Upside Down Chronicles 2: Wednesday 13th April 2011

Day Three of the Easter holidays and I have to say, I've felt perkier.

It all starts so damn EARLY these days. Always. By 5:50 this morning the whole household was up and about. Now, I would sometimes wake up early and do a spot of writing before the others got going, which is quite a different thing. Still managed a very short story today before I went down to deal with Stuff but still, it all boils down to being scrubbed, brushed, fed and sandwiched before 8am and whichever way you look at it, that's just too early. The day seems awfully long from that perspective. No wonder I fall asleep dribbling at 9pm. Well that's my excuse.

Today was Jenna day. We'd invited her over for a nice long playdate, and they did have a good time. Somehow it turned out rather high-maintainance, though. Entirely my own fault, I chose too many messy fiddly things. Kind of started out with asking someone over for the day without really having anything in the fridge or larder. Well you see we WERE booked on a 'bush food' tour with an aboriginal guide, but it was cancelled due to insufficient numbers and I asked her over at the last minute. So in the morning I popped in some pizza dough for them to make pizzas for their lunch, and also got ready some gingerbread for cutting out and baking. Lots of washing up, prepping, tying on of aprons, washing hands, sweeping up the floor afterwards, communal icing afterwards. Which they did enjoy but my plan of sitting back and writing something (or at the very least doing the ironing) went utterly to pot. I'm now exhausted and not a stroke written since 6:45 am. Just to cap things off we also went out to the park to get their Ya yas out... which they did. Along with mine. Sunny, hot and high-input.

Making their own pizzas, and then (rather more dishevelled after a damn good run at the Oval) icing the gingerbread men (squelch, splot).

Meanwhile... we're shortly expecting the Mr back from work... from the LAST HARD DAY! Actually it's getting a bit late so I suspect he's prepping for something tomorrow or on Friday but still, after this, one last lecture early next week and that's it. Will certainly be good not to have to do five hours straight lecturing.

I haven't told you about the last couple of days, have I. Well, yesterday I took Lara on an excursion called “Fantastic Fossil Forest!” - and it was. We'd actually been there the day before because of a cock-up with the dates (mis-print on their brochure), but on Tuesday we turned up and it was much more promising, with lots of people and cars about instead of a deserted track. The guide was lovely and told us all sorts of interesting things about the volcanic ash that covered the blown-over trees 260 million years ago when the area was covered in sub-arctic swamps. I've got plenty of pics so I'll post them shortly.

I have to say, the Non is absolutely gun-ho on all this stuff. She stuck to the guide like a limpet, and asked questions, listened, and generally took 'keeping up with the guys' and being attentive vastly seriously.

Dudley Beach, with the group walking towards the fossilised forest

Non by a 'blow hole'

Sticking to the guide ('Daniel') like a limpet in a pink hood, and a fossilised trunk. Turns out they were all blow over by a volcanic erruption at Stockton 260 million years ago and got covered in ash. Result: impressive.

More fossilised wood. Strictly speaking the wood has rotted away, it's been replaced with the minerals from the ash etc.

Still limpeting... and peekaboo from under a stone log (with Disco Bear, who of course came along).

Now, as I mentioned earlier, we'd also come there on Monday, with Indiah. It was a bit of a downer to find no-one there but we trotted down to the beach anyway, and they had a great time pootling about in the rockpools.

Gnomes and a cormorant