Every time my finger has hovered over the delete button something has made me stop. Do I want to lose this space? This precious real estate that is mine to own and control and direct?

It’s become a little harder now that I am back at work, less time for blogging and more implications about what I blog about. It’s hard when you want to write, but have to censor yourself so much for the risk of exposing your true self and those around you.

Of course, I never click that button, this space means too much to me. Even though there is stuff in my back catalogue that makes me cringe, and there are few opportunities now for me to regularly write, it’s still mine, and having this little bit of the universe allows me to feel connected even when real life around me is so unconnected from what I am feeling.

So I dip my toe back into the world that calms my anxieties, soothes my soul and provides me with a blank white screen of venting space. Let’s see if I can wade deeper and discover the benefits of blogging again.

I am one of these people who really want to contribute to the world.  I want to not only be doing good, but living good.  It seems so far away from my current world of such money burning capitalism that it makes me sad at times to see the void between my current world and my dream world.

I have accepted that I am a dreamer, and for me to actually commit and do something in the past usually always required the support of my network, be it work, family or friends, without their persuasion and reassurance, I often get bogged down in the questions, in thinking it through too much, in over analysing what may be, instead of just doing it and finding it out myself.

So my goal, for the next 12 months, is to start stepping up.  Stop dreaming and start doing.  Surround myself with people who inspire and motivate.  Commit to doing things and see them through to the end.  To show my children a way of life that I want them to be proud of, to appreciate the life they have, and empathise with those that don’t have the opportunities they have. To nourish my soul by doing that things that give me joy, and bring joy to others.

and sew more dresses like this one:

(It’s a pattern I have done before, but new material which was horrible to work with, you can’t look too closely, but from a distance this dress rocks!)

We are just getting our computer back up and running again, hopefully, some more pics and posts will be along shortly!

I was always open to the idea, the concept, of helping others to have a family. Even before I was a mother myself I had images of being that wonderful woman who’d carry a child for someone else who just can’t possibly do it themselves (be a surrogate).

After my second child, I knew I would never have been able to comfortably live with that scenario. I would have been a dismal failure. One of those horrible people not able to hand over the babe. To have carried a child in my womb, where my body has nourished a life for nine months and forever carry the scars to remind myself of the time we shared together? No that was just too personal.

It was the advice that I was to lose my womb, the need to have a hysterectomy, that made me re-visit the giving of a family in whatever way was possible. I talked to my doctor and looked into Altruistic Egg Donation – the anonymous donation of eggs to enable a man/woman to have an embryo implanted and hopefully grow their own family.

It was an awesome dream and yes I wanted to be part of it.  The more I looked into it though the scarier it became. There were no medical coverages at this time – all costs incurred and possible complications – were at the expense of the donor. Furthermore my impending hysterectomy (at a time when I was still breastfeeding) meant I was not able to undertake the hormone treatment required. It was a dream that faded with the reality of life and the burdens of raising a family and returning to the work force. It was all just too hard.

Then along came some media coverage out of the blue on the topic of donating eggs and I just had to make comment on facebook. I tend to say what I’m thinking/feeling…not always a good thing. But in this instant it did good. I had two friends (husband and wife) ask me if I was joking. I said no, I was keen to donate if it felt right. They asked. I said yes this feels right.

Wow that decision has taken me down a road I just didn’t anticipate.

Here I am in the middle of a hormone cycle – nothing complicated yet, just the natural hormones given to a woman to regulate her cycle. I am currently working together with my recipient friend to be “in sync” with each other.

In a few short weeks we will commence the high hormone cycle where I will provide myself with daily injections of FSH to grow the number of eggs for the harvest. At the same time my friend will be peaking in her hormone treatment in preparation for the implantation of an embryo…and her husband is preparing himself for the embarrassing presentation of his donation in a cup!! There are some of the harsh realities you just have to laugh at!

The surgery is minor though there is some heavy pain expected when the ‘fullness’ of the eggs in both ovaries just before the harvest is described as being painful and similar to the initial contractions of labour, or a bad period pain. I won’t be able to run or carry my son in that week. Does it make me a bad person to think that is just the worst thing of all this?? I’m bright enough to know that this pain is just temporary – as is the inability to run and carry my boy. And so Worth it!! Though I’m sure I will be calling my sister and bemoaning my state at this time.

My thoughts so far into it: – the doctors visits are confusing. They often say conflicting things and there is so much involved!  The blood tests have been endless and the vaginal probing – enough said!

But then you catch the eye of the couple you are helping and they look at you, like they have never seen you before, they talk of the possibility of bringing a child into this world with such precaution and awe, you feel swallowed up by a world that is bigger than you. You are just contributing, just a mere number in the threesome that is needed.

I am curious how others see this experience. There are so many things that arise along the way:

How to tell your family, who to tell in your family, do you let your friends know, when do you tell people? How to explain to work the numerous absences? How to cope when it is not all going as planned? How to decide the extent of your involvement (we have been asked to stay in touch and be close/involved with the family and pending children).

I am hoping there is going to be joy at the end of this road, I don’t think it will be the positive glowing experience I am now experiencing should it end in failure. I think for me that would be the most difficult thing to deal with.

Won tons

200gm minced pork (or mince it yourself like I did!)

200gm green prawn meat

1/2 tin (about 100gm) of water chestnuts

All the coriander roots and stems from one store brought bunch, chopped

2 spring onions, chopped

1 tablespoon of oyster sauce (or a combo of hoi sin & fish sauce)

sprinkling of white pepper

Now you want to chop these up finely, but not too finely as part of the experience is sampling the lovely textures of the prawn, the chestnuts etc.  Mix it all together and get your won ton wrappers ready.  I brought mine ready-made, and cut from an Asian Supermarket for around $2.  It had about 60 or 80 wrappers so I encourage you to double the mixture above, make them all at once and freeze some won tons for another night!

Place a spoonful onto the wrapper and gather up, pressing the won ton wrapper firmly so it holds.  Wet fingers will greatly assist with this, but the wrappers are very thin and your wet fingers will be the cause of many rippings if you aren’t carefull!

Place on a plate and keep in fridge (wrapped in glad wrap) until ready.

Now for the soupy bit

You will need a litre of stock, I just use the store brought ones, but it would be so much more amazing with a home made stock.  I would also recommend not getting the salt reduced one.  You need the salty flavour to really bring this dish out, and you would just end up compensating with soy sauce anyway.

I place in some minced garlic, some roughly chopped spring onions (the rest of the bunch minus the two from the won tons) and cooked that on a gentle boil.  I then prepared some ready-made egg noodles – now if you prepare, go with rice noodles, think or thin but my preference is the Singapore noodle kind.  Now dump the won tons in the soup and also add any other veggies you may be interested in.  My choices are usually bok choy and/or choy sum and sometimes broccoli or green beans (depending whats in the fridge!).  Turn up the heat and wait till the water boils.  You may want to add some more water, and some soy sauce and fish sauce to taste (remember you are after a really delicate flavour , not a really robust one).

Get your bowl ready, add the now drained noodles, place a bunch of bean sprouts on top and ladle some soup out.  4 or 5 won tons is HEAPS! Top with some fresh coriander leaves and serve immediately.  For the adults we flavored ours with some hot chilli sauce, and I put a little hoi sin in the kids bowls.

Enjoy!

Of course, chopsticks are always an exciting part of dinner!

And sometimes we find new ways of using them

But eventually the food gets in

]]> http://actinglikeamama.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/a-weekend-that-winded-up-with-won-tons/feed/ 2 actinglikeamama http://actinglikeamama.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/four-years/ http://actinglikeamama.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/four-years/#comments Sat, 21 May 2011 00:27:07 +0000 actinglikeamama http://actinglikeamama.wordpress.com/?p=623 ]]> Monday is coming around all too quickly.  I still remember when The Dant was like this:

And now, he is growing up so quickly right before my eyes

With Joe still working plenty of insane hours at work, and me still learning to juggle work, the kids etc – many a night has been spent with me slurping a bowl of something in front of the computer.   I find the computer so much more interactive than television, it suits my rapidly shortening attention span (good writing much?) and the glow from the computer screen ensures that I can see anything living or otherwise enter my bowl (Did i ever tell you about the time we were baby-sitting a friends bird and it flew into the Bolognese sauce I had spent hours preparing?).  Anyway, I digress, this post is not a recipe for the above meal, it was tasty, but by no means perfect – it was a gorgonzola, mushroom and shallot sauce, but I mixed a few recipes together, added my own twist, yet it still needed something…..more.  Anyway, I shall impart the wisdom of the recipe if I ever discover how to turn it from good – to sensational!

Anyway, one of the things I thought I would write a little about, is the place of Social Media in the workplace.  I have really no comments, I am just putting it out there, hoping to hear your thoughts or suggestions of places for research.  I have been given the opportunity at work to do some real research in Social Media and how we can use this in regards to Recruitment.  So many organisations are doing this and doing it well, and its a shame the APS are yet again, living in the dark ages.

It’s an exciting time to be able to utilise a passion and strong interest of mine, and hopefully find a place where it fits appropriately and effectively within the work we do. I am really motivated by being back in an environment where you can play your part as a change agent, and hopefully establish some ideas that can actually be of assistance in both short and long term measures for the organisation.  Of course, it helps when you’re fully supported by peers and managers too.

So, have you ever used or seen some great examples of Social Media in terms of recruitment? Care to share (you can send me an email or tweet if you prefer!)??

PS _ i promise we have some photos coming, I have been slack on the camera front but with The Dants birthday next week I can guarantee there will be some amusing shots to share – Dante has chosen a ‘Star Wars” theme party (he hasn’t seen the movies?) and I have promised to make him a Yoda cake…………..  Watch this space for the Cake Wreck!!

Okay, here are some shots of the kids dancing, just to tide you over!:

After lamenting the fact that I was close to throwing out my slowcooker, so depressed was  I with a funny “same” taste that I seemed to get every meal I cooked with it, a lovely lady from work offered me a recipe book for slowcookers to borrow.

Well, it has certainly reignited my love of the slow cooker, and now with those cold wintery nights seeping in, and my hours at work every quickly rising, it couldn’t have come at a better time.  I have now come to the conclusion that perhaps the metallic kind of flavour might come from tinned tomatos?  Any thoughts??

Anyway, this recipe book led me towards making a lovely, warming curried pumpkin soup, a scrumptiosly rich beef stroganoff type dish and inspired me to create the above picture.

We had some pork belly waiting for some attention so while the book didn’t provide any scrummy pork belly dishes, it did allow me to think quite differently about how to use the slowcooker.  I guess in the past I have always made ‘soupy’ type dishes.  After reading the book, and doing a bit of a google search I adapted a few recipes to come up with this.

1.5kg pork belly (try get as much meat as you can on it)

In a slow cooker, add the following :

2 cups soy

80gm palm sugar

1/4 cup rice wine (or chinese wine, or sherry)

4 whole star anise

a good sprinkle of chinese five spice

chillies – as much or little as you like, and whatever texture you like (I only had chilli flakes but would have loved to of put two big whole chillies in!)

1 tsp whole black peppercorns

2-4 cups of water

Mix together and alter to taste – you want it to be fairly balanced.

Add the pork belly in and make sure the liquid covers the whole belly, if not you will need to keep tossing it over.  Now I sat the pork belly in this “marinade” overnight but I don’t know if this is needed or not.  In the morning turn the slow cooker on low-med and leave for 8-10 hours.

Now take the pork belly out of the liquid and place in a pan.  Grill for 10 minutes or so to get a crackly top.  Meanwhile, heat the liquid in a saucepan until it thickens.

Slice the pork belly into serving slices (and then again into bite sized pieces if you want to only use chopsticks/forks) and serve on rice with some vegetables (I quickly sauteed them in sesame oil) and a good dollop of the sauce.

Pure wintery bliss!!!

Now speaking of new cooking experiences, yesterday was Good Friday, and Joe would not let it go by without the obligatory seafood meal, so I made a big batch of pasta marinara (our neighbours boy was over and he had three bowls which I am taking as a good sign!) but I also made some oysters kilpatrick.  Claudia was fascinated!

With the cold winds embracing us, we have now replaced our outdoor activities with some indoor ones, mainly (much to Dante’s excitement) the Wii!

Halfway through the easter break and already I am exhausted!! Now this little bunny needs to hop into bed to get ready for the BIG EGG HUNT tomorrow (yes, the camera is charging!)

Happy easter everyone xoxox

I’m the one that went to that blogging conference to get myself all motivated yet came back with more questions than answers and suddenly blogging got all too hard and I became disillusioned with the whole thing.  Yeah, that me

So here are some photos of late that might give you a little glimpse into our world or late..

Final Spring harvest -(although one month into autumn and we are still picking tomatoes!)

Grandparents came to visit

Which is always a delight!

and then there was a family reunion to celebrates Monica’s 40th!

Of course celebrating requires pretty peacock eyelashes!

Sunny autumn days allowing for hours of uninterrupted play

The first of the autumn harvest – so many pumpkins!!

]]> http://actinglikeamama.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/still-here/feed/ 1 actinglikeamama IMG_3580 IMG_4051 IMG_4166 IMG_4437 IMG_4542 IMG_4583 IMG_4753