Where have the last 6 months gone

I can't believe where the last 6 months have gone. Here is my 2009 Christmas letter. The blurry photo of my dog Bridge is a reflection of how I view the last 6 months.

Merry Christmas 2009

Life is relatively simple here in paradise. I wake before dawn to the cacophonous bird life that inhabits this coastal area and a dog which won’t be deterred by my need for more sleep. She thinks the birds are up and so I should be. This happens at about 4 am every morning. It’s not hard to get used to an early start to the day because it’s at its coolest then. Mooloolaba used to be a quiet sleepy seaside town but now the tourist trade is in full swing and because of the beautiful weather all year round (mostly) it’s always holiday time, busy and noisy.

As I sit here thinking about the year about to end I can hear the waves crashing on the shore and it’s only at this time early in the morning that I can hear the waves because traffic noises soon drown out this glorious mood setter.

Late January Dad went into hospital with a possible bladder infection but it turned out to be a blockage in his urethra. Then he developed blood clots and a skin tear inflicted by a careless nurse which required surgery. He would have been better off to have stayed at home. Nearly 6 weeks later he finally came home. Before we knew it was March and Dad’s 90^th birthday. I fixed him some of his favourite food and a banana cake. We have only recently taken down his birthday cards to make room for Christmas ones. We thought that at 90 and surviving hospital he deserved to have them displayed for nearly the entire year. When Dad came home we had weekly visits by nurses, personal care assistants, speech pathologists and dieticians to help attend to Dad’s needs which took the pressure of Mom and me. Dad also came home with a supra pubic catheter which required me to learn how to take care of it. Dad comes up with some pretty interesting euphemisms for his indwelling device, if I can call them that. When it bothers him it is a telephone pole or fire hose or some other equally descriptive word. He also refers to his bladder as the duck pond as in, “My duck pond gave me trouble last night or my duck pond is not draining.” Dad’s Frost sense of humour always shines through although this year it has taken a bit of a battering. He’s doing okay now despite the memory developing a bit of rust, constant duck pond algae build up and a waxing/waning appetite.

Mom has weathered this last year with her usual sense of humour and positive perspective. She’s only had one trip to the emergency department of our local hospital this year and came home the same day. She sees these hiccups in her health as opportunities to sell her book; she is forever the entertainer and perennial people collector. She is writing her 4^th or 5^th book now and that is what drives her to

keep going but she gets waylaid by mountains of emails. She insists on sorting through them meticulously so she doesn’t miss a personal message and then grumbles that these forwarded emails have taken up all her writing time despite enjoying most of them.

May, I had a holiday. I went to Melbourne to hear my son Ty sing in the Gay and Lesbian Choir and thoroughly enjoyed it. He also had a solo which made me tear up with pride. I caught up with friends and also met Ty’s flat mates. I was only away a week and while I was gone Mom and Dad had a respite worker call in each day for two hours.

June, July and August were fairly unremarkable except for the constant trips back and forward to emergency with Dad and his blocked fire hose and backed up duck pond.

September was the highlight of the year with Jeri and Diane’s visit but boy they didn’t know what they were in for when they arrived. A visit to the emergency ward the day after they arrived with Mom, who was having mini blackouts, was the start. The next day it was a duck pond emergency with it filling up to overflowing with nowhere to go. The weekend was quiet and we caught up with Jeri and Diane. Monday was a different kettle of fish which began with me dropping the sisters off at the shopping centre and me taking Mom and Dad to the doctor to check on their recent health issues when I was taken by surprise by a visit from a kidney stone right there in the doctor’s office. I knew then it had come time for my trip to emergency but I couldn’t drive. We went to the shopping centre and for a very painful hour I searched the shops for my dear shopaholic sisters. Found them, threw Jeri the keys to the car and said drive. By this time writhing doesn’t come close to describing the level of pain. Mom, Dad, Diane and a slightly pale Jeri (driving on the left hand side of the road shouldn’t be thrust upon someone suddenly especially when they don’t know where they were going either) left me to writhe in solitude until the morphine kicked in. I spent the night in hospital while Jeri and Diane were left to cope with the routine at home. I came home but the stone and pain came with me so it was back to hospital for another two days and stent placed in the ureter to stop the pain. The difference between renal colic and labour pain is that one is forgotten and the other haunts you forever with nothing to show for your extreme discomfort.

In comparison Oct was mundane, thank goodness. In November I took two weeks holiday down in Victoria. I started with a visit with Ty and we both went to see the Psychic John Edward who was visiting from the States which very entertaining and poignant for so many. I then took a train to Hamilton and spent the rest of my holiday visiting friends which I love doing. Mom and Dad were in care because they can no longer cope with being alone. Mom was her usual entertaining self, sold lots of books and Dad spent his time wondering where she was and looking for her.

Other highlights of the year were weekly seminars in Resilience for Carers and monthly seminars from a Life Coach. Trust me I need all the help I can get. Mom’s uncanny knack of ‘what she hears is not what I said’ always has me in fits. While driving one day she asked me a question about these seminars I go to and in the middle of it she says, “So most of the participants are from South America”. It is really hard to comprehend how she starts at point A only to arrive somewhere Over the Rainbow. There doesn’t seem to be a logical transition to the next point in our conversations. I answer, “WHAT? No they are all Australian.”

“But you said they were Brazilians”.

Through tears of complete hysterics while driving I managed to say, “NO Mom, the name of the seminars is Resilience.”

I really thought a trip to the audiologist would sort this problem out but apparently there is no problem with her hearing and Mom’s conclusion is I need elocution lessons.

Suddenly December is here and Christmas is only 4 days away. Where did the year go? I am so glad I can look back on the year and smile.

Launching "The Boomerang Returns"

My Mum who wrote "Pavlovas to Popcorn" has just released her sequel, "The Boomerang Returns" on her own blog so anyone can read it. All her writing is based on her life story. She is, in my opinion a phenomenal story teller. She writes the way she talks. If you get a chance go to http://atouchoffrost-frosty.blogspot.com/ and enjoy her story. The Boomerang is a reference to her Aussie heritage and her return visit after living in the US for 14 years.

More news from Nepal

The first Australian clay has arrived and Wendy feels this is an auspicious moment! Posting anything to Nepal and actually have it arrive is apparently a hit and miss adventure. I sent some Kato polymer clay via a A4 envelope conditioned flat so it actually looked like reading material. How boring is that but it worked. Many thanks to the person who came up with the idea on the Aussie Poly Clayers forum. I just took the idea and ran with it.
Soon these beautiful Nepali women will have a website produced by the amazing polymer clay artist Cynthia Tinapple. http://tinapple.com/cynthia/ It should be launched on 20th July which I’m looking forward to very much.

Wendy tells me in her email:
"I am just back from four days training where the ladies learnt to make the "Sari beads" which I'd first toyed around with as an idea for them in 2007. THEY LOVED THEM. They loved the name, they loved the multi-coloured stranded wedding beads with them, and they thought they would sell like hotcakes locally.

We chose four colours from a sari we liked and made "hair" and "ribbons" (with the extruders that Jen Tattam from Makin' Clay donated) and decorated the beads. What 5 women achieved, working on a coffee table sized table sitting on tiny stools in a very small cluttered room, was remarkable. They ADORED the necklaces they made from them. The sense of excitement in that tiny room was palpable. They all wore their own creations home and EACH WOMAN had at least one positive comment about what they wore, whether from a home member (if home was a nice place), or someone in the market, or both. One lady, took an order for an earring, necklace and bracelet set that another lady wanted to pay for and take to take to hill town (the next day!!) to get more orders for us and another, see photo, had gone home and come up with a design for a bead she knew would sell like hotcakes in the bazaar in the next Nepali month, Shrawan, when all women wear green and orange saris and necklaces to celebrate the lushness, fertility and dense greenness of the monsoon."

Photos from Nepal

Making the first Bahini Beads

People Making a Difference

I love making things with polymer clay, it is my way to relax and be creative at the same time but recently I was led to this letter (below) at the Aussie Polymer Clayers site and was moved by the plight of women in Nepal and also by the lovely and very colourful lady, Wendy, who is trying to make a difference in the lives of these women. She has introduced them to the art of polymer clay amongst other things and on her yearly trip home to Australia she fills her suitcase with supplies to take back.

Polymer Clay, Picnics and Perseverance!

Jhapa, in eastern Nepal, has a bad reputation. It is “known” for mosquitoes, malaria, heat and drug and human trafficking. There is widespread poverty and, for women particularly, life can be dreadful. But, Jhapa is also the home of some amazing people. People who would say they are very “ordinary” but who are anything but. A group of young Nepali friends were concerned about the lives of local women who were subjected to violence-usually domestic violence but sometimes related to trafficking. Women are “tricked” into marriages and then sold into the tragically huge sex industry in India. Some are “rescued” or escape but they are often not welcomed back by their families and have to try and make life for themselves (and children) as best they can. The friends knew that hand-outs were only a short term solution for these very vulnerable women so they got together to create “Sammunat”. Their goal was to work WITH the ladies to develop sources of income generation so that these ladies could gain independence, dignity and hope. It has been inspiring to have been involved with the board members and the courageous and resilient women of Sammunat. Together we have been working on jewellery designs using pote (pronounced poh-teh like…um…no English word I can think of!), which are Nepal’s traditional wedding beads-made in Czechoslovakia! Jewellery is an integral part of the Nepali culture and one of the reasons I love living here is that it is a country where too much jewellery is not enough. If I head down to the market without earrings, necklaces, bracelets (not to mention face ornamentation if you so choose) I may as well go naked. We’ve long wanted to incorporate traditional designs into polymer clay to make our own beads but have been hindered by a number of factors. Firstly, the organisation runs on the smell of an oily rag. We can only buy materials as we sell items and this has been very small scale to date. Even if we had rupees, polymer clay has proven VERY hard to get here. Tracking it down in India (to avoid hefty postage costs and the dodgy postal system) has been unsuccessful to date. Thirdly, ovens are as rare as hen’s teeth in Jhapa! Cooking is done on open fires or in clay ovens and I haven’t been able to get hold of the “Hardening Polymer Clay in clay ovens with inconsistent temperature control” DVD for love nor money. Despite this, the ladies were desperate to “play with clay” and make a “Fruit Salad” necklace they’d seen me wear. I said this would be “just for fun” which was a hard concept for these ladies to get. Heavy domestic work for little Nepali girls starts by 9 and they marry young. We made citrus canes and leaf canes. Because we only had one pasta machine between 10 of us, I’d made most of the Skinner blends in advance then demonstrated one and we did one together. You soften Kato clay with a pasta machine so that was done in advance. Nepal has ‘load shedding’ which sounds a bit like “We have so much electricity we have to shed it” but is in fact the opposite. Most people have two four-hour blocks of electricity and often one of those starts at midnight! Cooking has to be timed with power. Bring on that clay oven DVD. We incorporated the bead assembly with a long planned picnic. It was the hottest experience I have EVER had (can you have 100% humidity?) and thank goodness Kato clay copes with the heat. Now the ladies are full of ideas about using polymer clay. They want to make hand-made beads, using Nepali designs, which they can combine with existing beads in new and exciting ways. We don’t have a website yet (something else in the “one day” category) but I’d love to answer any questions. Until we make the polymer clay jewellery that changes the world – well, their world - the ladies will make aprons that turn you into a sensational cook, pote fringed scarves that take ten kilos off and make you look ten years younger and silver and bead jewellery that will make your heart sing. Would I lie to you? Maybe, as well as the mixture of things Jhapa is known for, it will now be known as the birthplace of the Nepal Polymer Clay Guild.


Wendy Moore Dharan, NEPAL

Photos of some of these women can be seen at Mel's site http://clayhappenings.blogspot.com/

First of my Toner Transfer pins

I downloaded the Donna Kato tutorial on Toner Transfer Pins and at last I have a method of transfering photos to polymer clay which actually works. I am thrilled, now I just have to keep practicing my technique. Donna Kato is an amazing artist. I made this pin to go on my wrap which I recently bought to take to cold old Melbourne next week. Ty is singing in the Melbourne Gay and Lesbian Chorus. http://www.mglc.org.au/ I've never seen him or heard him sing in a big concert so I wanted to make the trip to Melbourne to hear the Chorus. They are doing a Beatles concert.
Well I think I'll go to my work/play room and do some more pins or pendants.

More......

These are not the best photos in the world but I just needed to get them up on my blog because I am excited that I'm creating again. All of them are pendants.