The One About Inori

I have come to believe that direction sense is innate and that I was born with none, whatsoever.

Okay, maybe not none… I do still know how to get back home from my backyard.

I can read maps. In fact, without maps I would be truly, hopelessly lost. Incidentally, I am a visual learner and therefore can not use a GPS when driving. I cannot concentrate on the road while either looking at the screen or listening to the robotic voice. I therefore rely on the street directory while parked safely on the road shoulder.

Now this post will contain some drawings. I have not drawn for a long long time. I used to draw all the time when I was in high school……then I got all discouraged because I thought, “I’m just mediocre, so why bother?”
There are many blogs nowadays that are filled with awesome drawings  such as Hyperbole and a Half and Crappy Pictures… I thought I might try my hand at some illustrated posts. Not all my posts though because it’s too much work to draw, scan in and colour with photoshop because I am lazy.

So yes, it has been that long since I drew and therefore please bear with my amateur drawings.

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We live in a suburb about 25 minutes drive away from town and we usually do our groceries in another suburb that is only 8 minutes drive away from home. In order to go home from there, we’d have to drive across a river on a bridge. According to my (accurate) assessment, our bearings are so:

So, to go home, at the end of the bridge, we should turn left to go towards North.

HOWEVER, just to confuse people, the road looks like this:

Just a week ago after doing groceries and travelling home, this incident happened.

We were crossing the bridge when I spotted cars traveling on the road highlighted in pink:

I asked the husband, “If we took that road, where would it take us?”

There was a long pause…. and then he replied, “That’s the road we take to go home. We’ve been taking that road for the past TWO years.”

*Silence*

In my mind, I was working this out (let me rotate the map only because we have now reached the bend and straight ahead is south, not east):

See? How I am making a RIGHT TURN when I wanted to go home? It should have been a LEFT TURN!!! No????? How could both turns right bring you to both North AND South?!?!?!? I don’t get it!!!!!!!!!

At this point, my brain was about to explode and I must have looked like this:

Husband asks with trepidation, “….a..are you okay?….”

And that’s when I…

It’s too hard. I’m not going to fight it anymore.

 

Husband has to get in the last words though. He said, “I don’t get how you can take string and make it into garments but not get how the road goes under the bridge.”

 

Are you naturally good at directions? Or are you like me? (I even got accosted once by police because I was hopelessly lost! Something I can boast about!)

So……. two papers are over!

I am done with Maths and Biology! Yay! Chemistry (Very Important Subject) is next and then the last paper is Physical Science.

Maths paper A (calculator free) was easy but I almost died on paper B (calculator section). Funny how during O’levels (Year 10), I used to ace the calculator sections (I once got 98% in that section!) and my classmates would do much better in the calculator free sections. (They thought I was weird.)

Well now the opposite is true. :-/

My dear Mum in law is here to help out with the kids as I study. The downside (or is it an upside? haha) is that I am putting on weight! She cooks such delicious meals that I cannot stop eating!!!!!!!

So much for trying to go on a diet.

So for the past few days, she cooked this awesome chicken soup with onions (carrots, potatoes etc) and it tastes SO GOOD I drank a lot of it.

So this morning, thanks to the onions, I had this massive urge to pass gas but I controlled it as I was in the examination room (Biology paper). I think I risked methane poisoning.

So for THREE hours, I held in toxic gas.

When the paper was finally over, as soon as my paper was collected, I dashed out of the room and rushed into the toilet.

Is this too much info? But then it’s the highlight of my day!

So………. these are the other items I’ve been rushing like mad to complete:

I made two of these:

They look like that when both are hung up behind the car seats:

It’s to store the kids’ books, toys, flash cards, umbrellas, hats etc etc.

We already have a mesh pocket at the back of both front seats but it was over flowing and driving me nuts. Besides, we need more ‘slots’ to store those various stuff in!

Here’s a close up:

If you look closely, you can see the tabs I made with velcro sewn on. These are to hold plastic bags of rubbish or to hang my knitting bags on road trips

I also sewed on these purdy labels:

Nad likes the organisers. I guess that hard work didn’t go to waste afterall!

Ever since Chubbs started to sit in his baby chair instead of the infant car seat, I’ve been wanting to make seat belt covers for him.

Sunshine has a pair that someone gave to us when she was born.

So I made these:

to match with the car organisers!

Then I thought that I should make one pair for Sunshine too.

So that she won’t feel left out! (And the backseat would also be more coordinated… hehehe)

How do you find my new car ‘decorations’? I think Chubbs likes it pretty much!

(Notice the car themed fabric? I love the blue!)

So why all this rush and why the sudden urge to sew stuff for the car?

Remember I wrote about The Project not long ago? Because it’s a HUGE Project, it comes in many parts.

Some parts have been done now and the next part is actually to move house.

Uh huh. we are moving. Relocating. Woohoo! And not just across the street. Not across a few suburbs either! Not even across the same state! Yep. We are moving INTERSTATE.

We will be taking the road because we want to punish ourselves /are out of our minds/ want to see Australia and it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.

3 adults (including my dearest sister who so lovingly offered to come along and squeeze in between two babies in the car), 2 babies, 2 dogs and I would imagine, quite a lot of luggage. All in our not-so-big car. Woohoo! Fun times! (Not?)

We plan to take the drive slow. No rush and would probably be on the road for more than a week.

Apparently, if we drove for 24 hours straight a day, we can reach our destination in less than 2 days. Lol!!!!

So therefore, I had to rush through my spinning and sewing projects because we have to pack. My sewing machine has been kept away in her box and my sewing table dismantled. My spinning wheel has to be put aside too.

The side effects of that is that I have severe castonitis. I want to cast on 4 sweaters and like 5 shawls and many other projects now. AND bring them all on the trip with me.

What? You’ll never know what can happen! Our stuff might be delayed for a year and these projects would be the only ones I’ll have for that year! We could be stranded in the desert (although apart from sanity reasons, I don’t see how knitting can help us in the desert) *touch a lot of wood*! We could go through a snowstorm!!! (In summer.) Hey! Anything can happen!

So yeah!

My exams are in 2 to 3 weeks and we are moving right after them. If I had a stress level gauge, it would be hitting the sky by now. I think I’ve been acting rather cuckoo recently due to all these…..factors and probably stepped on Nad’s toes quite a lot. Sigh. I need to take a chill pill.

So would you help me move by going to my store:

And buy some yarn?

Relocation sale, baybee! (We ship worldwide. Just send an enquiry for a quote.)

When I was designing Mossy, I had to rip it back a number of times as I couldn’t get the calculations to work. It was after some time that I realised I had written “8 x 8 = 48″ on the top of the paper. Therefore, it didn’t take me very far.

Then, this Monday in Maths class, the teacher wrote y = x² on the board (we were doing calculus, finding derivatives) and he went around the class asking whats ‘y’ when x is 3 (9), what’s ‘y’ when x is 4, (16)…. and I immediately thought to myself… oh gosh… please don’t ask me!!!!!

ARGH, I was the 8th student and I panicked and replied……………….

……………………….

……………………….

………………………

………………………..

………………………..

56!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*head desk head desk head desk*

I’m no good with 7 and 8 times table. I only memorised up to 6 when I was a kid and got lazy with 7 and 8. 9 can be calculated by using your fingers.

I’ll teach you…

Hold up 10 fingers, palm facing away from you.

With 1 x 9, just put down your left pinky. You have 9 fingers left ‘standing’. So the answer is 9.

With 2 x 9, put down your left ring finger (it will be the only finger that’s down, your pinky will be back up). You will have 1 finger on the left of the ring finger and 8 fingers on the right of it. So the answer is 18.

With 3 x 9, put down your left middle finger and you will have 2 fingers to the left of it and 7 to the right of it. Answer 27.
Carry on in this fashion…. 7 x 9, put down your right pointer, you get 6 to the right of your right pointer and 3 to the left of it… answer 63….

So yes… I don’t know 7 x 7, 7 x 8, 8 x 8 by heart. Ok? Sometimes 7 x 6 is also a problem for me.

Sigh.

I wonder if I can get into med school? My classmates were probably laughing in their hearts then. *Hangs head down in shame*.

Photos were taken with my mobile phone – which explains the graininess and low quality.

Sorry people. I’ve been busy again. It’s so hard to get things done around here with the kids

HOW do people have 10 kids and still stay sane!?!?

On the news side:

Our regular place for grocery shopping, Spud Shed, has been burnt down a few days back. See this link.

Both Nad and I are shocked. We were just there a few days before it was burned down. The staff there have always been very kind to us and they adore the kids. They sometimes give us free veges and their produce have always been fresh, despite their low prices!

They have made living here very affordable for us when we were broke. God really helped us by showing us this little treasure trove.

We feel very very sad for the owner and the employees. And also sad that we would now have to shop in the bigger, more expensive supermarts now.

Nad was just telling me a few days ago, “When you choose the spuds (potatoes), don’t choose the small ones! They are so difficult to peel.”

Well.. now I can’t even choose them! Because Spud Shed has burned down.

Will try to update soon. Am doing a lot of crafty stuff now. Too many at one go, actually. Kinda overwhelmed. Which is not good. Coz they are supposed to make me relax.

What have you been up to?