Welcome to Another Weekend Coffee Share!
Happy Birthday to my 17 year old son , and Happy International Women’s Day. I’ve just woken up to wih my son Happy Birthday, and I’m not planning on staying up for long, and my stomach feels like I’ve swallowed Draino and my back feels like it’s been run over by a truck. I could say, that’s the power of positive thinking. That that’s me looking on the bright side. Well, I am looking at the bright side because I’ll feel bettter after a bit more sleep. I might also feel better if I wasn;t trying to type with a chewed up tennis ball under my right wrist too. There’s also an expectant do parked in front of my chair, too. That’s Rosie and the other two, Zac and Lady, are parked right in front of the door. I don’t know whether they’re hoping I might actually levitate out of my chair to take them for a walk. If so, they’re dreaming.
17 years ago today, I became a mum and my husband and I became parents. I don’t think we truly understood what that meant at the time, even though we knew their were huge responsibilities and sleepless nights with our little bundle. I think beyond all of that, our fundamental feeling was profound and overwhelming joy. I’d had an elective caesarean. So, there isn’t a lot to say about that, except Geoff still hasn’t recovered from the stress of trying to juggle the video camera, SLR etc and actually seeing the baby. It was exciting times. Our hospital was also still using cloth nappies. I have no idea why because i was 2004 and they’d changed to disposables by the time our daughter arrived just under two years later just so she could always be first with the birthday, although she was the youngest and clearly number 2.
Meanwhile, I used to taken International Women’s Day a lot more seriously and have even gone into the local march and was on the organising committee. Today, I think International Women’s Day can also be able having a rest, taking it easy, and making birthday cakes.
Last week, I ended up heading down to Sydney for my first medical specialist’s appointment since covid and in just over a year. This was a big milestone in terms of feeling safe and being able to take what now amounts to an almost negligible risk, and also in extending my personal freedom.
We went out for lunch in Kirribilli afterwards, and also walked down to the harbour to fully soak in the magnificent views of the Sydney Opera House and the sheer imposing grandeur of the Sydney Harbour Bridge which truly towers over the top of you their almost stretching a protective arm around like like a father towering over a small child.
Walking back up the hill, I spotted a pair of boots sitting on a street corner.
Not only that, the boots were around the wrong way and looked plain odd, which of course told a story they wouldn’t have told if they’d been around the right way.Of course, I have no idea what they were doing there.
Whose boots they were.
That turned out to be part of their appeal, and their inspiration.
Of course, I photographed the boots, and needless to say, I wrote a post about them, which I’d like to encourage you to read: https://beyondtheflow.wordpress.com/2021/03/06/boots-under-the-bridge/
After all, they made a perfect analogy for how we respond to people who don’t quite fit the norm.
So, how are things at your end?
Before I head off, I thought I’d just update out on the vaccine roll out there. Well, to start that story off, we’ve had over 42 days without any community transmission here in NSW, which is wonderful news, and further praise for our response to the virus. Without the imminent virus threat, we’ve been able to wait to get the vaccine through the proper government approval processes, which also means vaccination is only just kicking off here. Vaccination began on the 22nd February, and they’re still just starting to vaccination health and aged care workers who are in category 1a. We fit into 1b of people with health conditions, and last night I heard that we’ll be eligible from March 22nd. That’s only a few weeks away as along as all goes to plan. I still don’t know how I’ll go with getting the vaccine via my local GP. They have nothing written up about it on their web site, but I should have faith, shouldn’t I?!! I shouldn’t panic. Freak out or desperately long to have some peace of mind?!!
Well, what do I have to worry about anyway? It appears covid isn’t here and yet, when it gets out of its box, it truly takes off and as we all know, you can’t tell you or someone else has it and it turns out this early barely detectable stage is when it’s most infectious. It doesn’t do a lot to ease my concerns. However, I’m not really complaining about taking measures to stay safe, because I’m still here and a year ago I had a chest infection, breathing difficulties and was concerned hospital would be full of covid cases and it would be too risky to go. Thankfully, that never happened here, and friends of mine who are even more vulnerable than I, are still around. I say that not to show off, but to show what is possible. We should never give up on what is possible, because sometimes, it can actually come to pass, and the worst case scenario passes us by.
Humph. I’m not sure whether I should spend so much of our coffee time talking about covid. There’s so much more going on, but at the same time, i is having a daily impact on our lives. I’ve decided no to go to a physical Church service until I’m vaccinated, because people are singing and not wearing masks. Indeed, our Church has taken a stand against it because they feel the Church is being discriminated against when restrictions aren’t so stringent in other places, especially sporting arenas. However, singing has been shown to be a super-spreader. So, their decision counts me out. Moreover, when you’re having to make decisions all the time about wearing masks, hand sanitising etc, it’s hard to ignore covid’s omnipresence in our lives, and for that longing to boot covid out once and for all to reach fever pitch.
I hope you and yours are doing well and keeping safe. What have you been up to this week?
This has been another contribution to the Weekend Coffee Share hosted by Natalie the Explorer at https://natalietheexplorer.home.blog/
Best wishes,
Rowena
Beyond the Flow 
Happy 17th Birthday to Master Jonathan! Ai yai yai…it seems yesterday that I first saw pictures of him as a little boy and now, in another 20 years or so, he will (probably) be leaving the nest. 😈 Sorry to hear you are under the weather although it looks like very nice weather to be under. You got to be careful out there! We got our 2nd Pfizer vaccination this past week along with a lot of other Ancient Ones. The rollout here if finally getting some stem going and the number of jabs is increasing exponentially.
Hi Rowena. Here, my wife and I have pretty much run the course of on-line church. They do a good job, but it feels so much like watching a video or movie. We want to go back to real church and see real people. They may have restrictions on singing which would torture my wife but we’ll see. Our county is pretty tight about staying “As Safe As Humanly Possible” but after all this time, it’s gotten old.
Hope you guys find a formula that get you back in the church building soon.
Stay safe and healthy.
Happy BD to your #1 son.
Blessings
Rowena, Happy birthday to your son! Glad to hear you’re eligible for COVID-19 vaccines from March 22. The vaccinations have started here for high priority groups such as seniors age 80 and over, front-line health care professionals, etc. I hope you feel better. Thank you for sharing your updates and beautiful photos of Sydney at #WeekendCoffeeShare.
Happy birthday to your son! Hard to believe you have a 17 year old son. And Happy International Women’s Day.
Thanks very much, Monika. Wishing you a very Happy International Women’s Day too! I’m not quite sure what it means anymore and my politics has become much more blurry with age. I also have a son and a daughter, so my allegiance is also split there.
I’m not sure whether you’ve heard about what’s been going on with Federal Politics here. However, we’ve had a Liberal party intern make a rape allegation where she was raped by a colleague in one of the minister’s offices in parliament house.
In the interview where the allegation was first aired, Brittany Higgins walked us through the details of the night it happened. She was 24 I think at the time and she’d organised office drinks at a local hotel on a Friday night. Nothing unusual about that. This colleague then buys her quite a few drinks, and she falls over and decides she needs to go home and get a taxi. This same guy says he’s going her way and offers to share a taxi, but he needs to go via Parliment House on the way home to pick something up. She doesn’t have her pass and he signs her in and she falls asleep on the minister’s couch and wakes up with him on top of her. I think he actually left her behind. I have no doubt her raped her from what she said. However, as a now 51 year old mother of teenagers, I also see that there were warning bells along them way, especially in a perfect world. I have countless drinks bought for me back in the day, and I remember my dad telling me not to share drinks, leave my drink unattended etc and this is what the advice teens at school and the advice we give our kids. Also, when a guys been buying you multiple drinks and wants to see you home, that also strikes me as suss. Getting drunk male or female has its risks. Again, it’s easy for me at a 51 year old to raise this.
Anyway, after she went public, three more instance with the same man have have come to light. Another case involving our Attorney-General, and a former student of a private girls’ school in Sydney questioned her friends sharing she had been sexually assaulted as a 13 year old. That exposed a huge can of worms. So, that’s a lot to think about around International Women’s Day.
I didn’t think about it much yesterday as I was busy baking and celebrating his birthday, but it’s been on my mind since the story broke and I’m always cautioning and trying to protect our daughter, but with only intermittent success. Our son hangs out with people from youth and they’re not drinking etc. My main concern there is young drivers. However, you can’t keep your kids in a bubble. These days, we probably want to keep everyone in a bubble, especially beyond Australia and New Zealand.
Have you been vaccinated yet? I’d say I have about a month to wait until I get my first jab.
Well, I’d better head off.
Love & best wishes,
Ro
Hi Gary,
How is the management of covid going where you are living? What sort of restrictions are you under?
I think we were in lock down for around 3 months last year, and that was very strict. We’ve been lucky here that we’ve been able to avoid going back into hard lock down. This meant that Church was able to go back physically but with the 4 square metre rule and we had a stint there where masks were required. Not everybody was sticking to the rules at our Church, and one Sunday it was particularly bad so I decided not to go back under protest. I’m not going back until I’m vaccinated now because we’re down to the 2 square metre rule and the Church has announced they’ll be singing with out masks because they feel the government is discriminating against Churches. However, covid lives in the upper respiratory tract and is most infectious in the 2 weeks before you become symptomatic. That said we’ve had no community transmission for the last six weeks. Nothing is ever as easy as it seems. I can look after myself, but harder with the rest of the family. However, teenagers tend to be social distant so unlikely to catch anything from them.
While I’m not going to the larger Church services, I do attend our small groups and I see people there. Still a risk but not so big a risk.
So I feel for you and your wife being restricted to online. Church is family and it’s really hard not to see them for so long.
BTW I had fun with the cake I made for our son’s birthday. He went on a hike with his Venturer Scout group and I made a massive chocolate cake for them with a little chocolate scout hall on top. There was smasked Violet Crumble honeycomb across the top and jelly snakes. I’ll post a photo next week.
I hope you and your wife have a great week. Or, at least manage to make the most of your compromised situation. I do a lot of research and writing which is very conducive to the covid lifestyle, but it’s tough on people who live alone or need a lot of social interaction.
Best wishes & Blessings,
Ro
Thanks so much for the birthday wishes, Tom. He has certainly grown up a lot lately and it seems like he’s suddenly become a man. Of course, intellectually I known htis hasn’t just happened overnight and I know he still has a way to go. (Indeed, there are some days and in some areas I’m extremely aware!!) However, there’s been a different demeaner and he go a haircut on Sunday and he’s looking a lot more mature.
Sadly, that might also explain the grey hairs, which are telling me I need to head back to the hairdresser. She seems to be the source of the eternal fountain of youth! (Funny how looking “mature” is much more becoming on a 17 year old youth than his 50 something year old mum!)
So good to hear you’ve been vaccinated, and the roll out is gaining momentum. I chat with a number of people who have my autoimmune disease in America and they’ve been jabbed and shown to have resistance despite being immunocompromised. So, that’s great news for me too when my time finally clocks round.
Hope things for you all are going wrell and give Max a big hug from us.
Love,
Rowena
Hi Rowena, We really are fine, just suffering a touch of cabin fever. Our church has resumed in person meetings, but our daughter, who works in health care, has been lobbying for us to stay home because we’re both older and vulnerable (sigh – I hate even this thought). So we’ve been doing the online meeting.
This last Sunday, we both pretty much decided that we’d had enough of the online service. It’s recorded to help assure quality, which is fine, but some parts are being reused from previous services, like the worship team which our son plays in. We used to love seeing him do his thing because, now that he’s married and out of our home, it’s just a chance to see what he’s up to. But they have so many recorded portions of them making music and the band members have a hard time making time to record new stuff that we now get recordings. The only new stuff is the announcements and sermon.
And, as you mention, there’s no real time spent talking to anyone other than ourselves and there are friends we miss seeing and hugging. So, next week we’re going to venture in for a real and live church service, in a tent in the parking lot, with proper open air access and distancing and masks, etc. . . . But it will be all live and real.
As for being stuck at home. We’re fortunate as we both can work from home without much impact. The worst of this is that by the afternoon, I’ve pretty much had it with the computer and just want to watch a movie or walk or wander aimlessly around the back yard or find some excuse to make a run to the store for milk or whatever. Given what some have suffered with their jobs, we are very blessed and thankful for the minimum inconvenience we suffer.
Our county is slowly loosening things up and vaccinations are rolling out. Our county is so liberal though, we will be stuck behind masks for a long time still.