G'day, all. No time to address each of you, I'm doing stage II of my barbecued tomato relish and I'm grabbing a few minutes away from the pot. Just a quick thought on those autumn leaves, Linda - my mother used to preserve leaves and flowers for the vase in two different ways - borax (which is toxic - you leave the flowers/leaves in a shoe box with powdered borax coating everything) and glycerin - you stand the leaves in a solution of glycerin & water. Not sure of the concentrations, but from other things I've done with glycerin it's probably 50:50 to begin with and you increase the glycerin concentration over a few days. With the glycerin method, the leaves stay supple and should keep their colour, but they may have an oily feel to them (which will gather dust). I was only very young when she did this, probably about 8 years old.
A busy day today - mother in law & I had to see our GP for our monthly prescriptions. The doctor's a lovely bloke but he's leaving general practice to go into pain management/addiction medicine. So we have to see him in a drug referral clinic and today was particularly stressful, he was over an hour late and the room was full of tetchy addicts. Noisy as well. Bad language, tantrums over the parking cop booking people (parking there is horrible), whinging about how the doctor gets cranky if THEY'RE late, how come he's late and gets away with it (the doctor had been in surgery earlier, you can't just walk out if the operation turns out to be more complicated than you expected). It was depressing just to be around them - they all have this air of being beaten down. We felt very out of place - two older women, dressed conservatively among younger people with drawn faces, tattoos and piercings. Not that we've ever had any problems with the other patients, but the whole air of the place is depressing. And no magazines, other than "How to manage your Hep C" and "you and your addiction - a handbook". Signs on the wall saying, "If you choose to use drugs, that's your business. If you want to stop, we can help."
We were there for two hours. When we left and drove away we were giggling over nothing, like two kids let out of school early - it was a huge relief to be away from the feeling of depression in the place.
It's been misty with very light rain from late afternoon, it's forecast to turn stormy tomorrow, although for once it will be heavier inland and over the dam (yippee!). Tomorrow is my cleaning day but I think I will have to pass on doing the washing - it will only get wet.
Enjoy your Wednesday - I gotta dash, I think the tomato relish is ready for me to stir a bit more.
Marg
