I’ve heard some people give the advice that you should learn something new every day, but to be perfectly frank, that can be a lot of effort! If I haven’t made a conscious effort to learn something new, after a busy day I don’t want to spend a portion of my evening trying to dissect my day and work out what new thing I may or may not have learned. On the other hand, I do think it’s important to learn new things and continuously upskill – not just upskilling work skills, but life skills also.

Over the past 12 or so months, my learning curve has been drastically steep. Being pregnant, preparing for a baby, actually having the baby, and then having a child to nurture, love, and raise… the learning never stops! But there was a grey area of my knowledge which I have been wanting to fill for a long long time. Being a first time mother, I am paranoid. I like to think that I’m pretty relaxed, but I do have my moments of panic, and I do have my share of sleepless nights where I can’t stop thinking about the “what ifs”.

So a while ago I decided that Vincent, Nicholas, my parent-in-laws and I would all go on a two day paediatric first aid course. A couple of weeks ago we finally went, and what an amazing experience. I had forgotten the thrill of learning something new that I really wanted to learn and that I really believed I would benefit from. I have never been so attentive in a class as I was on the weekend – even when I had to sit away from the class to feed Nicholas, I was still completely tuned in.

A long long time ago, while I was still in university, I was at the train station when  guy collapsed and fell down the stairs. There were about a dozen people standing around and for about one whole minute, noone responded. The guy was lying on the ground with his head bleeding, and noone knew what to do. Finally someone called an ambulance, but I will never forget that feeling of utter hopelessness – of not know what to do or how to help. That feeling of panic and then of guilt – why hadn’t I even thought to call emergency services?

I hope that I never need to use the skills which I learned during the class, but it heartens me to know that if something happens, I will be able to do more than just stand aside and panic and hope that someone else knows what to do.

So what new thing have you learned lately?

This week I baked Pita bread – using a recipe from Under the High Chair. This recipe is totally amazing (and milk protein allergy friendly!). I’m a flat bread person – I love making chapati and roti and Chinese style pancakes, which are light and flaky and crispy. Hands down though, if I want something which is more bread-like and less flaky, this is what I will be baking from now on.  The prep work is short yet satisfying, and the end result is delicious. Even for me, a walking baking disaster, the results were fantastic. Now I just need to work out how to roll a perfectly shaped disc!!

My photos are again, woeful. Something to do with the fact that I was so excited about eating my Pita, that I could not muster the strength to run upstairs and grab my point and shoot. Instead you will have to settle for some grainy iPod photos and go to Under the High Chair for a proper picture. Again, my pita bread are really floury as I didn’t have any baking paper – so I floured the surface before baking…

… And so to conclude, in addition to using a mortar and pestle to pound spice mixes and make pastes, I have found a second kitchen activity which I can use to relieve stress. It’s going to be tasty in this house  moving forward!

For example, at work I have learned to take accountability for the times I screw up – and I’ve also learned to cover my butt just in case other people aren’t so bold as to admit to imperfection. In my home life I have learned that an air tight container will not save your grains from determined insects – and I’ve also learned that guests will never understand, when they open up my fridge, why all my open cereals are in there.

I like to think I try to learn something new every day, but if I’m perfectly frank, it doesn’t always happen. It can be really tiring to make that conscious decision to take note of something and recognise it as a learning opportunity.

Watching Nicholas this week, I realise that it must be extra tiring being a baby. Nicholas has learned that you can only lazy crawl on the bed. Dragging yourself along with your head does not work well on the hard wood floor. He has also learned that you can’t just flop backwards and lie down from a sitting position in any old place. Or, if you want to be a little more abstract about it, Nicholas has learned that being Mr. Independent can be a real headache.

He has also learned that cat toys are fun! That the doorstop is fun! That electrical cables are fun! And in doing so, he is learning that some things aren’t toys. In other words, just because something is fun/sparkly/pretty/enticing doesn’t mean that you can have them. Some things in life should always be off limits.

Of course, these lessons are often accompanied by tears. Nothing makes me feel more guilty that taking away Karamello’s “Mr. Mousey” from Nicholas and making him cry, or failing to stop him from smooshing his face into the floor while trying to crawl to the previously mentioned Mr. Mousey. Learning new things can hurt.

But I can certainly beam with pride when I see Nicholas accomplish something new – such as properly crawling on his hands and knees, and working out how to properly catch himself when he starts to topple from a seated position. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.

A new week is coming, and a new chapter of my life is about to begin. I hope that I can take the lessons which I will undoubtedly be forced to learn as gracefully and with as much stoicism and stubborness as my son…

I spent my evening last night switching the keys around on my keyboard, and now I just find it funny that I was unable to successfully change the index keys. Like my dodgy fix?

And does anyone have experience typing with a thumb/wrist splint on? Should I just go one handed?

I’m actually not annoyed, more amused. And to be honest, I’ve “borrowed” a few internal ideas here and there as well… In the context of work, I like to call it “using best practices” although I guess I could write a whole blog post on the lack of merits of using “best practice” (aka “old practice”). On the other hand, I do wish I could “charge” the IP team for the use of my scorecard. I think the aggressive (legal) pursuit of 5 unauthorised vendors in my region wouldn’t be asking too much. Would it??

Image from Atmostheory (link)

Lately, and from an incredibly subjective place, I’ve been pondering the merits (or lack of merits) of the “like” button. I actually do use the like button. On Facebook, if a friend posts a status which I find is particularly interesting or a photo which I find it really great, I will click “like”. But I don’t always stop at the like button. I also often like to leave a comment, just to show I don’t just “like” something, I actually care. On the other side, I admit to being a bit of a comment whore. I get a buzz when people “like” and comment on my posts/statuses/photos. There’s just something about being commented on or “liked” which puffs up my ego a little bit and makes me feel like I’m a slightly more important cog in the world, because someone took the time to notice me. Lame, I know

But recently I’ve come to the point where I hate the like button. It’s impersonal and too easily there. There are times when I don’t understand why someone likes my post/status/photo and I darned well want to. I’ve really come to loathe those people that just click “like” to everything. Seriously folks! Do you actually like it, or is it some kind of weird competition to see who hit “like” first? Stop being a drive-by liker! And I really hate it when people click “like” obsessively, as though they’re completely involved in your life, when they don’t really give a toss about you. And don’t even get me started about those negative posts which people “like”. Nothing online drives me more nuts than seeing someone click “like” to “I’ve got a horrible case of diarrhea and my guts feel like they’re going to spill out onto the floor”. What on earth is wrong with you people??

The irony of this post? I decided to take a semi hiatus from Facebook all because of this bizarre dislike which has been brewing in me, and I moved some stuff that I still wanted to share with close friends/family to a wordpress.com blog. And what do I see when I post? A freaking “like” button. LOL. It took me two days to work out how to turn the damned thing off.

Image from Disocciated Press (link)

Back in Sydney, I had tried multiple times to bake bread. I tried so many recipes, and they all failed. I don’t know whether I had a bad batch of yeast, but none of the breads rose properly. This time around, at the start of January I returned to my old faithful, the person whose recipes I have so far never failed at using… Jamie Oliver. In particular, his basic bread recipe. And to my surprise, I ended up with a nice round loaf of bread!

Emboldened by my success, today I tried baking pretzels, using the soft pretzels recipe indexed at the MSPI Mama website.

As a very non intuitive cook, who, despite being a massive Auntie Annes fan, I need step by step instructions. I gathered my ingredients, I mixed, and I kneaded. And then I went to roll my pretzels. “But… but…”, my brain stammered. “The recipe doesn’t tell me how long my pretzel dough should be, or how to actually roll the pretzel shape!”

I laughed at myself, and then found myself reminiscing on the time I made supersoft ensaymadas. I followed the recipe precisely there also, but again, didn’t know how big my ensaymadas should be as I rolled them and prepared them for baking. They ended up ginormous. And today in the case of my pretzels, they look like bread versions of those little plastic dog poops that you get in novelty stores. Also huge. Next time I know: The pretzel dough needs to be very thiiiiiiin and very looooong, and I don’t have to worry about them looking a little skinny pre bake. After baking, they will puff up to be about 3 times the size they went into the oven at!

The picture was taken with my iPod camera in bad light, which is why it’s so grainy. On reflection, I clearly still need to work out how to roll a pretzel!! The pretzel looks quite white on the bottom here, because I didn’t have any baking paper. I used flour dusted aluminium foil instead, so the bottom of the pretzel is very flour-y.

Overall, the recipe is quite good. I would add a touch more salt to the dry mix next time, and I also need to remember to be extremely liberal with the egg wash. I only put a little on (the same amount as I would if I was baking a loaf of bread) but I now know I should have put a lot more on. I also screwed up the oven settings and had the heat on only at the bottom of the oven, which is another reason why it looks so pale.

And next time I’m going to buy some powdered cinnamon. Boo yeah.

That’s correct. You heard me. The Dad factor. On the weekends, Dad is home!! It’s time to wrestle, play, and subvert Mum’s rules and schedule. I love watching the two of them together, so every weekend and with a grain of frustration, I shake my head, sigh, smile at my boys who are both getting over tired (yes, that can happen to Dad too), and grin and bear it. Even though I sometimes have to spend hours mopping up tears, pacing with an 8kg baby in my arms in a dark room singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, and even though sometimes I feel the strong and overwhelming urge to hurl the baby monitor onto the floor, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Dad factor comes into play in other less frustrating ways also. Bath time and bed time are different. Instead of rubber duckies, “splash splash revolution” comes to town. Instead of a soothing story about three bears (a Karamello Bear, and Holly Berry Bear, and a Nicholas Bear btw… we’ve tailored the story somewhat), Nicholas is regaled with stories of Dad’s crazy workplace. Milk time becomes a downright wrestle between myself and Nicholas, as he constantly strains to maintain eye contact, smile, and laugh at his Dad, preferring to do these things over drinking. And play time (complete with soft toys) sees Mr. Rac Rac (the Racoon) being “eaten” by Lejon the Lion; Mr. Robato (the Robot) coming to the rescue, and Raffie (the Giraffe) ultimately saving the day.

The Dad factor makes me reminisce about spending time with my own Dad. Spending time in the garage, watching him work on the car or help me with a particularly tricky homework assignment that involved building things (a pyramid and a kite spring to mind almost instantly). Crawling under the house after my Dad, carting wheelbarrows filled with dirt and sand or bricks from one end of the garden to the other. Building lego houses and being instructed in the correct way to “lay” the “bricks” so that my house walls are strong. These kinds of experiences fill my childhood, and I think helped to shape me into the person who I am today. I always felt (feel) safe with my Dad. I can run any idea by him and never feel judged (although I’m sure he has hung his head with frustration and disappointment about  some of the choices I’ve made in my life), and if I really need to, I can run to him for help.

That’s the kind of relationship that I want Nicholas to build with his Dad, so Dad factor, come on in. It’s a mixed bag of goods, which I wouldn’t trade for the all world.

Update: It didn’t work I guess the hardware problem is more significant. Now to contemplate whether or not I want someone to go to the effort of extracting the data from the disk n some other way. Probably not… Lol.

My home laptop hard disk drive is currently chilling. Yup, chilling. It’s in the freezer, and fingers crossed tomorrow when I take it out of its little zip lock bag and plug it back into my laptop, that it work for long enough for me to extract my important data. The ironic thing is that I do have a backup of most of the data somewhere but I have no idea where… Anyway, it is notable to mention that this is my first legitimate hardware failure. Yup, not taken out by a virus or a stupid user error (yes, I did once spill a cup-a-soup on a laptop to disastrous consequences), or by an “too early” (i.e. 6 months after I bought the damned thing) hardware failure. This is a hardcore, “it’s old and overused, and now ready to die” failure. I feel like I’ve reached some kind of milestone in life.

But back to my hard disk drive “on the rocks”. I had never heard of this kind of method (see “Freeze your hard disk drive to recover data: Myth or reality?“) to try and resurrect (temporarily) a hard disk drive, until I started googling… it’s actually extremely interesting, and fingers crossed (again) that it works for me. I’ll update tomorrow!

But since we got our landline in The Philippines, aside from being a cost I wish we didn’t need to have (annoyingly Sky Broadband isn’t available in this building), you get the most ridiculous pre-recorded phone calls, the odd “we’re currently testing the phone line” call, and a ton of hang ups. I don’t think I need to explain to anyone how annoying a “Happy New Year” pre-recorded phone call is, first thing in the morning on January 1st… Or how much it makes my blood pressure rise when the phone starts ringing pointlessly when Nicholas is down for a nap (like now). And today there have been about a half a dozen phone calls in the last 2 hours! I don’t even know what my landline number is, so it’s not like I’m expecting any urgent phone calls…

So is it possible for someone to explain to me why my phone keeps ringing, and when I answer it, there is noone there? I don’t think they’re prank calls, I think that they’re line testing. But goodness only knows why they are repeatedly testing the line.

I really need to move on with my life (although if the phone rings again, my next blog post might be from a cell, and not a cell of the smart phone variety). Could this be a sign I need to get out of the house more??