Sportsday

The dreaded day of the year for the young girl who has no interest whatsoever in athletics. She is in a team called Mortlock (red) and has no friends in this group (some of the girls are in her home class but they don't socialise) so I guess having Mum there for the whole day makes it less traumatic for her (I guess that not having me there would force her to socialise or sit alone - whatever, we had a great day). It was windy and cold though and having lost my layer of blubber, the wind just went right through me, despite the fact that I had a thermal t-shirt (from Target) a jumper and a thick overcoat and was still COLD!!! I did manage to bring my woollen gloves but could have done with one of my knitted beanies (which I have taken to making at night whilst watching the box). She did herself proud. She was suffering from a sore throat since Saturday and I kept her home on Tuesday but she did the 100m sprint (came last), 400m run ("Mum, I didn't come last, I came 3rd last", how proud I was to see her trying) long jump (not much success there), and the piece de resistance (i know that is not how you spell it but you get what I mean), she was in the final for the 100m relay (you get picked for this not on ability, but a quiz or a guessing game) and was coming 3rd when CRASH, they have to go around a witches hat at the end of the course and another girl collected her (that and the fact she was probably off balance with a blocked ear all day) and crashed down on her right side and couldn't even stop herself from falling. Man, I nearly cried. She was doing so well and hurt her hip and I bet her pride was broken too. She tried so hard not to cry but I guess the pain and the burst bubble just overwhelmed her. I didn't even see how the rest of the team went but found out they came last. They were however, rewarded with a Fourth place badge and I gathered up the girls and we went and saw the teachers as they didn't give the badges to them at the end of the race. They were pleased and Tori was stoked (through her pain and tears) as she said to me earlier on in the day that she didn't think she would get a ribbon. Her whole team actually came last on the day (years 3-7) but it was around 20 points between the final 3, the team that came first romped it in. Good luck to them.



Note: if this at all sounds like a parent who is disappointed on her child's lack of achievements, I've written it wrong. I am proud of my girl and how she has come ahead from last year, she ran the whole distance in the 400m, she was never disappointed that she never shot a goal, she was happy that Mum was with her and had someone to cheer her on. She is a legend in my eyes, (and has a fourth place ribbon to proudly show her Dad when he comes home next week).

Click go the shears (sorry, that's not very original)

Well, today we (I mean Bullet) crutched 82 sheep (for those of you that don't know what crutching is, it's shearing the wool off their bums. They are getting the full monty in September. Well Bullet was just going to do the ones that had daggy bums but I suggested that he might as well do them all, and the silly bugger did ! He was knackered by the end. I wont embarrass him by giving you the time/amount of sheep crutched because a) he isn't 18 anymore, b) he's not a shearer, c) he's not even 28 anymore, d) he did a great job. I was on the broom and swept up the crutchings and bagged them. I also got the job of moving them round in the pens, chasing them up the race and pushing them out of the shed (when they needed it).

Later on that day, we chased up the lambs (25) and put rings on their tails and the boys had their nuts ringed - I will embarrass myself here as I think they're callled lacerator rings, but I've heard them called lasterator rings - anyway, their tails and whoopsies will fall off sooner or later. I caught about 5 (refer previous story about me catching things) and held them while Bullet did the deed (Oh, and we also drenched them (worm medicine I think) and ear tagged them) but I am obviously not cut out for that role so I got brave and put the rings on the tails and drenched them but was a but dubious about nutting the poor little fellas so Bullet did that and gave them earrings. Tori was the drench holder and did a great job too. Who would have thought hey ?

Footnote: When Bullet sheared Ruby's Mum today (refer "we are with lamb" and "goodbye, ruby tuesday") we realised that her lambs would never have survived with her. A previous shearing session (who knows how long ago) had resulted in one of her nipples being shorn off - OW!, and the other was blocked, maybe suffering from mastitis. Poor bugger.

He finally finished and was buggered. I think a few times he mentioned that he wasn't 18 anymore.