avoid being eaten by kookaburras and, better than that, he got himself a lady friend.

Hi everyone. It’s nice to be back. Sorry about the long absence. It gets like this at school holidays: lots of work for me. It’s been so long since I actually took that photo that the mouldy looking dots in the jelly stuff are actually more like little commas. In a few days I hope to get a shot of some little black squiggles cruising round the pond. So exciting. I keep thinking of you whenever we do stuff in the garden, Eryn. Last weekend we prepared some round beds for vines: pumpkins, eggplants, cucumbers and the like. And stuff has been blooming.

This one is prostanthera, also called native mint bush. It’s a beautiful bush with pretty flowers and a really intense, lovely fragrance (though I don’t know where anyone got the idea of “mint” from) and it kind of makes the air cool in summer.

This is one of the last bluebells. Daffs are all finished now but the freesias are out. Love freesias.

I’ve always loved having herbs in my garden. The pink rosemary is blooming at the moment. Although the sheep did some damage to our big rosemary bush (um, ate it all, in fact) I managed to get cuttings, to keep it all going again.

Right back at the start of this blog, I planted a mulberry tree. Here it is in spring glory, its leaves a little wilted from the wind, but looking to me very much as if it’s about to bloom. As if in its very first year in my garden I might even get some fruit from it.

Which brings me back to the real reason I do this blog. To the fruit of my own efforts. Weight loss.

Thanks for all your kind thoughts. By the time I got to see GP I was no longer having problems with that pain. Last week, though, I did have issues with my wounds breaking down. Added to this was my skin sensitivity which means I tend to get a rash if I use the kind of dressings you can just buy over the counter. I didn’t know what to do, and I had to cover them because I had to wear a white t-shirt for work, and those just don’t look good, bloodstained.

Lucky for me there is a lovely nurse at my local medical centre and she dressed the wounds for me, even found a dressing that didn’t cause me too many skin issues. They took a swab, to see if I was growing anything nasty in there. Apparently I am, because I got a call from the medical centre this evening and the results of the test have finally come in. I have to pick it up tomorrow and take it to the surgeon.

Yeah. The surgeon. Tomorrow I get my first injection into the gastric band. This means that it will beging to constrict on my stomach and I can get seriously into the business of sending some blob creatures off to the planet Adipose III (yeah, Dr Who reference there).

Soooooo excited. It’s all about to really start happening. My clothes are already a little baggy on me from the few kgs I’ve lost since the operation, but now I’m going to begin my own metamorphosis.

The tadpoles are there to inspire me.

Ah, here I am again, having escaped the rigours of selling cinema tickets to people and sneaking a quite Sunday morning before the family gets up to do a quick catchup and visit everyone’s blogs.

Er, no, I haven’t been to see a doctor yet. I did make an appointment, but the pain has almost gone now. Beloved did remind me that I have, basically, been stabbed in the stomach (in the nicest possible way) and that there of course is damage and the pain was really like, well, you know how it feels when you exercise real hard and it’s a muscle group that haven’t been pushed for a while? The next day you’re going up some stairs or using your arms or whatever and it hurts so bad? Well it was like that times about a hundred. Anyway, it’s pretty much gone now, so I went to work on Thursday instead of the doctor. Wish I hadn’t. I was sick as a dog with this rotten cold, lost it totally and yelled at a customer and got a file note for sloppy cash handling. Ah, the fun never stops.

Still, the great thing about my job is the [mostly] nice people you meet. On Friday night I once again met my inspiration, a customer who has had gastric banding. Again he gave me his credit card with no signature on the back, but photo ID and signature on the front and once again he commented that he didn’t look very much like his much fatter picture any more. He’s proud of his achievement. I high-fived him and told him how he’d inspired me. He has lost 37kg (that’s 81lbs) in 2 years. Said it was slow but obviously so happy with the results. It’s great to get reminders like that.

In the good news, Beloved and I have been back in the garden and it’s so fun, planning out all our veggies and things. No sign of germination yet from the seeds I planted last week, and I’m a bit worried about them. You see, it’s been so windy, they kept drying out. I’ve put them in an old aquarium to protect them from the wind and I hope that will help them.

Yesterday we planted some seed potatoes and some chillies. I love having salsa with chillies. Still no sign of tadpoles in the pond but the frog is there, I hear him at night, so hoping he will have some luck with the girls soon.

As I said earlier, the whole family is home at the moment. It’s so wonderful. Radio Boy arrived on Friday night. As usual, I got myself in a state. Especially when I heard the sirens go off very late. We live in a fairly rural area and we have CFA (Country Fire Authority) which is a group of well trained local volunteers who do firefighting and other work around the place. Thing is, if a branch blows over the road and stops traffic, the sirens go off and the folks go down to cut and move the branch. If there’s a car smash, the sirens go off. So there I was, channeling School Buddy’s grandma, (who lived with her family) who was always in a panic if she heard an ambulance and the gandkids weren’t right there ith her. I turned to Beloved and asked him when he thought Radio Boy would be home and he said ‘Oh, anytime now’ and I almost worked up a sweat until I heard the front door and Radio Boy’s clompy boots.

Had such a fun day yesterday. GF got her nose pierced, but then bumped the stud and it came out. Radio Boy asked me to help. H’m. First time I’ve ever had my fingers up someone else’s nose. I’ve never even been that intimate with Beloved! (And I hope I never do!) Unfortunately, the little hole was swollen shut and we couldn’t get that rotten stud to go back where it belonged, so GF has decided she’ll have to go back today and have another try.

Oh, the pain!

Poss and BF got home last night after I was in bed, but I just lay there feeling good, knowing that my family was all here, safe under my roof.

Haven’t done any photos this week. Maybe today when Beloved and I go for a walk. Anyway, here’s a flower

I don’t even know what this is called. It’s a hardy little bulb that comes up all over the place in springtime and I love seeing those little blue faces.

And here is Illya (again)

with an apology for that big angry “don’t link to US” notice in my last blog.

Now I’m coming to visit you.

School holidays are on the way with some private (aka “public schools” here in Victoria, just to confuse people) schools already out. I just don’t get that. People pay all this money and their kids spend LESS time learning stuff. Ripped off.

Anyway, that’s my excuse. One of them. The other being fear. You see, last Thursday, all going good, blah blah blah and I go to bed and as I lie down: PAIN Imagine being stabbed with a red hot knife. Right where the gastric band is. Oh gods. I tossed and turned in bed and every time I moved that pain came back. It was terrible. But when I got up, it went away. So I forgot about it. Sort of. Friday night: same thing. I was up at midnight, surfing the net for “gastric band pain” to see what other people had experienced and I found one. And she didn’t know what it was, either. Nobody seemd to think it was the band moving, though.

I was so scared. Mostly that I’d broken it. I kept going over all my stuff ups and no, I haven’t been particularly good with the diet. I mean, sheesh. If I could do diets I wouldn’t bloody have needed surgery, would I? Yes, your honour, I DID eat a steak on Thursday for my dinner. It was tender as and I cut it into eensy little pieces and chewed each piece fifty thousand times.

Saturday, tried to cheer up. It was a perfect day. Spring was here and Beloved and I planted some tomatoes.

The wire on the ground is chook-proofing. Stops them rearranging the mulch to their liking. If you look very closely to the left of where Beloved is digging, you can see a chook, Sir Boris (a hen, despite the name) is already helping.

We have a few different kinds of tomatoes, Mighty Red, which is just big ones, some Romas, some of those little cherry type tomatoes, one plant of yellow ones and one Heirloom variety: Black Russian

Here’s my Black Russian. He already has flower buds, the enthusiastic thing. I have dubbed him Illya Kuryakin

Because David McCallum is forever my pinup boy. Long ago Beloved accepted the fact that I fell in love with Illya at the age of 12 and there’s nothing he can do about it. He doesn’t mind. He even records NCIS for me. What a guy!

Beloved is digging mounds. Here he is with Boris:

Boris is feeling a bit lonely at the moment. Her “sister”, Sir Morris, has vanished. The world is full of predators and hens are very tasty. Beloved is digging mounds for the seeds that I’ve planted and am hoping will actually germinate.

I did cucumbers, cantaloupes, watermelons, capsicums and eggplant. Yummm! I hope they grow for us. I’ve never had much luck with seeds, mainly because I’m afraid of wasting water, but with Radio Boy now living away from here and Poss only here part of the time, well, water isn’t so scarce. Anyway, it was a good feeling, gettting those tomatoes into the ground and befuddling the chooks so they can’t dig them up and planning for more seeds.

Saturday night: more pain and by Sunday I was feeling downright miserable. As though I’d managed to yes! Sabotage myself so that I, alone of all the hundreds and probably thousands of people around the world who have received gastric banding surgery would be the single one stupid enough to break it and not be able to lose weight.

It was another warm day and we went for a walk in the forest. The treeferns were all unfurling for the spring

and we saw a cute little swamp wallaby, like the ones that live on our road. He was nibbling grass just near the path, but the photos I took of him were crappy, so haven’t included them here.

We walked to a nice little restaurant called Cook’s Corner. It’s super yummy there and I felt relaxed and good and we had lunch and then walked back. I took lots of photos and so did Beloved. He’s having some fun with his camera. I even took photos of forget me nots

because even though they’re a noxious weed here, they’re still pretty.

Well, yesterday I rang the people who did the op and the nurse really didn’t have a clue and all she could do was quiz me on whether I’d been sticking to the diet. But the pain didn’t seem to be any different if I’d eaten or not, gone with food or liquid. She booked me in for an appointment with the doctor on Thursday, but I don’t want to go on Thursday. I’m supposed to work. I want to get my WALL*E t-shirt and save up money for my writing workshop.

Last night when I went to bed, the pain was still there. But not so bad. Kind of like a pulled muscle x 1000. So maybe that’s all it is. I’ll see how I go tonight and hopefully be able to cancel my appointment with the doctor.

Anyway, not working tomorrow, so I can catch up with everyone and see how you’re all going (well, I hope). Right now I have to go and visit Editor and her cute new baby. He’s a whole week old and I haven’t seen him yet! Ah, at least I’m not going to breathe any germs on him and that’s gotta be a good one.

be well, everyone