The East End Gallery has become Two!

The last two days have been another mammoth effort by Michael and me. He has finished the aluminium picture rails and the skirting in Shop 4. He was going to install the wooden picture rail along the white plaster wall, but the tremendous effort of the last week or so caught up with him.  He went home at two o'clock for a well-deserved shower and afternoon nap.

As for me, I kept plugging away on the updated organisation. What was Shop 3 is now the Gallery Giftshop ( all items under $500). Shop 4 is the East End Gallery (artworks over $500). We have been going backward and forwards moving items from one side to the other.

Tonight, I finished. We just have the last rail to go up and about three other art pieces left to hang. And remove all the work materials - like the scaffolding and other leftover items.

So, without further ado, here are the two sides of the East End Gallery revealed for the very first time. I am posting these photos and then I am going to climb into bed and sooth my aching feet. Night all.

Enjoy.

Gallery

Gallery

Gallery

Gallery

Gallery Giftshop

Gallery Giftshop

Gallery Giftshop

Gallery Giftshop

Gallery Giftshop

Gallery Giftshop

Gallery

Gallery looking into Giftshop

Gallery looking into Giftshop

Gallery looking into Giftshop

Giftshop

Giftshop.

The Beagle has a Fit of the Vapours.

The last few days have been quite tiresome, as far as the weather is concerned. Hot, sultry and sticky. Michael has been finding that his tee shirt is always sopping wet and most uncomfortable when he has finished yet another day in the East End Gallery. Unfortunately, as #1 renovator, the buck stops with him in the work department.

Last night was particularly beastly. No effort at all still had the capacity to raise a sweat. And I definitely wasn't glowing. I had rivulets of moisture gathering under my boobs and running down my back. I went for a swim to cool off and improve my disposition. Bliss. After doing running laps of the pool's diameter, I plunged all the way in. My wrist was wet but I didn't care. I was in ecstasy.

I sat in my towel next to Michael and we watched "Dead Man's Folly", one of the few Agatha Christie mysteries I hadn't seen. Midnight, we were still sufficiently cool to go to bed with the house flung open. Needless to say, we were both starkers with no covering whatsoever.

Two-thirty and I was awoken by the most amazing lightning show. The night sky was flooded by light in all directions. The rain was imminent. The growling thunder had begun but was pretty insignificant compared to the dazzling white flashes surrounding the House that Rocks.

We flew out of bed and secured windows, doors and brought the pirate parrot into the laundry. Sascha was starting her thunderstorm anxiety shaking and wide-eyed hyperventilation. Pip, the most alarmed of the Three Stooges in everyday situations, was relatively unbothered. And the Beagle was nowhere to be found.

We bellowed her name above the rain and the hail. We looked for her in the bathroom, the toilet and under our bed - all her standard haunts. We were just becoming panicky when Michael discovered her jammed between our of our bedroom chairs and the bookshelves. She was not amused.

Returning to bed, the storm continued with some fairly impressive cracks of thunder. The cat had joined us by this stage, defiantly indignant that her night routine of snoozing on the front verandah had been interrupted by almost horizontal rain.

Morning dawned, a gloomy and grey sky. The Beagle hadn't moved. She was still not happy. She only left the bedroom, reluctantly when Michael waved the vacuum cleaner at her. She retired to her top bunk of the dog's bed and resigned herself to Bad Health.

About lunchtime, we started to worry about her. Was she succumbing to some ghastly disease? Had she devoured something quite so rancid she'd given herself food poisoning? Was she dehydrated or having a nervous breakdown? We dismissed the last idea as we concluded Ruby's brain was not fulsome enough to have a neurological discombobulation.

Michael had returned to work at the Gallery. Desperate, I tried the last possible ploy to get her out of her bed. I offered her the remains of the rissoles we'd had at lunch. In her bed. Her recovery was remarkable. She licked the container clean and then tottered into the kitchen to inspect it again where I'd left it on the floor.

We have decided Ruby might be a bit constipated, possibly due to mild dehydration, as Michael witnessed a close-up of her ablutions on the back lawn. A combination of her roundness, lack of exercise, all her bloody hair and her anxiety obviously led to a temporary nervous collapse.

I say temporary as Michael has just dished up the dogs' dinner. Ruby devoured her dinner with customary enthusiasm and left nothing!

 Ruby suffering terribly on her Bed of Pain...

 until she received some titbits in bed...

now that's a recovering Beagle...

with the other dogs watching intently...

back in her usual place, licking her chops, post dinner...

the Beagle in all her glory, sitting side saddle!

A Most Unexpected Evening

Yesterday was an unpleasantly warm day. The heavy cloud cover rolled over in the early afternoon and the associated humidity increased our discomfort considerably. Michael was toiling away putting up aluminium picture railing on the new tin walls. In the end, he became oblivious to the oppressive conditions, looking like a grizzled contestant in a wet tee shirt competition.

Just after four o'clock, I'd had enough. I was hot, tired and my wrist was throbbing. I pulled the pin at the Gallery and went home. The air conditioning was so welcome as I opened the front door to the House that Rocks.

A call to Vanessa to catch up, a couple of text messages from Michael's cousin Faye and I was heading for our bed. The wind had risen, the storm was all around and I fell asleep to the dulcet tones of the pirate parrot calling Ruby...

An hour later the rain was still falling and the thunder's growling was fading away. Michael was home and reading the paper. However, there was a very distinct stillness and silence about the house. The power was out.

This is not an odd occurrence for Heavenly Beverley. We had once lost power for five memorable days after we'd moved to the town at the beginning of 2011. There was always a sneaking suspicion in the back of our minds that a power outage of that length could happen again.

The Western Power faults line was reassuring. Power to be restored by eight-thirty that evening. I opened up the house to the pleasant evening cool. The temperature had dropped so much I contemplated a cardigan!

A second calamity then unfolded. We had no vino. We considered our options. Eat late, eat by candlelight or go to the pub. Then we could eat and buy some vino. Damn the torpedoes; after a refreshing shower for Michael, we were out the door.

The top pub was pretty quiet, but we recognised Rob and his wife Linda, who lived in a hundred-year-old cottage on the Dale. They had been contemplating a trip to York to watch a movie. Outside. Bound to end with wet bottoms. They had abandoned this plan and headed for dinner at the pub instead.

As we talked, the penny dropped. Linda had bought the garden art horse for her grandchildren. Rob had painted our living room just prior to our wedding. We had not seen them together to associate them as a couple.

We had a great night. Photos of dogs came out, lives were compared and laughed about and our mutual affection for Beverley and her surrounds became quite evident between the four of us. We discussed children, chance meetings, relationships, houses, and renovations of course.

Having arrived  at around six thirty, we had spent an unexpected and delightful evening, enjoying the company of Rob and Linda and getting to know them a bit better. And none of this would have unfolded if the thunderstorm hadn't taken out the power.

And when we arrived home, we could see the kitchen light was on. All was well in our world.

back wall with picture rail...

front wall with picture rail and paintings...

how Michael felt...

how he coped!

and his reward at the end of a very hot and trying day.

The Cat, the Toast and her Suitcase.

Michael's dreams are often vivid, bizarre and bordering on the surreal. He experiences these nocturnal adventures without any mind altering drugs. Except for the legal one he takes before bed, which is supposed to help him sleep.

Which is why I'm sitting at my computer, pre-dawn, recording his latest bedtime shenanigans. This was too good not to share with the known universe.

I was woken out of a perfectly beautiful sound sleep by his Majesty thumping me on my upper left arm. The one I have just had the operation to fix. As ever, he had no memory of the whacking. And the cause of all this uproar was the toast.

Bear with me whilst I explain. This is not the first time toast has featured in our bedroom. The toast was ready. In the toaster. In our bed. And then the tale became truly, spectacularly nutty.

Madame Cat was present in bed as well. With her suitcase. What was the significance of the suitcase? To pack the toast into it, of course. And she was leaving. Suddenly, I had the most glorious vision of the cat in high heels, with a banana palm hat on her head, wearing horn rimmed sunglasses, leaving our bedroom with her suitcase, packed with two pieces of toast...

By the end of the story, I was wide awake, had forgiven Michael for the heinous punch and was laughing somewhat hysterically. Michael returned to Cloud Cuckoo Land, whilst I adjourned to our dining table to record his latest dream sequence.

I will never look at toast, the cat or a suitcase in quite the same way ever again.

And I'm off to bed again...zzz...zzz...zzz

I don't think...

I can ever look at Madame Cat...

in quite the same way again!

Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?

Never ever believe anybody who claims the country is boring. The country is not boring. In fact, I often consider Beverley to have a seething basin of intrigue and drama under its quiet facade. One can't be sure if a murder is about to be committed.and Mis Marple will appear out of the woodwork to solve a dastardly clever whodunnit.

Perhaps not quite that much activity, but we certainly have characters in town. In a small community, Beverley is a microcosm of the Big Smoke. Over the last five years, we have learned who are the jokers, the good guys, the quirky, the edgy and the treasures. There are a remarkably small number of people that we would not consider to be our cup of tea. Which is fine. We can't be expected to like every person we meet.

Take Lorna, our delightful next door neighbour. A Bunbury girl, Lorna has lived throughout the agricultural areas, had three husbands, six of her own children and countless adopted children. Her property is four acres of paddocks, trees, ponds and her house and sheds. Named Freedom Hollow. She has been known to fly the Jolly Roger and now has an extended family of several million.

And she has birds, sheep, dogs, cats, kangaroos and an endless supply of ongoing orphans who she hand rears. Sometimes, they come to her looking so scruffy it is difficult to recognise the breed. She has pig sat and horse sat. Most of her menagerie suffer from severe personality disorders where they have no clue as to what type of creature they actually are.

Take Bently for example. Bently was a magpie who thought he was a dog. Or Reggie, another magpie who thought she was a chook. Or two miniature horses who thought they were sheep. Lorna was forever receiving frantic phone calls from well-meaning passers-by who thought her horses were unwell as they were lying down. Roosters who attempt intimate relations with ducks. Or a winter lamb, born in the middle of a storm,  who thought he was a puppy.

Lorna's three hand-reared kangaroos are all female. Her fencing is not particularly high as none of the girls has ever shown the slightest desire to leave the paddock. At least not until Romeo came on the scene.

Romeo thought all his Christmases had come at once. Nice yard with feed, shade and water. And three young ladies. We have never quite worked out if he is a wild kangaroo living in the burbs or someone's pet. Romeo did not care in the slightest. He quickly took up residence and no doubt had his wicked way with one or all of the girls. Harriet was the one who had stars in her eyes.

Then he became restless and took off again into the wild blue yonder. With Harriet. Who had never been beyond the boundaries of Freedom Hollow. Harriet was missing for several days. Romeo returned first without her. What a cad!

Eventually, Harriet was located and returned to the bosom of her family. Lorna was severely displeased by Romeo's behaviour. He had blotted his copybook big time. Lorna leaves water out for Romeo but that is all. She is actively discouraging any further conjugal visits.

Which is why, in the early morning, we looked out and saw Romeo scheming how to get over the fence back into Lorna's yard and the arms of his beloved Harriet. Typical bloke - he was playing with his private parts...

just pause for a quick scratch...

and make myself presentable...

off to capture the heart of my beloved Harriet

Kate Becomes the Bionic Woman

When I was in my early teens, no Sunday afternoon was complete without an episode of the Six Million Dollar Man. I would sit on the floor, in front of Mum and Dad's dinky little black and white telly, watching my hero Steve Austin save the world, with all the appropriate sound effects of super fast running (in slow motion of course), super fast crushing with his cyborg arm and breathless, rapidly blinking close ups of his super sensitive eye. I lived for Sunday afternoons.

Then they introduced a love interest for lonely Steve. This was Jaimie Summers, slim, gorgeous with flowing hair that never seemed to get caught in Steve's mouth when they kissed...

We could all feel a wedding in the air.

Instead, they killed her off in a skydiving accident. I was distraught and grief stricken. We were all mourning Jaimie and letters (yes, letters!) bombarded the TV network responsible for this disaster. So, in a stroke of genius, they brought her back, with new legs, a new arm and (wait for it) a bionic ear. All the better to hear you with...And with amnesia. Excellent. Now we would get a chance to see the love affair blossom all over again. Except, the relationship never quite took off. We all blamed Jaimie's memory loss. The truth was simpler. Apparently, the two actors playing the happy couple couldn't stand each other.

Fast forward forty years. The Bionic Woman has been reborn and I am she...! On Wednesday, I was rebuilt. With the help of the Boy Wonder (his alter ego is mild-mannered orthopaedic surgeon Ben Kimberley), I no longer have a left shoulder with frayed tendons, narrow spaces in the joint itself, a dodgy carpal tunnel and an untrustworthy right shoulder.  I have been defrayed, with some deft chiselling within the joint and a release of the left carpal tunnel - I didn't even know my carpal tunnel was in gaol. My right shoulder has been rejuvenated with a cortisone injection I didn't feel.

Apart from the usual drifting sleepiness, I had no unpleasant side effects. I have no memory of being awake when they deposited me back into my tiny room post op. Which Michael was sharing as a boarder. He reported I did sound like me, but it was pretty obvious that I was off with the fairies.

When I finally emerged from anaesthetic slumber properly, Michael behaved with as much aplomb as Walter Raleigh had for the Virgin Queen. And I didn't even have him executed...He helped feed me, took me to the loo and assisted me with my knickers, remade my bed and adjusted my particularly fetching hospital gown. In the morning, he showered me, made me the best cup of tea, opened the sugar for my weet bix and commiserated with me about the pink antiseptic all over my left boob. What a man *sigh of perpetual love*.

We fled the hospital as soon as possible yesterday morning. Stopping for essential medicinal liquids at First Choice, we then lunched with Lucky, Michael's Dad, before heading for the hills. Arriving home just before three, we were greeted by ecstatic dogs, a miffed cat, an excitable parrot, a clean house and our fantastic daughter who had stepped into the breach (again) with impressive efficiency.

The Beverley Hillbillies crashed for a couple of hours and woke, refreshed, in the last hour of daylight. I indulged myself with some one-handed watering of my pots whilst Vanessa assisted me with my vino glass.

She made a sensational spag bog and salad and kept me well topped up with pain relief. Upon awaking this morning, the house was spotless (until Madame Cat made her entrance) and the washing and ironing up to date.

My left shoulder is extraordinary. Day 2 post op and I have more movement in it now than I have had for weeks. It aches but the sudden strikes of sharp, intense pain, even when I was doing nothing, have stopped. Only my hand and wrist are still very painful. My right shoulder feels much better and I expect it will be as good as new as I will be able to cease the additional effort it has been carrying.

I have been religious about the exercises I need to do (so not me!) and pain is under control with vino and panadeine forte. OMG. I may not have the looks, the figure or that super sensitive ear, but I am the Bionic Woman!

The Bionic Woman inspects the Final Push...

poses in front of that bloody fireplace...

joins the metal artist in a selfie...

and takes the Command Position in the East End Gallery.

The Tale of Alex's Toe.

One of Alex's big toes has been causing his grief for over two months. He injured it back at the beginning of November when he was staying at a friend's house. Apparently, a door and Alex's toe had a misunderstanding of epic proportions. His toe lost.

I first examined the toe about ten days after the initial injury. Bright red, with an impressive amount of damaged tissue on the outside edge of the nail. Alex had been putting Bandaids on it and ripping it off on a daily basis. Surprise, surprise, the toe was showing no signs of healing.

Alex's circulation is dodgy at the best of times.Particularly at his extremities. Like his toes. Under orders from me, he visited his trusty GP, who has known Alex for 18 years. Antibiotics were administered and the toe was supposed to recover in due course.

Except it didn't. On Alex's annual Christmas visit to the House that Rocks, I noted the offending toe was still looking exceedingly nasty. Alex's pain tolerance is almost as legendary as his appetite. Hence, he has not really been paying much attention to the toe.

Back to the GP after another edict from me. This time, Dr Mark decided more drastic action was required. The toe was to have the offending wedge of tissue and nail removed. With more antibiotics, of course.

Alex also needed a lift home after the surgery. Which he rang me to fix...Fortunately, Beth Mildenhall, his fab coordinator responded in his Hour of Need and organised transport to take the patient home.

Alex duly had the Procedure last Friday. He was extremely brave and only complained a reasonable amount about the local anaesthetic. The piece de resistance was Alex's comment regarding an obvious flow of blood from the wound..he is on blood thinners after all.

"It was a miracle that my blood did not get on Doctor Mark's shirt" was Alex's summation of the whole event. Priceless.

Our autistic superstar has had the wound redressed yesterday and by all accounts, the wound is healing beautifully.

Let's just hope that this unfortunate incident does not occur again in the near future...

the perpetrator...

the result...

the hero!

A Line in the Sand.

This is an open letter to the Sofoulis clan. I have had enough of guerilla warfare. I have had enough of sniping from the sidelines or from behind the curtain of Facebook. I have decided there will be no more attacks on Michael.

Those who speak ill of Michael should want to have nothing to do with him. Except that's not the case. They jeer at him, sneer at him, call him names, undermine his self-esteem, attack his self-worth. All four of his children treat him with utter contempt. And none of them have the courage to see him, listen to him, hear his version of events.

Michael admits his mistakes. They haunt him every day. Nobody is lily white. Are they prepared to change the status quo? No. They just want to keep privately whinging that Michael is a terrible father and claims to be a victim.

The world is not black and white. None of you who attack Michael recognise this fact. Guess what Dawn Ogley, I know what a needy person you were to Joan. Guess what Holly Sofoulis, you used to rage against your mother. Guess what Hayden Sofoulis, I bet you haven't mentioned your dad took you away, just the two of you, for a number of years. David Fasolo, I dare you to meet us. Ditto, Natalia Cichon.

Guess what Amy Sofoulis and Emily Rollings, your grandmother told me lots of truths about your mother. You attended her funeral and ignored your father. How dare you disrespect her. And him.

So, I am declaring a duel. I am slapping your faces and throwing my glove on the ground. Either put up or shut up. Are you, Amy and Emily, Hayden and Holly, prepared to go to family counselling to try and sort out your differences? If not, go away. Forever.

Oh and here's an invitation to the rest of the Sofoulis family. Somebody needs to speak to Michael's children about respecting him. That means compromise. If they are not prepared to do so, we will have to absent ourselves from family occasions as we are tired of being treated as second-class citizens.

I am Michael's wife. I support Michael and his well being. My children love him. Our daughter has taken his name. It's time to put up or shut up. All of you.

The Great (Bird) Escape

We inherited Red, our Eastern King Parrot, from Lorna a couple of years ago. She was hand rearing him, but after she booted out her third husband, she realised that she couldn't look after all her birds and animals without assistance. So, we were given Red to raise.

About six months later, Lorna surmised that Red had become a part of our family, so he was at the House that Rocks to stay.His plumage gradually changed from his juvenile green to a resplended red. This process took over eighteen months. By the time Red was mature, he had become a glorious red, green and blue bird, confident in his own beauty, with reactions like a punk and manners like a teenager.

He is also extremely rude. I have no idea where he picked up such bad language. He also whistles, cackles and imitates the cat. He pretends he's a tough guy, afraid of nothing, but the day before yesterday proved otherwise.

Outside on our back verandah, Michael was changing his food bowl. Red saw an opportunity and took off. Although his wings weren't clipped, he only managed to fly into our front pepper tree.  We swung into action. Red was quite happily nibbling on twigs up on the branch, but we knew if another bird approached, he'd take fright and be off. On top of a ladder, we took it in turns to tempt him with a honey seed treat. Ruby the cat did not help the situation by pacing and miaowing through Red's escape attempt.

Eventually, Red decided that being outdoors wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. He flew the short distance onto the front window sill, then launched onto the Christmas wreath that was still on the front door.

With his back to Michael, Red failed to see him coming and soon the recalcitrant parrot was gripped between Michael's two hands. With a bellow of "open his cage", Michael shot down the front steps and deposited Red back through the open door, which was then slammed shut before Red had time to react.

Nursing several scratches and a bite wound, I asked Michael why he didn't just chuck Red into the house through the front door. Michael responded that he wasn't interested in catching the little bastard a second time. Point taken.

Two days later, Red is not grateful to us at all. He is as raucous, loud and rude as ever. In spite of the fact that Red was a giant pain in the arse, we could not have coped with losing him at all. He is not to know this!

Red, the juvenile delinquent...

fully red (with Simon our backpacker) and still a juvenile delinquent!

Lifetimes Remembered.

Thirty years ago I was a very different woman. I was still short, but I was slimmer, fitter and younger. Over the course of a few years, I met a number of extraordinary women from different walks of life, from all over Western Australia, whom I would have been unlikely to meet in other circumstances. The connection between us all was the loss of our babies.

I was pregnant for the first time in spring 1984. My then husband and I had been married for nearly four years. I longed to be a mother. I always had. So, I was delighted when I found myself pregnant not long after coming off the contraceptive pill.

My pregnancy lasted for seventeen blissful weeks. I was just into maternity clothes at the end of January 1985. I had a bit of spotting and was afraid. I was under a local GP so we toddled down to a local hospital. I was told to go home and wait. The following day the bleeding was worse and I was in pain. This time, the local hospital sent me to the women's hospital to be examined. I was hospitalised on one of the wards.

I had no idea what was happening. All I knew was that I was terrified. The pain was relentless and I thought I needed a bedpan. This was brought and I miscarried my baby. All hell broke loose afterwards. An injection was shoved into my bottom and I was out like a light. The following day I had a D&C. My baby was "disposed of"'. I was discharged the next morning. Five days later, my milk came in.

I woke up believing I had some terrible infection. My breasts were like rocks, then as I watched, breast milk leaked slowly down my tummy. I thought I was losing my mind. My body image, my self-belief, my confidence as a woman/mother were all destroyed. How could I have milk with no baby to feed?

My mood plunged. I didn't know what to do, who to see, what to say. I bumbled around in a never ending fog of sadness for days. Then, and I can't remember how, I discovered an obscure little organisation named SANDS (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Support). I went to the first support meeting and talked as much as I could. These women were like me!

They had all started pregnancy expecting a live baby at the end of nine months. We were all together as this happy event hadn't eventuated. I discovered this suffocating sadness was grief. Suddenly, I was no longer alone anymore.

At times, I felt a bit of a fraud as I'd "only had a miscarriage". This was my perception, not anyone else's. Many years later, I realised that pregnancy itself is an illusion. All the women I've met who have survived a pregnancy loss are not affected by the actual time frame of this dreadful event. Regardless of the timing, our babies died. Not embryos or foetuses. Babies. And all our hopes and dreams for those children died with them. That was the legacy of grief.

I have made lifelong friends. Although we were initially linked by the loss of our babies, seeing these other women again is a joy to be treasured. We are alive and some of us have gone on to have further babies. Those who hadn't, kept their babies safe in their hearts forever.

Today, I reconnected with two of these amazing women. I haven't seen Nina and Noeleen for over twenty-five years. Nina and I have remarried two wonderful men, a great improvement of our first two husbands. Noeleen is single but seemed pretty content. We looked at photos of our now grown up children, swapped stories of families, homes, pets and caught up on two decades of our lives.

We remembered an appalling video watched whilst Nina's dog had an epileptic fit under my bed. Our daughters were born exactly a week apart. She reminded me of being aghast when Nina used toilet paper to blow her daughter's nose. I was in a mental health unit at the time but I had forgotten just how anal retentive I'd been.

I had met Noeleen a couple of years after Nina. I remember her losses particularly poignantly - two of her boys died. I think I'd had my second pregnancy loss around the same time and to meet her gave me a reality to hang onto when the rest of my world had descended into chaos.

And so our babies who are longer with us were able to move in and out of our conversations quite matter of factly. This is not because we don't still love them and wish they were alive. We do. But we don't have to explain this to each other.

Every now and then, without warning, grief reappears and takes our hands. This happens, rather like shit. The reassuring warmth that was SANDS in my earlier life and has rematerialised in the form of Nina and Noeleen reminds me how to survive. How to keep loving. How to live with these precious memories.

What does one call these middle-aged girls who met at SANDS?

SANDbags?!

Or my gorgeous friends reconnecting after twenty-five years -Noeleen on the left, Nina on the right and some random fat woman in the middle!