Sometimes I read a post written by my daughter and it breaks my heart because the pain in her words is the only clue that I have to the pain in her heart.

Other times I will read a post written by Veronica and I know that it was written purely to get the words out of her head, to give a tiny glimpse into how difficult parts of her life are.

Amy is an exceedingly difficult and tempestuous child to parent. She stretches and challenges every single one of Veronica’s parenting skills every single moment of every day.

It is very nearly impossible to get Amy to do something that she doesn’t want to. It isn’t because she is naughty or because she has pulled the wool over her mothers eyes.It certainly isn’t because Veronica is lacking some vital parenting skill. It is because Amy is so focused on doing what she wants to do in that moment, that nothing else registers. Some of the parenting advice that Veronica receives makes me shake my head and roll my eyes with frustration.

I have impeccable parenting skills. My ability to get small and not so small children to behave is legendary. I am also very good with dogs and horses. But with my grand daughter Amy I am at a loss. So I don’t bother with traditional discipline at all. We skirt issues and avoid situations and I use distraction as my main tool.

We do the same things every single time Amy comes to visit. We check for eggs, then together we cook Amy an egg.  We paint a picture or two, play with some clay, watch a bit of telly together or read some books and then we go outside and throw the ball for the dog.

When Amy was still eating gluten we would do all these things at a frenetic pace and at the end of her visit the house would be trashed and I would be exhausted. Minus the gluten we are still very busy together and Amy isn’t quite so exhausting.

Veronica and I have been talking about Aspergers and Amy, we have been talking about how there is a very real possibility that Amy has Aspergers. Now that the A word is out in the open I can look at Amy’s behaviour with fresh eyes. Veronica and I are noticing more and more things that Amy does and more importantly we are noticing things that Amy doesn’t do.

So the next time you see a small child running amok in the supermarket or having a tantrum in the middle of a shopping centre don’t be so quick to judge, to shake your head, to glare at the obviously incompetent parent. And as for the whispered advice that all the child needs is a bit of discipline, a good smack will fix her.You can keep that under your hat as well.

I have struck up a tentative friendship with Dad who writes and you can read his updates of the walk here

Dad who writes, posted this photo with the caption,

“We are walking across the strong, rocky bones of our land #hadrianswalk”

This photo really brings home the enormity of what these people are doing.

They are walking 84 miles in 6 days.

I walked a couple miles around a perfectly flat headland recently and it nearly bloody killed me.

So I am in awe of their efforts to raise money for the Joseph Salmon trust with this massive walk.

Well done to them.

If you want to donate some cash you can do so here.

But if you are broke and cant afford it just go and comment here and I will donate a dollar for you.

Ivy spends an incredible amount of time in hospital and because she is only little this means that her mother, Tiff also spends a lot of time staying in the hospital as well. Tiff wanted to raise some money to make things a bit more comfortable on the ward where they stay.

Together we have raised over $5000 that is a massive effort. So give yourselves a clap on the back.

Ivy’s elder siblings organised a fundraiser at their highschool and as Tiff says here:-

The response was amazing, many of them dressing as fairies and princesses (Ivy’s favourite things) on what turned out to be the coldest day of the year so far.

It was a wonderful day and rather than trying to explain to you how one school came together to raise well over $2000 for Team Ivy and what that means to me, I’m just going to show you

I want you to dig deep and donate to the Hadrian’s walkers who, next week are, walking across England to raise money for the Joseph Salmon trust.

In July of 2010 they will be walking the length of Hadrian’s Wall in six days. That’s 84 miles across the entire width of England.

Joseph Salmon was a little boy who died of pneumonia when he was three. A year after his death his parents set up the Joseph Salmon trust to give financial support to parents in the Huddersfield and Mirfield areas, whose child has died.

Now what has this got to do with you? What has this got to do with me a zillion miles away from England?

My friend Martin is walking across England to raise money for the trust.

Martin is probably going to die from blisters or his feet will fall off or he will whinge and moan so much that his fellow walkers will chuck him off a cliff.

Or in Martin’s own words

I’m five and a half feet tall, if I walk 84 miles there is a good chance I will lose 15% of my pathetic height, my stubby legs will be worn and eroded to just above the ankles. My last miles will be mapped out with a bloody wet trail of oozing slime. Like a snail. Or a 55 year old midget prostitute.

And I will pay good money to see that happen. *muawahaha*

You can donate here.

You can read more about the walk here

If you cant donate don’t feel guilty! You can still help, you could put a quick post up on your own blog, or on your facebook page. You can buy a t-shirt or a buff bandana

Or you can comment and for every comment on this post until the end of the walk I will donate one dollar to the trust myself. But please only one comment per person and all comments must have a valid email address.

cheers Kim

Luckily for me and for you as well, I have a very clever and supremely patient daughter who talked me through the aperture and shutter speed settings on the camera. I was pressing buttons and twirling knobs and nothing was changing when voila I magically found the right combination of sideclick,press and twirl and the aperture and shutter speed revealed themselves to me.

So without further ado and a great big round of applause to Veronica, she of the sleepless nights and cloudy skies, here are my photos of the lunar eclipse over Tasmania.

and for those of you who this technical stuff means anything  I used a Nikon D90, freehand with a 200mm lens, aperture of 8 and shutter speed of 800.

The full moon just before the eclipse.

The beginnings of the eclipse.

It is all happening by now and my nose was very very cold, luckily for me I could keep on racing back inside to thaw out.

This last shot was the moon just before sunrise at about 6.30 am on a frosty Sunday morning.

It is now ten am and I have been fiddling with photos and daydreaming away on the computer for well over two hours. No wonder time just slips away from me. I wont mess about with any more words this morning as they have become unnecessary, the title of this post really says it all.

Our class has been watching this video as well as the news every day.  We are sad that the birds are covered with oil and they are stuck on the beach.  What can we do to help?  PLEASE WRITE US BACK…LOVE, ROOM 110

I don’t know what you can actually physically do to help room 110, as I am Australian and thousands of miles away from this disaster. I am sure there are plenty of practical things you can do that don’t involve picking up oily and distressed sea creatures though.

You could choose a wildlife organisation and ring them up and see what they need. I do know that volunteer rescue organisations are always chronically short of money so maybe you could organise a fundraiser, a raffle, something like that and then donate the money to an organisation of your choice.

Here in Tasmania a few years ago the community got together and knitted woolly jumpers for the penguins to wear  as part of an oil spill response pack. ( a jumper is a sweater)

Here is a web page with a list of organisations you can contact

I assume that The American Red cross would know how you can help and I am sure that The ASPCA would be another good organisationto get in touch with.

Now as for what you can do in the longer term, that requires a bit of a think. Have a look around your home and really look at everything that you have. The ice cubes in your refrigerator, the throw away plastic bottle in your rubbish bin, all your gadgets, the family car and the clean clothes that you are wearing today.

Everything that enables you to have a comfortable life takes energy.

We are all responsible for this oil spill.

We all need to change our habits.

Reduce your consumption, it is as simple as that. Dry your clothes outside on the washing line rather than in a dryer. Put a sweater on when you are cold rather than turning the heater up.Turn the lights off that you aren’t using. Unplug your mobile phone charger from the wall when you aren’t using it. Dont leave the television on standby. Turn off the microwave when you aren’t using it. Think about that next trip in the car, is it necessary?

Look at how many green or red or blue little lights are on in your house while you are sleeping of a night. Do all those electrical items really need to be sitting there all night silently, sucking power just to save us a few seconds time when we want to use them.

Don’t leave the water running when you brush your teeth in the mornings. Put the plug in the sink when you peel potatoes. Choose environmentally friendly products and ask for organic produce. I am sure you can all think of a zillion more things to do to reduce your own consumption.

Saying NO to plastic is a really good thing to do.

Small things. They are all small things but from little things big things grow.

One person does have the power to change the world.

Because with the amount of giggling and talking I was doing last night at the Hobart tweetup there was a very real possibilty that my teeth could have shot right out of my mouth and flown across the room and that, just isnt a good look. It is one of the tricky little downsides to shiny false teeth, the other downside is not being able to eat really crunchy things but that is a story for another day.

Last night a group of tweeters? Twitterers? People who tweet, met up for drinks and nibbles at Remi de Provence in South Hobart and it was great fun. I wish that I had though to ask where the brie was from as it was divine, the blue was gorgeous and the pate was very good.

I had been a bit nervous beforehand, I hoped that I would like everyone and more importantly I hoped that they would like me as well. As Veronica and I walked across the road to the restaurant my nerves were  forgotten as I recognized people by their photos. Once inside we were guided to our seats in the corner of a small room and immediately we all started talking and laughing and exchanging our proper names.

The group was @Samaramc , also found at Samara McIlroy @StephenEstcourt,also found at Reminiscence of a Food Tragic,  @MaryEstcourt, also found at The constant gardener, @utsicafe,also found at ut si, @SleeplessNights also found at Sleepless Nights and the blogless ones, The Prof ,@quinnal, @JoHCook and of course there was me @frogpondsrock.

We did have a camera but as the light was very flattering the photos are very blurry, so you will just have to imagine us all in our sparkly glory, eyes glowing, hair shiny, free of children and stable of tooth.

I would like to organise another tweet up in Hobart very, very soon and everyone is invited. We need a venue that has a bit more space than Remi’s, though I am happy to  go back there just for the cheese alone. So any suggestions from Hobart people on a venue is more than welcome. We need to consider the ease of parking as well as somewhere that we can talk and be heard easily but they wont mind if we are a bit noisy and the food needs to be decent.

In the spring time I would like to organise a tweetup at the gardens so that children can come as well. That will be fun.

In other blog meeting news I am meeting up with Watershedd tomorrow at Salamanca market and I am looking forward to that very much. I must remember to glue my teeth in for that one as well. hehe.

It’s taking place on Friday, 7 May 2010 and will see 14,000 women and men standing together in pink ponchos to form the Pink Lady silhouette on the MCG, reflecting the number of women expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010. The event aims to raise awareness and much needed funds to support women diagnosed with breast cancer (BCNA is a unique not for profit organisation, its sole focus is on providing complete support for women who are diagnosed with breast cancer and their families).

I remember the cold terror that gripped my heart when my twenty one year old daughter told me that she had a hard lump in her breast. I remember the fantastic relief when the lump was just a cyst.

My grandmother had a masectomy in her seventies and is still going strong at the ripe old age of eighty seven. I have had three lumps in my breasts over the years and they have all been benign.

So I am more than happy to help spread the word here on my blog and you can help as well my lovelies.

You can follow them on Twitter @BCNApinklady

You can join the Breast Cancer Network Australia Facebook fan page.

You can register to attend the event at www.fieldofwomenlive.org.au

You can provide a link to the event www.fieldofwomenlive.org.au on your blog and encourage your readers to promote this link on their websites and blogs as well.

You are more than welcome to copy this and post it onto your blog as well.

Then I grew up and so did Australia. I grow bok choy in my garden and make sushi for my grandchildren. Sunday lunch might be a Thai green curry or Moroccan lamb. Australia has benefitted greatly from our multiculturalism and there is a lot of hope for the future.

But I feel that there is a black cloud of doom lurking just over the horizon and it has to do with our politicians and the popular media’s attitude to this generation of boat people. If our leaders demonstrate intolerance and the media reports in a frenzy of protectionist nationalism what hope is there for ordinary people to be heard?

I was down at the market last year and my son and his mate where looking at tshirts with humourous quotes printed on them. Deeper into the rack of t-shits were some with, not quite racist but certainly horrible slogans such as, This is Australia we drink beer, play cricket and speak English and other such small minded intolerant shit written on them.

My son’s friend wanted to buy a t-shirt that said, piss off we’re full.

Anyone that knows me in real life knows that when something pisses me off I get loud and  *Hmmphy*.  I explained to my son and his mate exactly why I found the t-shirts so distasteful. The salesman enthusiastically pushed his view that the t-shirts were just a joke and I pushed my view that they were crap. I reminded the stallholder that we are all boat people here mate and he would do well to remember it.

I huffed off from the stall and loudly lectured the boys on tolerance, well aware that I was being extremely intolerant of the bogan twat selling the shirts.

The experience left a sour taste in my mouth and I have been meaning to write about racism and intolerance for a while now. But I really don’t have the words other than to remind those that cry the loudest about the perils of the boat people to remember where you came from.

To remember that except for the Koori people we are all descended from immigrants here in Australia.

To remember that we are all the same under our skins and that hate begets hate.

Fe photographed two opposing protests at the Villawood detention centre and the APP have been commenting on her blog post, The face of Racism

My friend Anne,also writes eloquently here in her piece, aptly titled the lucky country and I would recommend that you go and read both blog pieces and then tell me what you think.