All By Myself

Tonight I am by myself.  Well, now I am.  Levi is on his first real sleepover at Ty's house and so I can go to bed and sleep in until I actually wake up by myself.  It means that I might actually get to sleep past the crack of dawn.  I am so excited I can barely sleep!  Just Kidding!

It will be interesting if he happily stays there all night.  I am hoping that he will.  It is a right of passage that will be fun to remember.

I am off to bed!

Surviving the storm

Well, Yasi hit last night.  I think all of Queensland stayed up to watch and hope.  The big towns of Far North Queensland but there are certainly little towns that copped it.  Mission Beach, that perfect, beautiful, dreamy little town has been hammered.  Carwell, hammered.  Tully is looking at major destruction of at least 1/3, likely 1/2 of all the structures in town.  We stay warm and dry and muggy.  The statistic that blew my mind was the one where they said Yasi generated enough power in a day to power the entire world for a year!

It is inevitable that comparisons will be drawn between Katrina and Yasi.  I think that as storms themselves they were fairly comparable but the most obvious difference is the difference in the loss of life.  Katrina lost 1800+ lives and Yasi is actually up a few lives.  Three babies were born.  two in Innisfail and one in an evacuation shelter in Cairns.  The parents are all resisting the obvious and are not naming their babies 'Yasi', although I think I would have.  The biggest difference that I see is the evacuation procedures.  New Orleans just wasn't evacuated in time!  That and it's a bigger city, but I think that there would be some loss of life here if towns like Carwell and Mission Beach weren't almost totally deserted by the time the cyclone hit.  Cairns had completely airlifted the entire Cairns Base Hospital, leaving only ER staff. 

I was wavering in regards to Anna Bligh, but she has redeemed herself.  She was brilliant in the last few days.  She got less sleep than all of us.  She spoke directly to us all and never had to read off notes.  She deferred to people who knew more when she needed to.  There is a fleet of helicopters out of harms way but still waiting to help.

I am proud of how this was handled.  I am sorry that the destruction was so severe.  I am sorry bananas will cost $20 a kilo for about 3 years.  I am amazed that Queensland got out of this without losing a life.....yet. 

But most of all, I am amazed that they didn't call that little girl Yasi

Heat and Cyclones

It is incredibly hot here at the moment and because of the standing water around it is also much more humid than it is normally.  On top of that we are all bracing for another weather onslaught, none more than Cairns.  Cyclones are funny things, just yesterday they were predicting Townsville and now Cairns has been evacuated.  They flew out all the patients from Cairns Base Hospital this afternoon and by tomorrow, Cairns will be battened down and will be a ghost town.  I hope that they all come through OK.  I hope that the families up there can keep dry!

Here is the prediction map.  Unfortunately it is huge and they are predicting up to 1.5 metres of rain.  Some of that will be felt in places that have not dried out from the last dumping.  Again, I hope that they are prepared, and that they get out of it with a few ripped up trees.  However, I fear that at Category 4, that will not be the case.  Good luck my friends, I will be thinking of you at 1am Thursday morning!

A day in paradise

 Today was one of those beautiful days that reminds me of why I really am in Australia.  It was one of the rare days that Levi actually slept in for starters and I think that actually having enough sleep is a start.  We missed his swimming lesson at 7.30am because I refuse to wake a sleeping child, really .... ever.  We skipped swimming but then went to the skatepark.  I think every child on the Northside got a scooter for Christmas.  There were a lot of kids there but they were all quite young, so Luke, Nate and Levi did OK, but we didn't last as long as normal, just because there were a few too many others scooters competing for space.  Our kids are all really tired and so it wasn't a big stretch for them to be done early. 

 Next we went to Luke and Nate's house for a play and a swim.  All of them are now competent enough that they don't have to have someone in the water all the time.  We can sit and chat from the side and occasionally saying "Don't jump on the boogie board like that!" or "Be careful".  Then the kids got on the motorbikes.  It was Levi's first lesson, so there was lots of 'Safety stops' and other first lesson type things.  His head was too big for the helmet that came with the adult dirt bike that Pete recently bought.  No one was overly surprised.  Luke has a huge head as well so they are good company.  It seems I'll be up for a helmet soon because he quite likes the motor bike.  Pete is a great teacher too.  Think 'safety' before 'funniest home videos'.  It works for me.  The best thing is Cheryl and I sit back and play on the bikes or drink coffee. 

 Tonight Levi went to bed on time.  Now that doesn't sound like much, but it is a big thing as for the last few weeks his sleep has been; well, disrupted is too mild a term for it.  The poor kid has switched too many time zones and had too many late nights, it is just a relief to get him in bed at a reasonable time, clean and with hair and teeth washed.  It is little wonder that he has been so tired.  It is little wonder that I have been tired.  In case anyone wanted to know, No I still haven't unpacked fully from either Townsville or USA, but at least I have made a start.

Today the one part of Queensland not flooded in the last month, has a cyclone bearing down on it with another following hot on it's heels.  I am thinking of my families in Townsville.  They have a hard week coming up.  I hope that they stay above water, a luxury that most of the rest of Australia has missed.



Camping

Friday night we went camping.  Camping in the easiest possible way.  We went camping by the creek near the house.  It is perfect because if you forget something you can get it in seconds.  Plus if the kids need a toilet you can drive them up the driveway and know they are OK.  Levi had his mate Ty over and Pam, my friend from work helped me.  We camped on very soft ground that only a few days ago was a fluidized bed and a few days before that was under water by several metres.  It is safe enough there and we had already tested to see if the boys could climb up the hill in an emergency.  It was very dirty though and you can see by Levi's sweaty, muddy face that mud got everywhere. 

The boys ran around like mad things getting firewood and rocks to make a fire pit.  We grilled sausages and roasted marshmallows on sticks.  Then we tried to put them to bed.  They played and giggled for about an hour before they finally collapsed into slumber. 

The next morning they woke at the crack of '.  Actually it wasn't that bad.  It was about 6am.  There was no leisurely waking though; as soon as their eyes opened they were up and out of the tent to collect wood and climb hills and trees again!

Since I have been home, the flood waters have gradually receded and left the city scoured clean in areas and covered in mud in others.  It is awe inspiring to see the power of the water itself.  Huge swathes of cliff face have been sheared from the side of the roads, and there are gaping holes in roads and bridges, many of which are still closed.  There was just so much water.  There still is.  Our creek looks different now.  The course has changed a little and where there were two channels with a little island of rocks and trees in the centre, there is now a single watercourse, deeper than before, with rocks clean of any algae.  It is impressive that so much can change so quickly.  There are many people in Brisbane who will take weather reports more seriously now.

Confessions of an overtired mother

Yep, still tired.  I can't wait until the weekend and we can catch up a little.  It will be a fairly busy weekend but I think there should be some vague chance that both Levi and I can catch up a little on sleep.  Here are the things that I need to confess for the day:

1.  I still haven't unpacked fully from the Townsville trip

2.  Or even the US trip

3.  I still haven't taken the 'First Day of School Photo' and at this rate it will likely get taken around about June!

4.  Should be unpacking or cleaning rather than writing on this blog.

Tomorrow I have to go to a funeral and it always makes me a little morose.  I will go into work for the morning and the funeral and then take off and do the shopping that I need to do before coming home and getting organized for the big sleepover.  Ty is sleeping over for the first time and to say that the excitement level is high is a gross understatement!

Today I got my eyebrows waxed.  I know it is a very strange thing for me to subject myself to but it was an emergency.  The beauty school upstairs at work needed some crash test dummies and we were available.  

Tired, really Tired!

Pretty much, this is what Levi has been doing a lot of in the last week.  He has been lucky.  I wish I had that kind of luxury.  It has been exhausting to go from holiday to 48 hours of travel, and then 9 days straight of work.  I have not been able to shake this cold and I am sure it is just due to fatigue, and travel and jet lag. 

Now I am sitting here with a day off tomorrow, watching something mind numbing on TV.  In the first few weeks back you have to stay up at night or you wake punishingly early in the morning.  Trust me it is a struggle every night at the moment.  At least I can sleep long and hard tonight!