A brief family update and peanut butter analysis
This is a simple “where are we at” update for those who follow the family content! 
No political stuff, no legal battle content, just plain old family stuff. You are relieved about that, aren’t you? 
Night Owl
The school year is drawing to a close. Miss O 1 has basically finished for the year, this week she is enjoying a week of Year 12 orientation. BIG year next year for Miss O 1. She also turned 18 this month – that is a very important milestone in a young woman’s life! No party, she has plans to have a joint party with a girlfriend later.
Mr O Jnr 1 is heading into Year 10 and has recently learnt that if you STUDY and prepare for Maths Tests, you get REALLY GOOD MARKS! Funny about that! At one stage he was threatened with being relegated to Maths B. We sat down and had a little chat. Was this what he wanted for himself? No, it was not. So kudos to our young man, he knuckled down and put in the effort. Maths A it is!
The simple joy of a great new blender!
Readers who have been following us for a while will remember the Is a grinder a blender? saga just after the ARRIVAL 12 months ago! Money was very…. no, money was EXTREMELY tight back then but we had to have this “grinder” in order to feed the kids something they would eat. Fish and chips was NOT a winner! 
Breville Optima – RETIRED!!!!
We dashed out and bought the cheapest blender we could find. We think we paid $90 and the Breville site says the recommended retail prince (RRP) is $89.95. Perhaps it has dropped 5 cents being a little out of date now. I’ve linked to Breville under that picture, but that may not work in 12 months!
As strange as this may seem to readers, I had never actually owned a blender. I had no idea what was a good or bad one, but I know one thing: you get what you pay for. Given I could see much more expensive blenders on the shelves, I was inclined to think this one wasn’t going to do the job for us. Mr O really was desperate for us not to spend any more than we absolutely had to at that time, so we got it.
The following 12 months was the Battle of the Blender! It managed soft foods, like tomatoes, quite well. Harder vegetables, like capsicums (peppers) and onions, were a struggle for the poor little thing. Also the sheer volume of blending for six people is a heavy load!
Peppers, tomatoes and onion
I finally found if I processed the tomatoes first so there was some liquid in the jug, it did handle the capsicums better! But it really was a battle every week to get this ata (pepper) sauce happening! Blend a bit, half empty the jug, blend a bit more…… Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I do not do pain well
Damn it. I’m in pain. This is a purely venting update from So the chickens come home to roost – scoliosis. To recap, I had the x-ray and dutifully collected the x-ray films and a letter from my osteopath. My spine looks closer to an inverted question mark rather than an exclamation mark, although not remotely as bad as some of the pictures I have looked at on the internet. Armed with x-rays, radiologist’s report and osteopath’s letter, I trot off to the doctor. I leave work an hour early get to the doctor’s on time, only to sit there for one hour waiting. She was running late and by the time I saw her she was clearly stressed.
The doctor declares crisply it can’t possibly be my back as I “must have always had the scoliosis, it doesn’t appear overnight“, it is more likely my hip causing the pain. As far as I know, I don’t have a hip problem, but I guess we will find that out in time. Secondly, no, my back has NOT always looked like this at all! I had a SLIGHT curve in 2008, it has got worse. Surely I am not totally off the planet if I suggest that things can get worse with no noticable pain up until a certain critical point of progression?
Stuck!
Yes, you read that right. Stuck. Miss O 1 and I did our weekly hunting and foraging excursion a day late this week, on Sunday. Where did we spend about 40 minutes? It went like this. Costco’s lifts hold, so the sign says, 133 people. It doesn’t state with or without over-laden shopping trolleys, but 133 it is. Here we were in a lift (elevator for some other nations), ready to descend into the dark, haunting car park. The lift went nowhere. Doors opened and closed several times, still no movement in a downwards direction.
Some shoppers, clearly more sensible than I, disembarked and sought other routes to the lower levels. Miraculously, the lift then started to descend………………………… then came to a very jolting type stop – between floors! Miss O 1 was rather perturbed by this initially, but noticing that Mum wasn’t overly worried, she was OK.
Another passenger pressed the alarm, but not for long enough. OK. Mrs O to the rescue. I pressed for the obligatory 5 seconds and the phone started to ring. Finally we got a response.
“Where are you?”
“In Costo’s lift” – There is only one Costco in Melbourne at the moment, so that was enough information.
“We’ll have a technician there in 15 minutes. How many people are with you?” – Like, DOES THIS MAKE A DIFFERENCE??? If it were only me, was I not so important?
Behave! Ice-cream ban for a month
The Backseat Brigade
A day in the life of Team Oyeniyi can be exhausting, especially Saturdays, our shopping expedition day of the week. Mr O escapes this reconnaissance mission because I can only take four passengers and he has still to get his licence. As soon as he does – Mr O is doing the shopping run!!! Mr O had his first professional driving lesson this morning at 9am: this was a change from me doing the teaching. I can’t have done too badly as a teacher because he received lots of encouraging praise from the instructor.
Upsizing the shopping
Today John and I did our first “upsized” shopping!
Upsized Shopping
20 kgs of rice (44 pounds), 48 rolls of toilet paper, 8 kgs of laundry powder (4 kids make a LOT of washing, I’ve discovered), 60 eggs (not sure how long those will last) and whatever else is in the picture! I’ve just never shopped in bulk before! Quite an experience, I have to say. Costco now have a healthy chunk of my salary!
