My daughter Lily and granddaughter Amelia drove down from George on Thursday afternoon week before last. It was a 6 hour journey with Lily having to amuse Amelia and drive but they managed it. Lily was carting a truck full of things. She had loads of clothes to pass on to Caitlin that Amelia has outgrown as well as all of the props she had brought for Caitlin’s baby shower on the Saturday.
Lily had found the perfect pages in an old classic Winnie the Pooh book and she had her dad create a folding screen and paint a copy of the pages of the book onto it. Lily’s sister-in-law Bronwyn did the lettering. The girls’ Dad and Lily also made the Hundred Acre Wood sign. Lily made the hot air balloon with the basket full of gifts. She brought loads of bits of wooden slabs and little blocks to use as decor as well as bits of ferns and wildflowers, she is so clever and creative.
Finn was obsessed with Amelia and followed her everywhere. She is his to protect and defend. They spent ages at the window watching the birds. They even calmly watched a squirrel feeding. Lily said Millie had never seen a squirrel so we were not really sure if she even caught sight of the actual squirrel seeing as she oohed and aahed about all of the going ons in our busy garden. Finn obviously decided the squirrel was no threat to Millie as he did not make a fuss.
Millie sat outside with me in my favourite spot watching the little white eyes flitting around the feeders. She loves birds as much as her Elisi!
She loves animals and was so thrilled with the cats and dogs. Panda was cautious, he is so tiny but he let her pat on him and poke him, she is pretty gentle and is not a tail puller. If you say ‘nicely’ she will pat them softly, go ‘ahhh’ and lean down to give a kiss.
We had a quiet night in on Thursday as Lily was tired from driving so she and Millie went off to bed early. Norm and I relaxed and bit then also headed to bed early as I had work on Friday. I kept popping out to play with Millie every chance I got. Lily went to get some prints made for the party and then did the last bits of the shopping then dropped it at Caitlin’s sister-in-law Paige’s house.
Caitlin came for dinner on Friday and we all sat out in the sun and had a nice catch up. It was a gorgeous sunny day.
When we woke on Saturday it had started pouring with rain. We were running a bit late seeing as we had Millie to attend to as well as prep some of the food items and we were completely frantic. Lily’s childhood friend Chelsea came over to go with us to the shower and was going to spend the night with us afterwards.
Luckily Lily had taken all of the larger decor pieces over to Paige’s house the day before and she and her fiancé Nick had it all set up. How gorgeous was it??
We managed to get there a few hours early and get the table of food all set up. Lily put her event planning hat on and she made the tables all look like a picnic in the Hundred Acre Wood. It was all beautifully decorated with bits and pieces she made, collected, brought with or bought.
She even made the drinks cute!
Even Amelia was part of the decor in her bear costume and red T-shirt. She is such a wee charmer smiling and dancing and being the star of the show.
How adorable are the cookies we ordered for the party? We ordered them from ‘That Girl Who Bakes Cookies‘ and Lily asked for Winnie the Pooh and sent her the colours she wanted and Cookie Girl did an amazing job.
The girl’s stepsister was going to make a cake, but her oven was not working so we had to make a quick plan. I messaged my friend Lucy from Luscious Lucy Creative Cakes and discussed what we needed and she agreed she could manage it. Lucy did an amazing job, we did not want any fondant or loads of icing, just a simple carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and not huge amounts of icing so it would not be overly sweet. It was so moist and gorgeous and the icing was the perfect balance of sweetness.
There were about 30 women there and the backdrop the girls’ Dad made was used as a photo area. This is mama to be Caitlin on the left, me in the centre, and my daughter Lily holding my granddaughter Millie.
This is Paige, Caitlin and her mother in law Susan. This will be Susan’s first grandchild.
This is Caitlin with the lovely Chelsea who was staying over at my house and who feels like my ‘adopted’ daughter (actually….maybe she is not my daughter because we want her son to marry Amelia and that would be weird. #Hillbilly)
Speaking of weird, when we got back to our house after the baby shower, we were chatting about being weird and that our family have always celebrated individuality and weirdness. As most of us are neurodiverse and I am only recently diagnosed I said ‘I have been masking so long I do not know who I am!’ to which Caitlin replied ‘Well, if you are masking then you are doing a really bad job of it’. To be fair, I think everyone in our family recognised I was on the spectrum but I certainly did not! Now that I do, I cannot believe I did not see it!
I have so transformed my opinions of myself. I have always been so self-critical, so hard on myself, so lacking in confidence. Since I realised I am neurodiverse I am starting to realise that not everyone thinks like I do, not everyone has the mental ability to grasp things as quickly as I can or figure such in-depth technical things out. I have always assumed I am playing catch up with everyone else. I am starting to recognise my own skills and to be grateful for them, even if they differ from ‘the norm’. I am trying to be more patient with others if they do not reach the same point I do at the same time.
I am also starting to speak up more at work. At the client I have no problem speaking up, but when in a group of my ‘peers’ at my contract house I diminish my own ability. I am not technical, but I am very logical, so I often foresee problems where others do not. I also see a solution that others may not because they are bogged down in the technicality of HOW to achieve it. I have often processed something in MS Access just to show it can be done, then passed my results to the more technical guys to replicate it in code. I have to hold onto that feeling of confidence in my abilities. But then as an autistic, I also do not always know how to distinguish what I consider just me stating facts, from me being perceived as arrogant or ‘bragging’?
Lily and Amelia left as soon as they could get up, have a quick bite to eat and load the truck. Lily dropped Chelsea off on her way. I spent the day alternating between cleaning the kitchen and tidying things and sitting in the garden watching the birds. It started raining on and off a bit but had moments of sun.
Lily had left a bag of oranges here and I am not a huge sticky fruit person so I decided to see if the birds like them. They went mad for them! I have been giving them an orange each morning.
On Monday night I was in such pain I could not get to sleep. My lower back, hip, knee and ankle were all throbbing. I had bent over holding Millie’s hand to walk around with her and had stood for ages in the kitchen prepping and it was too much for my joints. I lay on my back and palpated around, focused on finding the spot that was the most painful in my pelvis and I pushed hard on that spot until the pain stopped. I asked that pain what it was retained from? Was it based in a past trauma? I told that spot that I was sorry and that I released it from holding onto anything. The muscles spasmed rather violently, and the pain in that spot eventually lessened. I felt the need to move my knee across and down and something did a little ‘snap’. The next morning my back was better than it has been in ages and it has stayed released all week. I am going to continue that and see how I can get on my with some of my more concentrated trauma area releases. It cannot hurt and it might help. Physician Heal Thyself #IAmNotADoctor
On Tuesday some men came to check the leaking windows and my main gate jammed. I could not get it to shut and that is a huge security risk so I completely panicked. I messaged my friend Tam who is a practical Aries and she said to me that there is a manual override somewhere. I then saw that there was a lock and I found the key and opened the box which was full of dirt, ants, spider webs, 2 snails and all sorts (now that I think about it, that was possibly why it was malfunctioning). I tried to get the key to turn but it would not so I poked about until I got the dial to turn instead and eventually I got it into the right spot where I could manually push the gate into the locked position and then I locked the wheel down so no one could open it.
I felt like I had solved world hunger.
I know it is nothing much to most people but for a woman who has a man who always looks after her, it is an achievement! Or for someone so averse to germs and creepy crawlies? I am not letting anyone pee on my self pride, thank you very much.
We had our Social Circle on Tuesday. Tam collected me.
There were several women there that I knew already but they had never been to a social circle, some I had met before at Circle and some I had never met. It is nice when the same people come back because each time you get to know someone a bit better to help gauge whether you will mesh with them or not.
The hilarious thing was that one young woman came for the first time and when we all went around to introduce ourselves she said she had bought a house she has renovated and I said ‘what area of HB’ and as soon as she said Meadows, I realised she was my neighbour! She moved in several years ago and has been renovating the house but it is pretty much finished now. I had never officially met her, I had once chased Finn frantically through her garden screaming like a banshee when he escaped and Norm was away. She was kind enough to give me a lift home from the event so Tamlyn did not have to so it all worked out great!
Wednesday was rather chaotic. Norm was still away and I had a full day of work meetings and things to achieve. There were a few random dudes coming to the gate for some reason so I had to keep interacting with them. With Norm away and the crime in our area up, it kept me a bit tense. The guy who walks Finnie came to drop off Norm’s truck and the gate would not close again. We both tried and really struggled with it. Eventually we got it to close and I went back to my desk just in time for my 3:30 to 4:30 meeting and then I got a message from V to say I was booked for my pedicure that afternoon! I locked Finn in the garage and I asked her to come in and get set up while I finished the meeting. At 4:30 I told them I had to drop off and then I let Finn out and had my pedicure. Finn was so annoyed that he only had a boring pedicure to watch instead of chasing his friends around the doggy daycare and kept howling at us. Eventually he settled onto the sofa opposite and Panda snuggled next to me and V and I could gossip with no interruption while she dealt with my hooves.
Norm arrived home from the airport about 6pm and the dogs went insane. He pottered about the house and both dogs stuck to him like glue. That night Norm and I chatted for ages to catch up. As I am not a phone person we just keep in contact with quick video calls or messages if he is away and then fill each other in when he is home. I was chatting while he was falling asleep as he was so tired.
On Thursday the builders came to lay the concrete foundation for the new rock wall we are having built. I am so excited to see it all finished.
At the end of the day on Friday it looked exactly the same as they spent the day breaking up the stones for the wall. They are here this morning to carry on and have laid the first row of stones. It will look gorgeous when done. Then we fill the space with earth and I can plant lots of things! As long as said things can tolerate shade and an acidic soil.
The weather was absolutely stunning yesterday but I was busy with work so only got to enjoy it when I had a coffee.
This morning I went to SKIN for a facial and my face feels so amazing! I applied my new hip release techniques and was able to lie flat on my back with no pain. I thank my intuition for telling me to do this weird move which gives me relief.
This afternoon is my healing session so I hope it goes well. I will update you all next week.
I discovered a new RuPaul series called RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars. I am not familiar with all of the queens as they are from the international shows but I am still enjoying it.
For my new music, I have mentioned many times how obsessed I am with Orville Peck. I am sharing a new video by Orville from his recently released album Stampede. The whole album is amazing but not many of the videos have been released. This one is Orville Peck & Noah Cyrus – How Far Will We Take It?
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and week ahead. Until next time, Kisses from the Kitten xoxox
Kitten in the City 