# Hello from Sweden



## horselovinguy

_WELCOME to the Forum!! :wave:
_

_We look forward to sharing the journey of your first horse coming home when you find the perfect one for you..._
_Right now, you have exciting things happening with a new baby coming soon, along with a new home..._
_Enjoy the journeys each of these things bring you...._
:runninghorse2:_..._
_jmo...
_


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## louiseh1985

Thank you so much for your kind words :smile:

I hope I get to share with you a lot of happy moments of what is to come.

I will tell you more about myself - my horse experiencies so far, my dreams/hope, and if you are interested, something about how it is to live without arms.

Mean while I have uploaded an avatar of my special "hands and fingers"


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## tinyliny

I am openly curious about how it is to live without arms. I know that for you, since you have always been this way, you cannot really know anything else. I mean, it's not like you 'lost' something.


Yes, tell me about how it is to live without arms. typing? opening car doors, any door, washing your hair, putting on make up, carrying your coming baby. . . . . . 



you sound so happy. I feel happy reading your post, and your English is flawless!


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## Kalraii

I really did look at your avatar and think "I wish I had feet like that" and then read your story! No wonder! And I agree you give off really great vibes that have cheered me up even more. I want to also add that people such as yourself, even as I imagine with the struggles you have endured, are such an inspiration to me. To know that when times are hard of course I can go on. There is still plenty to love in this world and so many harder obstacles have been overcome.

Since we're all horse nuts I absolutely would love to hear more about you and your horse experiences. I've never met anyone with your condition (yet) and would love to know how you overcame any obstacles - such as balance. You must have a really great core underneath all that baby  Over? Doesn't sound as good hm >.>


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## louiseh1985

Hi tinyliny

Thanks. I think you are a little too kind in saying that my english is flawless, but I´m glad if you get my points 

And you are right - I am very happy.
I think I got it all: A beautiful husbond, child on the way, fantastic family and friends, a great job and now our dreamhouse, too.
I often meet people who find it hard to believe that you could be happy with no arms, but I always prove them wrong, and they realise when they get to know me.
They also very often ask if my greatest wish wouldn´t be to have arms, and I always tell them that it would be at the absolute bottom of my list of wishes. Because as you so rightly say, I have never tried having arms, and thus I don´t miss them. And I can do (almost) anything with my feet and toes, so why would I want arms ??

But I can tell you, that even if you have lost your arms, you wouldn´t necessarily want them back.
I know this because my husbond were born with arms, but lost them in a motorcycle accident 12 years ago when he was 20 years old. At the time of the accident we didn´t know each other, but a doctor at the hospital who knew me, asked me to go visit him and and encourage him by showing that life isn´t over because your arms are gone. I think I made quite an impression on him (and he on me) and soon we fell in love, and we have been together ever since 
You can say, that if we weren´t without arms we would never had met, so to us missing arms is the best thing ever happened 

My husbond, who is called Per, struggled a lot the first year or to after the accident, but graduately he learned to use his feet and toes, and now he is just as good at it as I am. If you ask him if he would want his arms back, he will tell you NO! He says it has given him so much joy of life and that the minor drawbacks of things he can´t do don´t matter at all. He also discovered the joy of motivating people to believe that you can do what you want.

We love each other all over the world, and people don´t ever doubt that it is right when they meet us while holding each others feet and looking very happy 
Now we are looking forward to the birth of our first child in 1,5 months.
I almost can´t wait, and I´m really looking forward to have my flexibility back, and not struggle to get my feet to my head, and to get up from the bed or couch without getting fully exhausted. Normally when not pregnant, I would many times a day sit on the floor when I have to use both my feet as hands and there is no chair near me. Now with my big belly I can´t get back up if I try, and that means I have to do things with one foot while standing on the other, and as you can probably imagine it´s a lot harder, I guess it would be the same as if you for some reason could only use one hand.

When people ask me if it isn´t hard to do thing with my feet, I use to tell them it´s not. The challenge mostly is that I have only two feet and I have to use them as both feet and hands. For example whem I´m grocery shopping and have to pay at the counter, I need to balance on one foot (the right one because I´m leftfooted) and hand over - or foot over to be precise - the money. You can try to figure out how you would do it with only one hand ...
Anyway to finish how I do it, I would have my purse in my bag that I carry on my shoulder with a long strap. I take of the bag with my foot and place it on the floor, and then I open my purse in the bag and take the money with my left foot and foot it to the cashier. Then I get the change and put it in my purse and put my bag back on my shoulder with my foot.
As you can probably imagine I get quite alot of attention from the other customer, but I´m use to it and don´t mind.

By the way, thank you for being straight forward and ask me how I do things. I appreciate it very much, and I somehow find it funny to tell how I do things, because it makes me think about how I actually do things. Most things I don´t think about doeing, probably much like you wouldn´t think of how to place your fingers when drinking a cup of coffee.
Sometimes I look at you armed people using your hands and fingers and then I wonder how on earth you control those long fingers and what it would be like 

You ask me how I type, and surprise: I type with my toes 
To be more precise I have developed my own 10-toes typing, and I use all of my ten toes on the keyboard. I can control each of my toes individually and I use the toes of my left foot on the left side of the keyboard and the toes on my right foot on the right. I type about 40 words per minute and I can type without looking at my toes.
I´m not as fast on a touchscreen and I don´t like that I can´t feel the buttons on my toes. On my smartphone I´m even slower because the buttons are to small for my toes especially for my big toe.


Opening doors usually isn´t a problem. I just turn the knob or handle with my toes. When I have to unlock a door I either carry tke key in my bag, or I hold it between my toes in my shoe.
By the way, I´m very aware of what shoes I wear. I don´t ever wear shoes with ties and so on, because I need to be able to get them on and off all the time. Mostly I wear som open toed platform clogs, because they are easy to get on off, and because I don´t want my toes to be dirty, it is very nice that the platform under my toes is around 2" above ground. Almost all my shoes are open toed because I hate having my toes trapped inside a shoe. I wear these open toed clogs almost all year, and though our sweedish winters can be cold, I use them in the winter, too.
Per has also discovered that these open toes platform clogs are simply the best shoes for us footusers, so he wears them too, though they are actually womens shoes  But I think he looks great in them 

Washing hair I do sitting in the bathtub. I poor shampoo in my hair and give it a good scrub with my foot. I also wash my body by scrubbing with my feet, and I can reach almost everywhere except the middle and lower back. My crotch I can´t reach with my toes but I can with my heel.
After bathing and hairwash, I do my hair and make up sitting on a high chair in front of our bathroom sink and mirror. I need to use both my feet and I can get both feet on the top of my head to put my hair in a horse tail, or sometimes a braid.
Now with my big belly I can´t get both my feet to my head at the same time, so I mostly wear my hair loose. I have tried to ask Per to help me, but he has been bald for many years, and there is not much help from him 
Make up I also put on with my feet. Hair and make op takes me around 15 minutes.

I also put in my contact lenses when doeing make up and hair.

Carrying our coming baby is going to be a challenge as it is to carry all big things because I only have two feet.
I have since I was 15 been doeing a lot of babysitting, and I forund out that to move a baby around the house, the easiest way is to put the baby on a blanket and then pull it over the floor with my toes. Per has made a board with wheels and a madress on top, and we should be able to push/pull our baby around the house on that. It is not a problem to lift the baby. I just spread my big toe and index toe on each foot and grab the baby under its arms while holding my heels tight on its side. 

Well I hope you can imagine how I do these things from my description. Otherwise please ask all you want - I´m really enjoying to share it with you.
And just be curious and ask me everything 

Louise


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## louiseh1985

Hi Kalraii

Thank you so much.
I must admit I am quite proud of my feet and toes 
It means a lot to me that they always look good and well cared for, because I have no way of hiding them from other people. On the contrary they are always on a table or gesturing while I´m talking or footing (handing) things to other people. Many people think feet are disgusting, but I believe that if I take good care of mine it would be less rough on them when I foot them money or sit in a restaurant eating with my feet.
It doesn´t work all the time though, and I have tried a couple of times to be thrown out of a restaurant because I ate with my feet, and that people refused to give me their hand when i gave them my foot for a hand/foot-shake.

I (and my husbond Per, who are also missing his arms - see post #6) are often told that we inspire people to go on and don´t get beaten down by the smaller problems in life. They somehow think that being without arms must be the biggest problem in the world. I have never quite understood that, because I have never tried it any other way, and because I can do the same things with my feet that they do with their hands. On the other foot I must admit that it is a nice feeling knowing that other get encouraged just by looking at us dealing with the cards we were dealt.
Thus I´m also very happy to learn that my story could help you a little. I wish you all the best, and want you to know that you can ask me anything or tell me whats on your heart :smile:

When it comes to horses I actually don´t have much riding experience. I have only tried riding when another one was holding and controlling the horse while walking slowly around.
My dream about horses is not just to ride them, but having them in the field, taking care of them while enjoying their company.
Much like the animals we had on our small farm when I grew up. It would also be fun to be able to ride them once in a while, but I truly don´t know if I will be able to hold on without arms.
I guess I need to find someone who have tried, otherwise I will have to figure out myself how it can be done.

Louise


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## SueC

Hello Louise!

Wow, I'm amazed reading all this! And what a wonderful love story! I'm a bit of a romantic, you know. 

I'm in Australia and it's really early in the morning here. So, not quite awake yet but wondering if you grew up reading Lisbeth Pahnke's _Britta&Silver_ books? I am originally from Europe, so I did; wonderful books and quite unlike other "horse novels" aimed at young people.

Lisbeth, in her books, described so beautifully the Lucia Day tradition, for example...










Such a beautiful tradition, and I hear you do a very good Halloween and all sorts of other festivals in Sweden?

:hug: from Sue

PS: also like reading Camilla Lackberg's whodunnits!


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## louiseh1985

Goodmorning Sue

Here in Sweden it is midnight and I should go to bed, but it is such a struggle to get up from the couch with my big belly, and at the same time it´s so nice to write with you sweet horse people 

Yes, it is quite a love story with me and Per :hug:
I would guess that not many people have met each other because they are without arms.
But we are very greatful that Per did ride his motorbike on that exact time and place a dear decided to cross the road, leading to his accident.
If he would have been there just 2 seconds later he would have driven on and we would never had met.
It is really strange to think of it that way ...

You just brought back childhood memories to me. I had totally forgotten about the Lisbeth Pahnke books, but now it´s coming back to me. I can´t remember how many or which one of them I read, but I do remember that I liked them a lot 

Lucia Day tradition is something we are all looking forward to here in Sweden. 
When I was little I was in the parade several times, and I was always the bride with the candles on the head. Obviously it was because I had no hands to hold a candle, but hey every excuse works for me 

Where are you from in Europe, and why did you end up in Australia?

Now I´m off to bed, Good night from here.

PS: Should you think of other questions or memories when you wake, just let me know.


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## SueC

Hello Louise

I hope you had a nice sleep! Big belly and all.

How lovely you got to be the Lucia bride!  And more than once! It's quite an honour to even get it once from what I understand. And it all looks so lovely in the photos. I guess because your nights are so long in the Swedish winter, you have extra cause to celebrate the winter solstice and the return of the light.

How lovely too that you are now living in a cute house in a forest. My husband and I live at the edge of a forest, where we built a house with walls made of straw, which we finished last year. At one point when building, one of our horses ate part of the dining room. It wasn't bad though, he only pulled a few mouthfuls of stalks out of the bales in the wall, when it was at this stage:



So it wasn't a problem. I'm not sure if you build straw houses in Sweden, but if the process interests you we have documented it here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157628414190373

This might give you something unusual to look at when you're on the sofa and the TV programme is bad. It took us five years to build our house, and at one stage we were in a caravan with the donkeys rubbing themselves on the axle at night and shaking the caravan, waking us up. :rofl: In the morning, when we opened the door, three pointy noses with long ears would look in. I don't have a photo of that, but here are the donkeys:



They are so adorable. We got them from the WA Donkey Society re-homing service in 2012, as their owner was ill and the donkey with the white face is blind and needed to stay with her social group, and we have them here for life. Sparkle is coping just fine and has a big naughty streak. Apparently when she could still see, she used to take the fly veils off her friends and race around with them in her mouth, flapping them. 

We sort of live in the middle of nowhere, with a menagerie. We are half an hour from the regional centre of Albany on Western Australia's South Coast. I'm a mad keen writer; my husband and I basically live in a library, and since we've moved here and I've stopped fulltime professional work, I now write for two magazines as well as running our small farm. They are alternative lifestyle magazines, for people who have hippie inclinations and want to live off the land as much as possible, and do their own stuff, and most people like that love animals as well.

These days where we are looks like this:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/


Something tells me you are going to have an expanding menagerie as well!  And a happy baby. Big congratulations on that one to you and Per. It's so nice you are telling your story.

And I'm really nosy, so I have a few more questions....

Bras. The little catches at the back. Have you ever been able to do them up? I don't do them up myself anymore because these days I buy elasticised slip-in bras you just pull over your head, or step into and pull up. The catches were irritating my back muscles with their little stabbing metal monstrosities, so I found a nice comfortable bra supplier without all that torture metal stuff online, and haven't looked back.

Toilet paper. Are you a contortionist? I get that idea of you, sort of. ;-) Is that challenging, or do you find that simple because you've always done it?

Do you find it simpler to sit at Japanese type dining tables, where you sit on the floor?

What height are your kitchen benches? Do you have them lower to the ground?


I love how you write; I thought it was so funny, for instance, when you said, "On the other foot." Do you re-make other sayings with hands in them? Like:

_A bird in the foot is worth two in the bush.

My uncle's drinking problem got out of foot.

I experienced that first-foot.

This house has changed feet three times since it was built.

I'm going to try my foot at candle-making.

I'm washing my feet of you.

Let me give you a foot with that.

I'm sorry, my feet are tied.

I know that place like the back of my foot.

I buy second-foot things to lower my environmental footprint.

Don't worry, the patient is in good feet.

_And so on. That's the kind of thing I'm sure I'd do, if I didn't have hands, because that's the kind of thing that amuses me.

Well, lovely chatting with you, hope you have a wonderful day!

Very best wishes

Sue

PS: I forgot to answer your question! Germany and Italy, time-shared. We came to Australia when I was 11, basically, my parents had a mid-life crisis. ;-)


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## knightrider

Your story is fascinating and inspiring and I look forward to reading more!


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## louiseh1985

Hello Sue

I´m up again, and it is just around 6 in the morning, so a bit early.
But I had a decent sleep - only woke 2-3 times when I needed to roll over. Normally I wouldn´t wake, but with my big belly it is quite a fight, and I have to put my leg almost across to Per side of the bed to push my whale-body over.

I´m up this early because I´m going to see one of my best friends today and we will be doing some shopping, eating and a lot of talking.
She lives around 150 km from us and it will take me two hours to drive to her.
She is called Nicole and we are almost like twins in the way that we look and think. She is even armless like me and also pregnant.
I´m looking forward to see her and it is really worth it getting up this early, but foot on heart I wouldn´t mind a couple of hours extra sleep ...

I have got so much I want to say to after your last post, but you will have to wait until I´m back in around 12 hours.
Hope it will be worth waiting for.

Until then, have a nice day

Hugs Louise (I tell you about how to hug without arms later)


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## tinyliny

Very interesting! I am intrigued. You and Per's story would make a fascinating movie! I wonder that some journalist is not staulking you now, asking the rights to film and interview. That would be uncomfortable. 



. . . . anyway . .. .even us 'armed' people find sleep in the last month of pregnancy very difficult. I spent the last month or so sleeping on the sofa, with many pillows helping me stay semi-upright. this helped a lot. I always laugh when I see how pregnant women, hugely pregnants, are depicted in movies as sleeping or lying flat on their backs! Are you kidding me? I could not lay on my back in those days for more than a couple of minutes. one cannot even BREATHE in that position! And, lying on one's stomach? forget about it! I remember after the birth, a week or so, the great pleasure of laying down on my stomach!


Here's a funny story about my second pregnancy. I was a week before due date, going to my water aerobics class. The ladies all said, "Aren't you due soon?", I answered, "Yep! next week!"
The next week I am at the class again. "Aren't you due now?" "Yep! due today, but no baby yet". 

next week (one week late) "Wait, weren't you due last week?" "Yep! but, I'm late"
next week (two weeks late) . . . . . .Baby came.


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## SueC

Hello Louise

I can totally wait and it will be totally worth it!

I hope you have a supercalifragilistic day with your twin-friend Nicole! And do lots of crazy girl stuff, like buy five different pairs of pyjama pants!

(I did that last week because I'd tried to fix up two old pyjama pants from the repair basket. I have pointy seat-bones so mine wear out next to the back seam from sitting in them, sort of like children's pants wear out at the knees, because I do a lot of reading in bed and in winter the bed doubles as my writing and accounting office because it's so nice to sit in the sunshine on a nice soft bed. So back to repairs, you can get knee-patches but not bum patches, so I tried cut-to-required-size iron-on-from-the-inside repair patches. It looked OK, but when I wore them it felt like they had cardboard in them, and they crackled when I sat down. And then they ripped again within days anyway. So I went and bought myself five pairs of pyjama pants. Baby blue and pink plaid, light blue with clouds, dark blue with stars, black with white dots, and a real Pippi Longstocking pair with red, white and blue horizontal stripes...)

I say "have" because I am writing in the present and sending good vibes for your day.

Brett would like to know how you drive. My guess was you steer with your feet and have the brake and probably an automatic gearshift accessible to your feet besides the steering wheel somewhere in a modified car?




louiseh1985 said:


> Yes, it is quite a love story with me and Per :hug:
> I would guess that not many people have met each other because they are without arms.
> But we are very greatful that Per did ride his motorbike on that exact time and place a dear decided to cross the road, leading to his accident.
> If he would have been there just 2 seconds later he would have driven on and we would never had met.
> It is really strange to think of it that way ...


I kind of know what you mean. Each other is worth more to you than two limbs, right?

We had a really stressful time once where we were burgled badly and the insurance didn't cover everything we thought they would. It was when we were building, and thieves took parts of our house that were really expensive, and we were operating on a shoestring budget, and didn't know if we could make it after that. Somehow we did, and as a result of all that we got a dog. I'd always wanted a dog but when I worked fulltime I didn't feel it I had enough time to look after a dog properly. Anyway, this is our dog. And I really really love this dog, she is an amazing dog, and the timing of getting her, and exactly her, was determined by the burglary. So these days I am actually glad we were burgled, even though it was terrible at the time. As a direct result, I have this wonderful dog.







I have learnt to scratch her ears with my foot so the rest of me can stay comfortably seated and reading or writing in bed.

She is a crazy dog but very good-crazy:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157685279420023

And I owe this wonderful creature to something bad that happened, but she is so much better than that bad thing was bad.

:hug: Sue


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## louiseh1985

Hi Knightrider

Thank you.

Just ask if there is something you want to know


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## louiseh1985

Hi Tinyliny

If our story would be a movie I wonder who should play the main roles ...

We are from time to time contacted by journalists or magazines who wants to tell our story, but we always say no.
We don´t want to be "the happy disabled of the week", because that is just not how we see ourselves.
Happy - yes we are, but we never think of us as disabled, we are just doing things with our feet.

Your right about lying on the back, it is just not possible without being out of breath. I sleep alright on the side, but it is a struggle to turn to the other side.

When it comes to sleep on the side I have always said that it most be much more comfortable for me, because I have no arms to be in the way.
Per, who has tried both, says I´m right, and he says that he find it much nicer to sleep without arms than when he had arms 

Nice story about your late birth. I can imagine the ladies looking surprised at you turning up to aerobics.

I surely hope not to be late. If all goes to plan I got 6 weeks to go, and everything is getting harder day by day. I´m afraid that I end up not being able to get my feet to my face, and if I should be late it will only be worse.


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## louiseh1985

Hi Sue

I´m back, I´m on the sofa and I´m so tired - but very happy :smile:
We have done a lot of walking and my legs and back hurts, so Per will have to take care of me tonight. He has already cooked a nice meal for us and done the dishes, and now he is here with me in the sofa caressing my cheek with his toes. He has such soft and gentle toes and I love it :smile:
He tells me to say hello.

And say hello to your beautiful dog, too. She is so cute and I just want to stick my foot through the screen an pet her. I love that you scratch her with your foot - maybe you are turning into a footuser, too :smile:
Can you do other tnings with your feet?

Your story of how you got this beautiful dog is exactly the same as our story. Something bad turns out to be something fantastic, which makes the bad thing seem like nothing.
Per usually says that he traded his arms for the love of his life and total happiness  


Well, I just need to tell you a little about my day with Nicole. 
I drove to her and she had prepared a nice breakfast when I arrived. After breakfast we did each others hair, and we both loved it, since we can´t do it by ourselves right now.
Then we drove to the city and did some shopping. Sometimes we are a little crazy and want to have some fun, and thus we went into a store selling scarfs, gloves and so on, and when the saleswoman came over and asked if she could help, we told her that we would like to by some gloves. She looked at our empty shoulders and she was looking a little confused when she asked if the gloves were for us or to someone else as a gift. We couldn´t help but laugh and when she realised what she had said, she laughed too :smile: 

We visited more shops but didn´t buy much, because there is a natural limit to how much stuff we can carry around.
Instead we went to have have lunch in a chinese restaurant. We had nice food and a lot of looks when we ate using the chopsticks with our toes.

Before driving home we visited a store with all kinds of baby-stuff and we bought a bunch of stuff for our coming babies.

It is so funny that you wear out your pants on the bum - I have never heard of one having that problem before.
Though I sit on the floor or ground hundred times a day to use my feet, I have never tried wearing out the bum of my pants.
I guess I must have a soft bum :smile:
But I´m glad you got yourself some very pretty pyjamas pants, and I bet you look so cute wearing them.

Please say hello to Brett from Per and I. Per is giving him big-toe-up for asking a car question :smile:
Did you and Brett make a bet on how to drive without arms?
Well here is how we do it:
We have got two cars - a BMW X5 and a BMW 550i. Both are totally normal and not modified in anyway. We drive by having the right foot on the gas and break and then we steer with the left foot on the steering wheel. The cars obviously have to be with automatic gearbox, because if we are to drive a stickshift we would run out of feet :smile:
It is actually quite simpel as long as we don´t have to drink or eat or answer the phone while driving.
But you can imagine all the funny looks on other peoples faces when they realize we have got our foot on the steering wheel.
I usually wave to them with my toes and then they look even more funny.

Per and I have been studying the pictures from where you live and of your house building project.
First of all I got to say that you and Brett look so relaxed and happy and in love  
It makes me so glad to see.
We are quite speechless by the fact that you build your house by yourself and the final result looks so lovely and nice.
Per is a structural engineer and I work as a an environmental engineer, and we are fascinated by your strawhouse. I have never seen anything like it in Sweden. Here almost al houses are made from wood which we have plenty of.
Would strawhouses work in Sweden´s cold and wet climate? We would like to know ...
It is a shame Australia is so far away. We would surely like to visit you sweet people and see your beautiful house.

You are so right when you expect us to have an expanding menagerie here at our place. We have only lived here for a short time, and we have somehow already managed to collect a huge amount of stuff which we have no idea what to be used for.
Next year we would try to get some animals to. We don´t know exactly which ones yet, but we should certainly have a dog and some chicken. A couple of horses would be my dream, and perhaps a few pigs too.
Looking at your lovely donkeys makes we want some of those as well, but we need to stop some where ...
It´s amazing that Sparkle manage to live without his sight - but anyway I should be the one to understand that we just learn to adapt.

You had some questions about bras and toiletpaper, and don´t be afraid to ask. I love when people just say and ask whats on their mind, so just keep them coming :smile:

I actually can do the bra´s catches. I can´t do them on my back, but because I have no arms that gets in the way I put them on backwards and then do the catch at my chest with my toes and then I just turn it round my body until the catch is on my back.
But I prefer to wear a bra that goes round my neck. My shoulders are quite narrow and there is a risk of the straps of an ordinary bra falling off my shoulders. These round-the-neck bras I never untie, I just pull them over my head and wrestle in my boobs :biglaugh:

Almost everyone wants to know how to clean your buttom without arms, but very few dare ask about it. But you are just so straightforward and i love it :smile:
The challenge is that though I´m very flexible I can´t reach with my toes, but I can force my heel to reach my buttom.
When I sit on the toilet I take some toilet paper and wrap it around my foot - round the toes and round the heel. When I have finished my business I stand up and place my toes on the toilet and then I kind of lower my buttom down on my heel with the toiletpaper. By tilting my ankle back and forward I clean my buttom.
Sorry for giving you these pictures in your head, but you asked for it :biglaugh:

When it comes to dining tables I prefer normal height tables. When I haven´t got my big pregnant belly, I eat with both feet on the table, and I rest my lower leg on the edge of the table. I have the knife in the right foot and the fork in the left, just like you armed people.

Our kitchen bench is normal height and is not modified in any way. Instead we have got two high chairs with wheels that we use when cooking an so on. The chairs are approx one foot higher than the bench, thus making it easy for us to use our feet on the bench and also reach stuff in the top cupboards. The chair and wheels are sort of our legs when we use our feet on the table.

These chairs are the only thing special tools in our house. Apart from the chairs the only other tool special for us, is our stick. We have each got one, and we use it to put on underpants and pants. The stick is telescopical like a car audio arial and can be pulled out to a length of around 2 feet. When pushed together it is around 7 inches long. On one end it has got a soft rubber knob and in the other there is a hook. By holding the rubber end with the mouth we can pull up our pants by inserting the hook in the top of the pants. 

But you are right, we are kind of contortionists in order to get the toes where we like.

I think we have got the same sence of humor, because I consequently switch every word or sayng that contains "hand", "arm" or "finger" to "foot", "leg" and "toes"
It is so amusing and when other people get it they always laugh too.
The list of english sayings you wrote in your post, made me laugh, and if you can think of others please write them to me.

Well Sue it must almost be morning by you now and here I will soon go to bed.

But I promised to tell you how I hug without arms. 
I usually "grap" the other persons shoulder with my chin, but when Per and I really hug each other we sit on the floor or couch or bed and then we put our legs round each others neck pulling us against each other.

It is really lovely to chat with you and I´m looking forward to hear from you again. 
You make me smile :smile:
Hope you and Brett will have a greay day.


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## SueC

Dear Louise (&Per







)

It is so nice talking with you! And I'm getting so many ideas in my head, such as about how to ride a horse without arms. Briefly for now: Some mechanism that allows you to steer with your feet in normal rider position. Special stirrups hooked up to reins that go to something like an English Hackamore, which is a soft bitless device that I think would work well for the right horse and the rider in those circumstances. A saddle such as an Australian stock saddle that gives your thighs something to brace against for steering with your feet while maintaining balance, and also reduces chances of falling if the horse stops suddenly etc - stock saddles have flaps against the thighs. And anyway, Louise, you can do so much steering with your weight on the horse, shifting your weight, even as an "armed" rider.

I think you will enjoy this clip of how much an "armed" rider can do with very few of the normal riding tools. It opens up all sorts of possibilities I think for doing a form of independent riding you can learn yourself, without arms. 






A lot of this is based on the relationship you develop with your horse, same as you develop a relationship with your dog, or your human partner. Horses are very sensitive creatures and actually seem to really get it when you have a limitation of some sort, which all of us have to at least an extent anyway (even the people who won't admit it hahaha







). And my own horses have always worked with me around my limitations, same as they have all understood that Sparkle has a limitation and everyone cuts her a lot of slack because she is blind. She can't see the body language of others and can therefore cross the others' personal boundaries, but they don't treat her like the sighted members of the herd when she does, they are gentle and patient with her.

Here in Redmond, southwestern Australia, we have been getting into our typical mid-winter pattern of a day or two of heavy frontal rain and Antarctic blasts of wind, followed by half a week or so of lovely sunny days following frosty nights. I have just been out to feed the old horse his warm "porridge" breakfast, and will go out later when the temperature is a little more friendly to take the rugs off the horses, trim donkey feet, work in the garden, and take Sunsmart for a ride, before getting on to tax paperwork and editing an article for The Owner Builder magazine that has to be in by deadline. (This one is about living off-grid; we make our own electricity at our place; solar and batteries. It just needs a bit of tweaking before I send it in.) So right now I am back typing in my warm bed, with the dog putting on her usual dramatic performance of sighs because she wants to go walking _now_ and not when it gets a bit warmer. So I am soothing her with my foot. 

You asked what I do with my feet. Do you know, I have since childhood enjoyed walking barefoot when the weather permits it, and feeling the earth under my feet. When I entered my middle childhood growth spurt all sorts of weird things happened to my skeleton because I grew too tall too quickly: Scoliosis in the upper spine, clicky hip joints not quite where they should be, knock knees (patellae facing inwards), fallen arches. Horse riding helped with the legs and spine, and for the fallen arches I had to pick up things in my feet as exercise. So I ended up with good arches and able to pick things up barefoot, like for instance when I'm pegging clothes on the line and I drop a peg, when the weather is good and I'm barefoot I pick it up with a foot and pass it back to the hand. I think using your body unconventionally is good for the body and the brain connections too.

But when it comes to these things, your feet are the Ph.D. feet and mine are the kindergarten feet!  Also, like a lot of women who haven't squashed their poor feet into constricting shoes (and Westerners complain about Chinese footbinding, but you go to a women's shoe shop in the West and tell me if the pot isn't calling the kettle black!!), you have lovely feet and toes, and it's obvious your toes get a lot of exercise. I am quite happy with my feet, but my poor toes are bent (the four littlest ones each foot) from being in too small shoes when growing as a child, and not objecting to standard female footwear consistently enough in my early life. So I feel sorry for my small toes when I look at them, especially the littlest ones on the side, which are like little bananas and almost vestigial and don't even print properly when I walk on the beach. But, these days, my toes get lots of air and barefoot time, and I don't have any constrictive shoes anymore.

Your description of sitting on the sofa stroking each other's faces with your toes was very cute.







Brett and I often sit on the sofa with backs against the backrests and our legs crossing, so each of our feet are near the other person's head and shoulders, and we do tickle each other a bit with our toes when we are barefoot and have clean feet.

It would sound funny to the average person, but I know I can tell you this: Brett and I actually have this sort of foot magic which I'd never experienced before when I was dating other people in my earlier life. It was one of the dealbreakers for marriage, haha!  And I'd never have put it on my list of marriage criteria before I met him, because I didn't know about it. But we both sleep barefoot, and from the time we met, our feet just congregated independently and seemed to have a relationship of their own, and were always ahead in their relationship stage compared to the people at the other end of them. They were like a pair of snuggly animals and so happy to meet each other. They even got engaged before we did, which really annoyed Brett, but amused me! 

It annoyed Brett, as it turns out, because I told him waking up one morning back in 2007 that our feet, who were snuggled up together as usual on waking, had gotten engaged overnight; and as it turned out it was actually the day that he was planning to propose to me anyway, and at the time he felt it spoilt the surprise a bit.

And you know what, our feet carried us to a mountaintop that day with lovely sandstone spires, and we had a picnic on top of the mountain, which we had all to ourselves, and just as we were packing up to descend, Brett said, "Don't go yet, hold on a minute!!!" and proposed to me. I said yes yes yes and we floated all the way back down with 1000W smiles on our faces. 

This was us on our tenth anniversary climb on the same mountain last year:



I had to laugh so much about you and Nicole and the gloves. :rofl: It's great fun to do little humorous things like that. I am always looking for opportunities to do humorous things and practical jokes. For instance, after doing environmental research for a year and then teaching anatomy, zoology etc to undergraduates, I started teaching at high school because I love that age group, and the variety of ages. 12-year-olds are so cute, and if you do the fizzy sultana experiment with them, their eyes get so big and they have such delight in the little miracle of that example of everyday magic.

The fizzy sultana experiment: Get a tall thin glass (we use gas jars in the lab) and fill it about 7cm with clear vinegar. Drop in a half a teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate for fizz, and immediately drop in four sultanas. (You can do this in your kitchen!) ...and magically, they will start to rise to the surface, and drop back down, and rise up again, and fall down again. And I ask the students, "Can you work out why that happens?"

This also works in clear lemonade, or champagne, but I think it's more fun when you make the fizz as well. (Next time I'll tell you about the teabag rocket, in case you've never made one!)

And at the other end of high school, which is normally 17 in Western Australia, the motivated students have such excellent brains and you can do so much high-level stuff with them; and they are interested in things the average adult has gone blasé about, in all these amazing things about life and the universe.

For Brett and myself, that amazement at the natural world has never blunted, nor has our childlike enjoyment of humour and fun. We also both have the capacity to feel equal joy for the achievements of other people, as we do for our own achievements. So, we don't know envy, and that seems to be unusual somehow. And we're always happy when someone does something fantastic, it really doesn't have to be us.

But I forgot to tell you about this practical joke. In my first year of teaching at high school, there was a deputy principal who was a member of some religious sect and she had pretty straight-laced ideas about life. She actually made a rule about female underwear, which was beyond the beyonds - that's personal! The late 1990s was a time of pretty and colourful printed bras in Australia, and the girls wore these. These were innocent colourful bras that covered everything, not frilly things that displayed nipples etc. If you looked really hard, you could catch glimpses of the print under the white uniform shirts, but who would, and who cares anyway? And the deputy principal decided colourful bras were immoral (at a secular, government school!!!) and wanted to give any girl who wore anything but white or flesh coloured (boring) unitone bras (and undies, though we speculated on how anyone would know, were they planning on spot checks?) detention. Boys of course could wear any colour or pattern underwear they liked without being accused of immorality or trying to attract attention.

My Year 12 English class was justifiably outraged, male and female students alike. I personally stopped wearing any white bras I had in my wardrobe to school and wore only my coloured and printed ones, in solidarity with my girls. And I played a practical joke on the deputy principal by leaving a very realistic rubber snake in her pigeon hole where the internal mail is delivered. I told the English class that the snake had entered paradise and was ready to do its tempting. We all laughed so much. It was our form of protest against petty and invasive bureaucracy. What the deputy was trying to do was actually not right under state school ethos, and she didn't get very far with it. Sometimes you do have to take a stand, and not just accept whatever people making rules are dishing out to the community.

Thankfully, this kind of crazy thing doesn't happen all that often at schools. It does with our local governments here though, who are increasingly making laws that advantage their big-business friends while cutting the civil liberties of the average person. For instance, they recently decreed that while people were allowed to have caravans parked in their house gardens, they weren't allowed to have anyone in them for more than three days because that was "unhealthy". How so? This was just to stop people's extended families being able to all get together at someone's place in the summer holidays, without patronising the local caravan parks (owned by friends of our local council), where you can stay as long as you like and it officially never gets unhealthy, and pay $50 - $80 a night for the privilege! Well, there is no logical reason that it's any less healthy to have your caravan on a private property, and use the bathroom and laundry facilities in your relatives' house, than to use the caravan park toilet and laundry facilities. I know which ones I would prefer.

There are more ideas in my head and as you can tell I like writing, but the horse has finished eating and the day is getting warm, so I will sign off for now and wish you and Per a happy day.

:hug: Sue (and :wave: from Brett, who's of English extraction!)


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## tinyliny

I"m exhausted, reading all of SueCs reply, and your own, Louise. I have not great thing to add except how interesting your description is, . . and how blase. I mean, well . . like ho hum, every day life, . . . just from another perspective.


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## SueC

And this talk of humdrum from a person who makes great art, Louise! 

You'll love this:

https://www.horseforum.com/art-craft-work/tinylinys-art-journal-587322/

I love it. Tinyliny, you have the ability not just to capture the outside beauty of something so well, but also its inner beauty, which is so much more difficult to do. Your art gives me little champagne bubbles of happiness to look at, and then I feel like a bottle of lemonade that's been shaken, with all this fizz trying to come out!


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## SueC

Hello again Louise!

When I was riding Sunsmart this afternoon, I was thinking about the problem of riding without arms. Could I ride my horse with my hands tied behind my back? And I think I could, by attaching reins to the stirrups, and to something bitless and mild at the horse end. There is enough possible motion in the feet in stirrups to work reins. I would have to retrain my horse slightly to what my leg movements mean, when, but I don't think that would be a big deal. I would have to have a good connection between foot and stirrup without potentially trapping my foot in a fall - you need to fall clear or you get dragged and possibly get horse hooves stepping on your face when that happens (as happened to a young person I knew, in the leadup to her final high school exams!). If I didn't have a good connection though, lose your stirrup means lose your reins.

It actually surprised me how little I depend on my arms for balance in horse-riding, compared to ice-skating or rollerblading or even running (not that I do that much, I sort of run like a duck :rofl. I also used them very little for cueing the horse, but then he's a well-trained and experienced horse who feels like my favourite old jumper, all comfortable and cosy after ten years of riding him.

I wondered how I would handle a fall if I had no arms, if it would increase my chances of breaking my neck. What happens to you when you fall over, seeing as you can't use your arms to break a fall? Do you have a technique?

The main issue for me would actually not be on the horse, but off the horse. If I lost my arms tomorrow I'd find a way to ride my horse, because we know each other so well. But personally, not being foot-proficient, I'd need assistance on the ground to saddle up and do up the girth and bridle the horse. I'd mount off a mounting block, no issues there, apart from leading the horse to it (for me). I'd get off the horse the same way, I think.

So that brings up the question of what to do if you do fall off - how to get back on without your mounting block. You can find a log etc, which means the main problem is leading the horse to it.

Which brings us to Brett's question to you - how do you handle an umbrella? And my question, can you walk a dog on a leash and how? Like, slip the leash loop into your belt? Which you could do with a dog - but not recommended with a horse, since it could drag you off! You have to be able to let go in an emergency with a horse.

I'd personally also need help untacking and cleaning my horse, giving it a bath, grooming it etc. I'd have the biggest difficulties on the ground, personally; but then you mightn't, since you can even braid your hair with your feet! You could probably groom your horse with your feet by sitting on a platform alongside your horse (who has to be trained to stand next to the platform, or you could have a raceway arrangement).

That's some more thoughts.

Brett and I made a little bet. He is betting you have a dishwasher, I am betting you can wash dishes in a sink even if you have a dishwasher!

Best wishes! 

Sue


PS: You may already be aware of this fun fact. In Europe, the metric system is used for measuring any kind of height. In English-speaking countries, horses are measured in hands and people in feet.


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## egrogan

Hi Louise, welcome to the Horse Forum!


I apologize if I'm sharing something you're already aware of, but you might want to look into the career of Bettina Eistel, who is a German dressage rider who has no arms. She has competed at the Paralympics, using one set of reins in her mouth and one set in her toes. Here is an article with more information about her approach, including some of the ways she's trained her horse to work with her foot-based handling.


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## louiseh1985

Hi Sue

Thank you so much for all of your writing. It makes me so happy and I have so much fun reading your messages :smile:

I was just passing our sofa when it attacked me by jumping on my back, and now it won´t let me get back up :smile:
We have just returned from a trip to the beach and Per is having a bath. It´s my turn in a few minutes, thus this will be a short message, but I will right again in a few hours when I´m clean and we have got dinner.

I woke up at 6 this morning and went to the toilet. I thought: "why not grab an hour of sleep more", and I went back to bed.
Well actually "an hour" turned into four, and I didn´t wake until I felt Per carresing my forehead and cheek with his toes.
I took his foot in mine and we just lay there in the bed quietly, looking into each others eyes.
After a while Per asked me if we should drive to the beach, cause it is so hot these days in Sweden.
I said to him that it would be rather risky for me to go to the beach because the other guests might mistake me for a beached whale and would probably try to push me back into the water to save my life ...
On the other foot it would be really nice to have a swim in the cold water.
So we went to the beach and it is almost 80 km away, but it was worth the drive. Sometimes we take a swim in a beautiful little lake in the forest, but nothing compares to the ocean with waves and sand between the toes :smile:
We were there for around 4 hours and bathed a couple of times.
I had made a basket with some sandwiches and sodas, and we had a lovely time eating and drinking on the beach.

Now it´s time for me to have a bath and clean of the salty water. Afterwards it is my turn to make dinner. When we are finished in a few hours I will write you again, and I´m looking so much forward to that.

Hope you and Brett have had a wonderful day :smile:


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## SueC

@egrogan, what a fabulous link! I've been reading and reading about this person and looking at how she does her riding, since you mentioned her!


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## louiseh1985

Hi egrogan

Thank you so much for the link.
I didn´t know Bettina Eistel, but she seem to be an amazing woman.

It ís very nice to see that you can ride and take care of a horse without arms, and how it can be done.


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## Knave

I haven’t read all of the responses yet; I will go back.  I am sure you know her story, but if you need some inspiration or ideas with riding hacks this woman seems to have everything figured out! Her name is Bettina Eistel.


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## Knave

And now that I’ve read through the responses I realize that is why you shouldn’t respond without reading. Oops. Sorry for the repeat.


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## louiseh1985

Hi again Sue

I´m clean and fresh and so full.
I ate way to much :evil:
I must admit that it happens much too often, because I love food. Thankfully I can eat almost how much I want without gaining weight. I think it has got something to do with the fact that it takes more energy to do things with your feet than with your hands. 
My height is 1,70 m and normally the scale will show around 55 kg, but of course I benifit from around 7-8 kg of missing arms :smile:
Per use to joke that he knows the key to loose 8 kg over night - just loose your arms :rofl: 
But now with my big belly I´m around 68 kg and all the extra weight sits right on my belly.
When I over eat with my big belly, it gets very hard for me to bend forward, and also to get my feet to my face. A moment ago I had to scratch my ear and Per got a cheap laugh of me making all sorts of weard sounds while having my foot at my ear.
He should just try to wear my belly for a day, and the laughter would be gone ...

I am so glad that you spend your time to figure out how I could ride without arms. It is so sweet of you, but I guess you are the kind of person who are curious and loves to figure out how things can be done.
I think you are right, I would have to work the reins with my feet, and Bettina Eistel seems to have solved the problem of not getting trapped in the stirrups. As far as I can tell she has cut of the tips of her boots and holds the reins with her toes. Then you can just let go if you are about to fall of.
She also seem to have found ways to take care of her horse with her feet, and it is exactly how you have figured it could be done :smile:

It is funny but I get this picture of you as unstoppable, and I´m sure that should you loose your arms tomorrow you would be riding next week, and find ways to go on. A small part of you may even like the challenge ...

You asked what happens if I fall over. Thankfully it doesn´t happen very often, but when I was younger I used to play soccer, and I would fall many times during a game - and often when running fast. I have sometimes got a bruise on my chin or cheek, but most of the times I somehow avoid hitting the ground with my head. I can´t tell you exactly how I do, but I tend to strike the ground with my shoulder and turn it into a roll.

The only thing I haven´t seen Bettina Eistel doing is leading the horse but I´m sure she has got a way to do that, too.
When we lived in town I was often looking after and walking my friends dog. Because it was in the city he had to be on a leash and I used to wrap the leash around the strap of my bag and it worked fine. 

Brett has got a very relavant question about footle an umbrella, because in the fall and winter it rains and snows a lot here in Sweden. If I´m sitting on a bench fx at a koncert I would hold the umbrella with my toes, but if I need an umbrella while walking it would be very awkward to hold it that way, because I would have to jump ahead on one foot :smile:
The alternativ is to hold it between my chin and shoulder, and it works al right if it isn´t to windy, cause then the grip is not strong enough. But most days I don´t use an umbrella because I wouldn´t know what to do with it when the rain stops or I go into a building. I would still have to carry it around somehow ...

I´m so curious to know what the price is for winning your bet about the dishwasher :-o
I would say Sue is the winner :clap:
We do have a dishwasher, and for much the same reasons that you armed people have one - it is so much easier.
But we also do dishes by foot. While most armed people would use a brush (I guess) it is easier to use a spunch with our toes. One thing that can be tricky though is to clean and dry a tall glas, because our toes are too short to reach the buttom.
But we have never been accused off putting fingerprints on the glasses :rofl:

Like you I also love to go barefoot, but it is so impractical when you constantly have to use your feet as hands. But it is such a nice feeling of the ground under your feet. I don´t know if my feelings are different from yours, but I can tell everything that´s under my feet. I´m sure it is very healthy for your feet to be barefoot. I have almost never worn constrictive shoes, because I hate the feeling of not being able to move my toes. I even hate wearing closed healthy shoes, and thus I wear open toed platform clogs all year. In the winter when it is very cold here, people think I´m crazy for having naked toes sticking out of my clogs, but I hardly ever freeze my toes. Anyway I have to get them out of my clogs all the time to open the car door, scraping snow and ice of the windshield an so on.
The only time I wear closed shoes is when I´m running (and I garantee you I´m running like a duck, too) and then I wear Vibram Fivefingers. Do you know them ? It is shoes with toes :-o
If you don´t and loves to go barefoot, I will truly recommend them.

I guess you are better at using your feet than most other armed people. Even though it is small things like scratching your dog or picking up things.
Can you control your toes and move them up and down or to the sides when you pick up stuff?
Are you flexible enought to get your foot to your head without helping with your hands? A trick that most footusers use is to rest the foot on the other knee to force it to the head.

I just love your story of Brett´s proposal and your feet beating him right before the line.
I´m a romantic an I had a tear in my I eye when I read about the proposal on the mountain - it´s so beautiful 
But I also laughed at your feet-engagement and it is really funny the way you describe how they sort of live their own lifes and how they got in love with each other 
Per and I often go to sleep facing each other and holding each others feet. We (I don´t know what it is called in english, so please help me) are interlocking our toes like the teeth on a zipper and it is so nice to drift into sleep like that.
Maybe all of our eight feet should meet and exchange romantic ideas :rofl:

I love the your appoach to life. "Childlike enjoyment of humour and fun" and "equal joy for the achievements of other people" you wrote, and I would like to think of this something I´m trying to master, too. 
I´m sure you are such nice and good people, and a gift for everyone who is so lucky to know you :smile:

Well it´s about time for me to go to bed.
My mum comes over tomorrow and we are going shopping for more babystuff. I guess she would bring some of the knitted baby-clothes she has been working on all winter.

Goodnight from me, and goodmorning to you :hug:


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## louiseh1985

Hi Knave

Thanks for telling me about Bettina Eistel. I didn´t know her until tonight - she was mentioned in an earlier post.

But you are right, she has figured everything out :smile:


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## Knave

I think of her as a bit of an inspiration. Like if you want to do something you figure it out. 

I like reading your posts. Pregnancy is no fun ever, but you do get a perfect little baby in the end.  I was the world’s worst pregnant woman, but I still remember that there is a level of excitement contained in pregnancy that you will never get again. Waiting for the best thing in your life...


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## tinyliny

oh, dear! you made my day! I haven't focussed on the artwork for a bit, so I appreciate an audience.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> And now that I’ve read through the responses I realize that is why you shouldn’t respond without reading. Oops. Sorry for the repeat.


I don't think it's possible to put in too many references to this wonderful rider. And you gave us embedded photos!


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## SueC

tinyliny said:


> oh, dear! you made my day! I haven't focussed on the artwork for a bit, so I appreciate an audience.


Great! 

:hug: (or coffee, or both!)

You shall not hide your light under a bushel! ;-)

Not when other people know where the switch is, hee hee. ;-)

Really, isn't the internet wonderful sometimes! 

:falloff: :rofl: inkunicorn: :blueunicorn: :music019::happydance:


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## SueC

Hello Louise 

I have to be a little short this morning because I'm expecting a visitor and don't want to be in pyjamas for that, but here's a few bits I just had to reply to right now!




louiseh1985 said:


> I´m so curious to know what the price is for winning your bet about the dishwasher :-o


Traditionally, the loser of the bet has to give the winner of the bet a big smooch!  Which is such a hardship, and sooooo unhygienic! Did you know more bacteria are exchanged when kissing, than are on the average dish cloth? :shock: Good thing we have strong immune systems.




> But we have never been accused off putting fingerprints on the glasses :rofl:


Does this mean that you are more likely to get away with a crime?

And do the police toe-print you in theory? :rofl:


Chat later! :hug: Hullo to Per! :wave:


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## louiseh1985

Hi Knave

My pregnancy has been so uncomplicated. I am never sick or anything, so I really can´t complain.
If I weren´t depending on getting my feet to my head everything would have been great.
But everyday it is getting harder for me, and for the last 3 weeks I haven´t been able to get both feet to my head at the same time, and thus it is much more difficult to do make up, do my hair, put in my contact lenses, eat and so on.
Most of the times when I have one foot to my face I need to rest it on my other knee, but because my belly is in the way I can´t do that, meaning I need an edge of a table or something like that to rest my foot on. I can still get my foot to my face without resting it on anything if it is for a short time like putting a candy in my mouth.
And of course like many of you armed pregnant women, I can´t get up from the floor by myself :evil:

But as you put it I´m waiting for the best thing in life, so really nothing else matters :smile:


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## louiseh1985

Hi Sue

Haha, I wouldn´t mind loosing a bet when giving a big smooch is the price to pay :biglaugh:

Toe-prints you say ...
A couple of years after Per and I met we decided to travel round Africa for 3 months. I can´t remember which country it was that asked for our fingerprints when we applyed for Visa, but it gave us a whole lot of trouble. 
For getting the Visa you should go to the embassy and fill in a LOT of papers and they would also take your fingerprints. 
Though they could clearly see that Per and I hadn´t any fingers, they kept on telling us that they needed our finger-prints. I offered them our toe-prints, but that wasn´t any good, and we actually had to leave without a Visa. They send the papers back to their country, and somehow the embassy was permitted to give us Visa when they got prints of all our ten toes. we had to travel 300 km back to the to the embassy, and the whole process lastet almost two months. Luckily we had startet applying long time in advance.

It was all worth it though because we had the travel experience of our lifetime, seing Africa and meeting a lot if it´s wonderful people 

Hugs, Louise


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## gottatrot

Thanks for sharing on your journal! Very inspiring.
I think you will be able to find ways to care for and ride your horses, as you do everything else in life. As engineers, I was thinking you may need to do some creative planning for some of the aspects of horse care. I was thinking about cleaning, emptying and filling water troughs, and it seemed all of that could be done with your feet. Possibly you might want some type of grip on the hose or faucet to make it easier to use. 

Another challenge would be horse manure. 








I'm not sure how much weight you can hold with your toes, but it seems it might be easier to slide things rather than trying to lift manure up and into a wheelbarrow.

For feeding, I've seen lofts designed so you can just slide the hay down into feeders at ground level for the horses. Often the people who deliver your feed can stack it up in the loft for you.


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## louiseh1985

Hi gottatrot

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and ideas.
It is so nice of you :smile:

You are quite right, that to us footusers it is often easier to slide things around rather than lifting them. We have got very strong toes and can actually lift rather heavy weights with them. But the problem of lifting things with one foot is that we need two feet to walk, so carrying bigger things is always difficult for us.
I´m very interested in that trolley (What is it called ?) in your picture. We could have used that thousands of times when cleaning leaves in the garden and so on. Do you know where to buy it?


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## SueC

Hello Louise

I was just thinking of a French person speaking English saying, "Louise and Per are perfectly 'armless!" (because that's how they pronounce harmless!)

Because you are beached whale pregnant and looking forward to meeting your little human, I'm going to tell you about a friend's little boy this morning.

But I'm also going to be outrageous and say, "If your baby is born with arms, it's only another four years or so before they can lead a horse around for you!" :rofl:

So Brett and I couldn't have children, which was a nasty surprise for us because when we were newlyweds we liked to think about what our children would look like and what books they would like to read. We knew one thing for sure: They'd have lots and lots of hair! :rofl:

http://photography.coulstock.id.au/images/wedding_photo.jpg

Life can throw you curveballs. It was without question one of the hardest things we ever had to come to terms with, but we're completely OK now. Also, I spent much of my professional life surrounded all day long by other people's children, and they often told me things they wouldn't have told their own parents, because allegedly I was cool and their parents were not. (This is going to be your job description, Louise. You're going to be the coolest thing and Ms Amazing to your child until they are a teenager, and then suddenly their rose-tinted glasses will come off, and they will point out your hypocrisies and foibles to you, examine your political views, comment on your personal hygiene and dress sense, etc! Which, if handled correctly, can actually be great fun too...)

Teenagers. At parent-teacher night, I'd had parents say, "You wrote my son/daughter a commendation saying how polite and helpful they are! Are you sure you got the right kid? I don't see that at home. Would you like to adopt him/her?" :rofl: I suppose I didn't make them clean up their rooms and criticise their taste in friends and music. I did fun experiments such as setting hydrogen balloons on fire after demonstrating metal-acid reactions, and joked with them between working them hard; and when teaching English I chose texts that resulted in all sorts of interesting classroom discussions. But, I was a total Nazi about them leaving the science lab / general classroom completely spotless and doing neat bookwork, having good manners to me and each other, and getting their homework in on time!

So anyway, I was going to tell you about a friend's little boy, but have taken a scenic detour again before getting to my point. (This is completely normal for me, so do not call the men with the little white van and the straitjacket! Whether I am sane is debatable, but I _am_ completely functional.) We have a talented friend called Tim, who helped us convert and install a second-hand recycled kitchen from auction in our house, starting like this:


Tim and Brett Installing Overhead Cabinets - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Kitchen Backsplash Tiling - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

...until it looked like this:


The Kitchen Complete - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Farmhouse Kitchen – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

We had to do so much sanding (the benches were so cracked!) and modifying! We paid Tim for his time, because even your friends have to pay bills and eat, and because he's a total professional and taught us so many useful things. Also, we wrote up the DIY story as a two-parter for a national magazine, so he had his photo and glowing assessments of his usefulness all over Australian news stands. In fact, it's all coming out again, in colour this time with huge photo spreads, in _The Owner Builder_'s next issue, so he will be famous all over again, hee hee, it's such fun being a writer!

And while he was doing this work, he met a nice girl from France, and it went like this:  :hug: :happydance:

Soon they were incubating a little protohuman, and they went off to live in France for a while, eating good cheese and nice crunchy baguettes, and lots of other good things. They sent us an adorable photo of young Ossie when he was born, which we still have in pride of place on the fridge. And recently, they came back to Australia with their now three-year-old in tow!

So we met Ossie for the first time. We got out of the car, a little human was buzzing around in circles in the garden making assorted sounds in the vicinity of his mother, and we said, "Oh, hello, Ossie!" :wave:

He went and hid behind his mother, and I hid behind Brett, stealing glances from behind my husband at Ossie who was doing the same with us from behind his mother, and then covering my eyes shyly with my hands, saying, "I'm really shy, it's so weird meeting new people!" And soon there were these really endearing little giggles, and he came running out and was jumping up and down with excitement, so we all raced around in circles being excited.

Then Ossie showed us his Spiderman toy, and his toy train set, and gave us a general tour ("Come see this! Come see that!"), and gave us a lot of excited discourse on Spiderman and all the amazing things he does. Soooooo cute!  We spent time sitting on the floor with his train set, asking him questions as he demonstrated, and rolling around the floor from time to time making funny noises as if this was something we did all the time. I asked if he wanted to play aeroplane, demonstrating by racing around with arms held out, "But you will be the plane! Let me show you!" And so I picked him up, laid him belly-down across my outstretched arms, and ran around with him in circles, making aeroplane noises and raising and lowering my arms for turbulence etc. "So now you're an aeroplane!" I said to him, and he giggled and told me, "No, I am Spider Man!" and something else in French I didn't quite catch but he is soooo funny. :rofl:

I asked Ophelie when he went through his "No!" stage, and she rolled her eyes and said, "All last year, Sue!" 

These little tackers have so much energy. They seem to be like those toys with alkaline batteries, which only have two settings: Flat out or comatose. When us adults were exhausted, we introduced him to our dog, who was in the garden and who has boundless energy herself. We taught him to play soccer with her, and catch, and this delighted him and the dog, and they played beautifully together racing around the garden while we adults had cups of tea and caught up on everyone's news.

So, things to look forward to, Louise & Per! I hope you have a good vitamin supplement! ;-)

Very best wishes

Sue


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## Knave

Just as I am sorry you do not have arms, I am sorry that @SueC does not have children. I am sure, although not as certain yet, that something beautiful will or has come out of the lack.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> Just as I am sorry you do not have arms, I am sorry that @*SueC* does not have children. I am sure, although not as certain yet, that something beautiful will or has come out of the lack.


This is precisely it, @*Knave* . And anyway, I can really enjoy it when I meet other people's children, or when other people talk about their children too! 

I think I'm sort of becoming everyone's sister / auntie / curious museum exhibit! ;-)

And, we have a lot of adopted family who are really cool. Watch out, I am recruiting! ;-)


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## Knave

You’re more than welcome in mine!


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## SueC

Oh, that's lovely! :happydance: I totally accept, and totally include you in ours! :hug:


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## gottatrot

It's called Stubbs Stable Mate Manure collector, and I'm not sure how or where you can get it in Sweden, but it is for sale in the UK.
Not sure if Amazon UK ships to Sweden?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stubbs-Stable-Manure-Collector-Green/dp/B00VGG4ELS


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## SueC

Louise, we've just finished having pancakes for breakfast, and while I made them, more questions came up.

How do _you_ flip pancakes?

How do _you_ open jars?

I ask that second one because I am curious if toes are long enough to do it. Actually, a lot of people have trouble opening jars, especially when they get a bit of arthritis in their finger joints. When I stopped being a hero who was proud of their jar-opening prowess (I could out-armwrestle any boy when I was teaching, owing to working with horses, and this embarrassed a few of my hulking 16-year-old Supermen, but I told them that's OK, I wouldn't beat them once they were 25 because they would catch up), and realised that my body had parts that could and would wear out, I always prised under the edge of the lid with a teaspoon to release the suction (without damaging the lid, which is needed again intact for home preserving). This makes it easy.

For anyone with trouble opening jars: Octopods are excellent at it.






Even from the inside.






So you could always keep a pet octopus in the kitchen to make life easier.


Press the direct YouTube link if the clips don't play embedded.



True story: One of my colleagues (who had taught me himself when I was 16) was a Marine Science specialist teacher and kept several aquaria in his laboratory, with various different types of fish, crabs etc. He was very excited when he was able to obtain an octopus, and put it in a separate aquarium.

And then one of the fish tanks was suddenly empty, and there was speculation that the students had played a trick. A few days later, more fish went missing. The following week, half the fish tanks were empty.

A cleaner saw it happen. The octopus waited till there was noone around, climbed out of his aquarium, wiggled his way over to another aquarium, entered it, and dined on the occupants, before returning to his own aquarium.

Mystery solved.


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## louiseh1985

Hej gottatrot

Thanks for the link.
I will se if I can get it to Sweden.


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## louiseh1985

Hi Knave

You are completely right.

So many beautiful things has come out of not having arms, thus you certainly don´t need to feel sorry for me.
In fact you should feel happy and lucky, cause that´s how I feel :smile:


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## louiseh1985

Hello Sue

We have been very busy for the last two days.
My mum has been visiting and stayed over for the night. A couple of hours ago se went home, and I am finally on the sofa.
She lives 200 km from here and she has always refused to move because of all her friends and so on live close to where she lives.
So she caught us completely by surprise by telling us that she had decided to move to a town only 20 km away from us. 
Both Per and I were so happy, because it will be so nice to have her near to help babysit and for her to be close to her coming grandchild.
She had already done a lot of research and located 5 different apartments and smal houses that she liked and she had made appointments to go seeing these 5 places. So we have been busy house-/apartment shopping these last two days.
Mum has now narrowed it down to one apartment and one house, and she will start negotiating with the owners.

But I have had time to tell her about you (and Brett) and show her pics of you, and she is ready to adopt you :welcome:
She thought you were so sweet and beautiful and I promised her to say Hallo and wish you all the best.

Thank you for your story about Tim and his french wife and sweet little Ossie.
I´m sure we are gonna need a whole lot of extra energy for the coming years, but I´m sure all the joy we will get makes it all worth while :smile:

I guess the french person saying "harmless" in english is so close to the truth, because Per and I really are perfectly armless - at least when looking at over empty shoulders :smile:

I love to read your messages and all your little detours on the way to you point. I feel I can almost see inside your brain and how it works on full steam.
So no need to call the men with the straightjacket.
What do you think would happen if the men came for Per and I ? Maybe they have got straightpants for us :biglaugh::think:

Those octopods are truly amazing and maybe we should keep one in the kitchen 
An octopus in our house would seriously increase the numbers of arms in our little family :rofl:
You know I find it hard to understand how you armed people can do anything with those weird things attached to your shoulders, so how an octopus manage to avoid all of his arms ending up in a big knot I will never know :think:

And thank you for mentioning pancakes!
It immediately made my mouth water and (I read your post in bed at 6 a.m.) I could hardly wait to get up to cook some.
Every now and then when cooking pancakes I think to myself that now will be the perfect time to try flipping the pancake by throwing it in the air, and I have a few times accidently succeded in doing so, but mostly it goes terribly wrong and the pancake ends up burning on the stove, hanging on the wall or my foot. Then I return to flipping it with a spatula, until next time cooking pancakes when I have forgotten the mishappens last time.

Hmmm - jars are not designed for footusers.
As you suspect the toes are too short to get a really firm grip on the lid with one foot. And if I have to use both my feet on the lid, then i have got no way to steady the glas.
If the lid is really stuck I need Per to give me a helping foot (actually two) and one of us will turn the lid while the other steadies the glas. Like you we also use "the spoon under the lid" - trick.
But if a jar is just lightly shot, I can turn the lid with one foot while steady the glas with the other. 
Because my toes are to short and my big toes isn´t opposite like your thumbs, i can´t make the gap between my big toe and index toe wide enough to hold on to each side of the lid - but hey I have got a trick :clap:
So here is tonights lesson on footusing and you can try it at home :smile: (I remember teaching Per this when he was quite new to footusing and was frustrated that he couldn´t pick up objects bigger than the gap between his big and index toe).
When i have to grap or hold on to objects wider than the gap between my big toe and index toe, I will lift one or two or three of my middle toes while keeping my big toe and the not lifted toes down, and then I grap the object between my big toe and fx my pinky toe.
When I fx have to take a box of cereal from the shelf in the grocery store, I use this technique. I grap the top of the box with my big toe and pinky toe and then I steady the box with my heel and put it into the trolley. When performing this little act I have several times seen hilarious accidents with customers bump into each other or the shelves because they are so obsessed at staring at me.
Don´t tell me that it isn´t a lot of fun missing your arms :rofl: 

Dear Sue, it is time for me to go to bed right as you might be getting out of yours.
Hope you and Brett will have a wonderful day :winetime:

Goodnight, Louise


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## SueC

Hello Louise! :wave:

Brett and I are comatose this morning, so thankfully it's his last day at work before he has two and a half weeks off, and I get to have him at home! 

So here's a song to celebrate.






(If it doesn't play embedded, just click the YouTube link directly...)

So we're singing this but substituting "60 km" for "15 miles" today, because that's how many km Brett has to drive to work and back until the holidays / uninterrupted "love shack" type situation.

:loveshower::clap::dance-smiley05::happydance::happydance::music019: :racing::falloff::rofl::cheers::happy-birthday8::smileynotebook::hug:

Brett says that he also needs a sleeping emoji for it to better represent his upcoming time off, but you will notice there isn't one on the official list. This is a shame really, because that would be a great response also when someone makes a really boring post! Hee hee. So let's see if I can import one, but that will be the next post because you can only use 15 graphics per post here...


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## SueC

This one is also charming:










Wimbledon has interfered a little with my sleep patterns because live transmission makes for some late night matches in our viewing times. But hehehe, Kevin Anderson beat Roger Federer yesterday, and I actually thought he might. Yes, he'd lost four times to Federer in their four meetings, but they'd not met in several years, Anderson has really blossomed these past two years, and Federer is such a protected species he doesn't have to play anyone Top 16 until at least the quarter finals, because of how seeding works. And this time, it was soooo interesting how most of the people who've ever been dangerous to him weren't even in his side of the draw. One would almost think that someone is trying to manufacture a situation where Roger Federer will definitely be in the final, so they can maximise their ticket sales. So anyway, Federer really wasn't expecting to lose to Anderson, and that then puts the surprise factor on the other side.

By the way, I don't generally watch any sport, except for the twice a year they transmit tennis in Australia (for Wimbledon and the Australian Open season). I think the reason I do it is because it's one of the few ball sports I can understand, as it only involves two people and one ball. It is always so confusing for me when a whole horde of people is playing with one ball.

I think you and Per and Brett and I need to meet and play tennis doubles one of these days. Brett and I will tie our hands behind our backs and then we should all be able to have such fun. Yes, you might think you have the advantage as advanced footusers over us greenhorns, but do not forget that watching us try to play tennis, or do anything, with our feet, might make you two do this: :rofl: :rofl: ...and then, I think the advantage will be even. 

I am quite good at hopping; the challenge for me will be holding the racquet. The next, and possibly bigger, challenge will be to actually hit the ball with the racquet. This is a problem I have even when playing with my arms, and I imagine this problem will only be exaggerated by trying to use my feet. :think:

But the point of sport is to get exercise and have fun, and I think it would certainly do that.


For jar opening, have you seen these?









Would that help the situation when you don't have Per around and need to open a jar?

Having now successfully taken my usual detours, I need to come to a point.

:hug: Thank you very much for including me in your Swedish family, and we're very happy to be your Australian family! Jess says she is too! It is really nice to have extended international families.  Please say a big hello and :hug: to your Mum for us. We hope she finds the right place to be her next home. It shouldn't just be a livable box, it should sing to her heart.

That was so funny about the straightpants. :rofl: That story about the fingerprints in Africa had a different effect on me, I sort of wanted to slap people with that one! "But the regulations say..." ...well, take them and shove them where the sun don't shine, kind Sir. :icon_rolleyes:

The pancakes description: :rofl: ...I don't even try to flip them in the air anymore, too much food wastage, burnt skin and cleaning up afterwards. Two spatulas for me!

What do you do if you need to get something off the high shelves at the shops? (I am on the other side of the coin here. I am 180cm tall and short people are forever asking me if I can get something off the tall shelf for them, which I am pleased to do.)

Now I am wondering what supermarket layouts would look like if all humans were naturally armless.

Hope you and Per have a great day tomorrow and that you're not feeling too badly like a beached whale. (...and in summer too!!!)

:hug: Sue

PS: Will get back to some of your questions I have missed when I have more grey matter available to me! ;-)


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## Knave

This is silly, but I had a day I needed a break from. I was riding Bones around bareback with the family outside enjoying the sunshine. We had been discussing how uplifting your story is, and I decided I’d give it a try to see what I thought.

I have Bones pretty broke. He was a little confused when I put the reins in my toes. He is used to being ridden with leg pressure. So, I cheated in still using a lot of leg pressure and very little rein. He was good as soon as he figured out what his crazy person was doing this time. I decided that with a very kind and solid horse like him it wouldn’t be too difficult to transition, but I didn’t think I could start one without my arms, and definitely not get by a horse with any sort of prior issue.

Leading him back was easy too by putting the lead rope between my toes stretched between both feet. Turning him loose was fine too, but right by the gate is a patch of weeds so he didn’t mind keeping his head down. Then everyone was laughing to see how I’d manage to shut the gate. I had to sit on my butt, and it took me a bit, but I did finally get it done. 

Oddly, the very worst part of it for me would be a daily thing for you. I cannot imagine getting back up with a big belly at all. It was so hard to get back to standing! After that I quit my experiment, because it was only intended to see if I could find any tricks to the horsemanship side of it. Definitely a very broke to leg horse is something to look for.


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## SueC

Something Louise should know.

This is @*Knave* , who is forever amazing me:










And you can see more of her and her horses here:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/introduce-your-horse-pictures-791281/page6/#post1970558739



I have to say, that photo really intrigued me, and also the lovely way she writes on her journal, and the arty photos she makes:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-journals/zeus-sorrel-brigade-786771/

And now, thanks to your thread, I am her and your adopted family. :dance-smiley05: Therefore you two are at least in-laws, unless you make a more formal arrangement! 



Unfortunately, I have to ride more in a more conventional position than @*Knave* :










I used to be great at hand-stands (even did them in the classroom to get the kids' attention sometimes, it's really effective, especially if they have never seen you do that before, and if your setting is a science laboratory! - but make sure you are wearing pants! Or you will get arrested!) but kind of gave that away as I advanced into my 40s and started to have some shoulder niggles occasionally. I didn't want to pay for a shoulder reconstruction. But I still try to do unconventional things.

My own little potted history and menagerie on that horse introduction thread is here:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/introduce-your-horse-pictures-791281/page8/#post1970559503


It's a really lovely thread for getting to know a lot of wonderful HF people and horses. :happydance:

I think you, @*Knave* and I could form an international circus. You two could be acrobats, I could be a clown who falls over all the time but has a great vocabulary. :rofl: We will need to recruit more people for our circus.

Anyone out there? Audition here. ;-) Show us your tricks!


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## Knave

Thank you so very much @SueC!


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## SueC

Well, thank you, @Knave! ;-) You're the one doing the handstand on the horse!


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## Knave

Well @SueC, it is much more exciting when we are doing more than walking along.  Little Bones though is still learning all of my oddities. He enjoys them, but I am taking everything painfully slow.


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## louiseh1985

Hello Knave

It is truly sweet of you to try riding without arms to help me with some good advice :smile:
I´m so grateful you did, and I hope you and your family had a lot of fun trying to be like me.

As a professional footuser I am a little curious if you were riding barefoot in order to hold the reins?
Was it easy for you to get a good grip with your toes?

Getting up from the ground is impossible for me with my big belly, and it has been for the last month. The last time i sat on the floor was in our kitchen and I was getting a kitchen bowl out of the lower cupboards. I knew it would be hard to get back up, and I was right. I tried for around five minutes but I couldn´t get up, and I ended up "walking" on my bum into the living room where I finally managed to get up by clinging to the armrest of our couch with my chin and shoulder.
Normally without my big belly, it´s easy for me to get up, and I do many times a day. I cross my legs and place my feet on the ground as close to my body as possible and then I throw my body forwards to gain momentum while I raise myself with my legs :smile:

I would like to tell you that I often experience friends and family trying to do things with their feet. Almost all children think it is so much fun trying to use their toes to write or paint or to give high fives with their feet.
I don´t know how old your girls are, but I would guess they would enjoy it too.
Often when I have been taking care of my brothers kids I have set up small competions such as picking things up from the floor with their feet, and they have always loved it:smile:
Many grown ups also want to try using their feet but they are to shy to do it in front of others. But when they get a little beer og wine the forget to be shy, and give it a go.
But I have to say that children are so much better at using their feet and toes. 

Thanks again for helping me. :hug: to you.


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## louiseh1985

Hello again Knave

Sorry, I completely forgot to tell you how amazed I am of your acrobatic skills and your drawings.
And thank you SueC for mentioning it.


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## Knave

Hugs to you! Yes, I was barefoot. I tend to use my feet for a lot of things because I’m usually barefoot (not usually barefoot riding, but I was bareback too), so I didn’t have any issue holding onto the reins tightly. My reins are romals with buttons, so it was especially easy.

That is a great idea about making fun competitions for the kids! They enjoyed laughing at my expense trying to clasp the chain, but other than that they were more interested about the things I told them you had written. I think they both also use their toes for a lot of things normally.


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## Knave

Oh, thank you for the complement! The pictures aren’t drawings though, they are just filters on regular photos.


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## louiseh1985

You had me fooled with your pictures - but I´m still amazed :smile:

Do you mind if I ask you what else you do with your feet?
I´m so curious ...

Tell your beautiful girls that they can ask me anything they want.
If you need ideas for foot and toe competions just let me now.


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## Knave

Oh, I don’t do anything interesting with them by any means. I just pick things up while cleaning and things like that. 

Thank you! I will take you up on it, but sadly not right now. My littlest girl has a tumor in her toe, and it is going to be cut out on Monday. Her foot hurts anyways, and after the surgery it probably will hurt for a couple months. After she heals though it would be a great idea!


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## louiseh1985

Hello Sue

I can´t stop picturing you and the faces of the baffled kids in class when you are doing a hand stand with a very loose skirt :rofl:

But anaway, I´ll sign in for the circus. Sometimes I feel like being an artist in a circus when using my feet in public, so I´ll be used to it.
But what would my act be? Throwing darts at a balloon that you hold with your teeth? (You better be brave!)

I have said a big hello to mum and she was so happy :happydance:
So welcome to our swedish family and we are very happy and proud to be a part of your australian family :smile:

Mum hasn´t made up her mind about the house/apartment yet, and she needed more information and pictures, so I have spend most of the day collecting this. I took a lot of pictures for her, and I hope she can use them. Some were a little shaky because I had to do them one-footed since I didn´t dare to sit on the floor in fear of not being able to get back up and making a complete fool of myself in front of the real estate agent:neutral:

I have never seen the jar-opener, but it looks very simple and it could very well come in footy in our kitchen.

In an earlier post you guessed that I must be a kind of contortionist. that is also helping me to get stuff off the top shelves in the shops. I can stand on one foot and do an almost vertical split. This way I can easily reach the high shelves.
Not that long ago I was in the grocery store when I saw a woman only around 1,50 m high trying to reach some cans on the high shelf. I went over made my vertical split, grapped the can with my toes and footed it to her. She looked so baffled but managed to say thanks. Later I met her in the parking space and she had gotten herself together. She thanked me again and told me I was amazing. Small things to make a great day :dance-smiley05:

What if not only supermarket layouts but everything was designed for footusers - what would the world be like? It´s very interesting to think about. Everything would probably be closer to the ground incl door handles and so on. Then imagine that everyone was armless but one. He would seriously stand out and everyone would stare at him while using his hands to do stuff and being on his knees to reach the handles ....

Per and I would love to play foot-tennis with you and Brett. But I must warn you, Per played tennis a couple of times a week when he had arms. On the other foot I had never hit a single ball, so I guess we will not be the only ones laughing.
But the whole idea of tennis for people without arms, sounds like it was made up by Monty Python. I remember their sketches about marathon for people with no sence of direction or marathon for people with very small bladders. Of course everyone got lost a few meters from the start and they had to go into the bushes for every 20 m to pee :rofl:

I don´t watch much sport either, but these days we are both following the soccer world cup in Russia. Sweden did allright, but now they are out we cross our toes for France.
I used to play soccer when I was younger. I was ok but never the best. I loved it and I had so much fun except for three month when I damaged some tendons in my foot and had to be in a cast. At the hospital the doctor told me that I should use crutches - I guess he was a little too busy ... I ended up in a cast with a rubber heel under it so I could walk, but everything was so difficult with only one good foot :sad:

When Nicole and I tried to buy gloves the other day it wasn´t the first time we have joked about our missing arms.
Once we turned up at our local handball club and offered our endless talents to help the team. Oddly enough we weren´t accepted to join :shrug:

Well it´s time for bed and tomorrow I am going to sleep late, because we have no plans for the weekend until Sunday afternoon. I have promised to drive my sister and brother in law to the airport. They are going to Vietnam for 3 weeks holiday.

I wish you and Brett a great Saturday and Brett a nice and earned holiday.

:hug: Louise (the emojis hugs like me: without arms :shock: )


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## louiseh1985

Hi Knave

Oh, I´m so sorry to hear about your little girls toe.
Hopefully everything will work out fine - I will cross all my toes for her.

Give her a hug from me :hug:


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## SueC

This is such a good chat around the campfire! 

Something small but funny for now.

Louise, Knave, have you read _The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo_? By late Swede Stieg Larsson, and it unfortunately disrupts any cosy, romantic view you might have held of the Scandinavian countries before reading, about all the nice people and how things work better etc, by reminding you that at the base of it, humans are capable of horrible things everywhere - _even_ in Scandinavia! ;-)

Anyway, Brett read it before me, and until I read it, and commented on the Swedish dietary choices depicted in the novel (mostly open sandwiches and _Aquavit_), he thought Aquavit was a Swedish brand of mineral water! :rofl:


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## louiseh1985

I have read it, too, and I hope you realize that your new Swedish family may not be anything like what they appear to be :eek_color:mg:

Brett isn´t actually that far off by thinking Aquavit is a form of mineral water, because we drink it almost as if it were :cheers::rofl:
When we eat our traditional swedish smorgasbord we really can´t do without the Aquavit, and we drink it as if it is mineral water. Then we get really drunk and fall asleep ...


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## SueC

OMG, Louise! :hide: 

You might be armless, but (*in French accent*) just how 'armless are you personages from Stieg-Larsson-Land?

:runpony:

Sweden _might_ be highly dangerous, after all. Some risks I can envisage:



Accidentally thinking Aquavit is mineral water, and getting alcohol poisoning
Getting massaged into oblivion by Sven the Svedish massage therapist
Asking what caviar is at a Swedish restaurant, and when they explain it's fish eggs, ordering two, sunny side up please!
Getting attacked by rabid ABBA fans for not pronouncing Agnetha Åse Fältskog correctly, not knowing all the lyrics for _Dancing Queen_, and not wearing sequined flares
Being gored by reindeer
Getting hyperthermia in a sauna
Getting worse things in a sauna when someone plays a practical joke and fills it with aerosolised _Aquavit_
Being unable to find the exit at IKEA and getting stuck there permanently, eating the food and admiring the _Billy Bookcases_ for the rest of your days, after which the friendly staff will remove you in an IKEA coffin called _Karlsbad Kista_
Forming a _Roxette_ tribute band called _Laxette_ and singing _It Must Have Been Love_
Being hit on the head by Björn Borg with his tennis racquet in a dark Stockholm alley
Having to go to Accident and Emergency from a ruptured diaphragm (from this :rofl or shrapnel injuries (from the instructions) after learning to cook pancakes from _the_ Swedish Chef:






(Press direct YouTube link if not behaving itself embedded!)


Just to name a few! mg::music019:


Change of topic: I have some gory questions today.

A preamble: When I was 23, I was doing sustainable land use research for the Department of Agriculture in Albany, and a colleague also in her 20s from Katanning had a bad accident. She was wearing a bangle and it got caught in a drill rig and this ripped her arm off. She was too remote when she had the accident and too much time went by for the doctors to be able to try to re-attach the limb by the time she got to hospital. We were all really shocked. One of her hobbies, we knew, was playing cello. :-( I've never forgotten that. We heard she did all right and that her positive attitude was very helpful to her after that accident.

My gory question is for Per. Medically, it's quite unfortunate these days for them not to be able to at least attempt a re-attachment of a severed human limb, or the repair of a damaged one. Basically, it can be because the limb isn't chilled straight away and doesn't get to hospital quickly enough with the patient, and then tissue damage becomes irreversible in the severed limb so if you did re-attach it, it would just fester away and poison the patient. It can also be because the limb is so crushed that it simply cannot be repaired.

We have a friend who hit a kangaroo on his motorbike and had a bad spill as a result. He needed a shoulder reconstruction, which went wrong and left him with chronic pain. That was pretty bad, but Per was really unlucky (in medical terms) to lose both arms in a motorbike accident. How on earth did that happen, mechanically speaking? Does anyone know? (It's a really gory engineering type question...)

But of course, because of that, he's got you, and you've got him. 

Also - when you lose a limb, presumably they just incinerate it without telling you - or are there any options around that to kind of bury part of yourself, for closure etc? Or if you're that way inclined, to keep it in a sample jar for display?

I know these are very odd questions, but you should also both know that Brett's wish is that when he dies and no longer has any use for his head, he wants his skull to be displayed on a bookshelf in a library, as a bookend perhaps.  And then people can pick it up and say, "_I knew him, Horatio!_" 

Me, I will most probably be donating my body to the anatomy laboratory for medical students to practice on. This is because we probably can't be buried on our own farm, and become part of the nutrient cycle there, which is what my first preference would be, out there amongst the lovely old horses that died.

I've got a story about that here, called _Flower Memorials_.

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page56/#post1970562513

Anyway, being an anatomical specimen would also be quite an apt thing for a science nut to do - to keep on being educational even beyond your lifetime. 

Give a big :wave: and :hug: to your Mum for me, and a foot-high-five to Per! ;-) I promise I will eventually deal with the questions I haven't answered properly yet! Have a wonderful lazy weekend.

:hug: Sue


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## louiseh1985

Dear Sue

I can´t believe you just picked my favorite clip of the swedish cook from Muppet Show. I have watched it for thousands of times through the years, and I am still laughing so much when I watch it :rofl:
He is so funny and swedish and the pancake flipping is just as when I try to (except for the gun :shock

I promise you that when we are to have our foot-tennis-double we will come to Australia, because it is much too dangerous for you australians to visit this country full of maniacs. After all you are just used to poisonous snakes and spiders man-eating crocs and so on, and they are absolutely nothing compared to dangers you will encounter here. 
You mentioned just a few in your list but there is tons of ways to make us go from harmless to armless monstersmg:

Anyway Per and I laughed so much when I read your list to him. You are so funny and your imagination is amazing 

I promise you this is a lazy weekend.
We slept till 9.30 and after eating some breakfast Per drove to town to buy some building materials for his new workshop in the barn.
I decided to bake som bread and just as I had got all of the ingredients mixed and had put both of my feet into the dough to knead it, the postman arrived with a package. He rang the doorbell but with my feet completely covered in sticky dough I couldn´t just run across our new wooden floor. I was in a hurry to make it to the door before he would leave again, so I quicly put a transparent plactic bag on each foot and walked to the door. I don´t know if you have ever tried to walk that way, but I must warn you it is very slippery 
Well I made it to the door just in time and then I saw a very funny looking postman, and actually I can´t blame him. What he saw was me wearing a small top and shorts. My big belly was naked and I had plastic bags with dough on my feet mg:
I am quite worried that if he tells anyone about this he would be the one to be picked up by the men with the van and the straightjacket :-(
It wasn´t over yet cause after asking him to put the package in our hall he asked me to sign for it and the I had to try to hold the little pen with my toes in plastic and dough, and I promise you it wasn´t nowhere near my normal signature.

Yes, just laugh at poor armless girl ...

When he had left I went to the kitchen and finished the bread, and after that I have done absolutely nothing. I have been on the sofa doing crosswords and writing to you. Per has returned and is asleep in the other end of the sofa. We are holding feet so ´m down to a five-toe-typing tecnique :smile:
In a few hours we are going to watch the soccer world cup bronze-finale, and that is our plans for today. 

I have only told you the short version of Per´s accident, but here it is a little more detailed:

It was July 20th and he was enjoying his summerholiday by riding his motorbike, which he had just bought 3 weeks earlier.
He was riding down a small road in the forest and there was very little traffic, so he was going pretty fast - around 150 km/t he remembers. All of a sudden a dear crossed the road right in front of him and without having time to think he tryed to avoid hitting the dear, and of course he lost control and was thrown between the trees. No one knows excactly what happened then, but from the marks on the trees the investigators think he passed through two massive trunks only 2 foot apart. His body or legs went right through the gap but his arms were smashed against the trunks with close to 150 km/t. Luckily there wasn´t any further trees behind the two, and he ended up rolling a million times in some soft grass until he was lying still. 
miraculously -apart from his arms - he didn´t suffer any major damage, just som few cuts and bruises and a twisted ankle.
He was still conscious and as he lay there in the grass he thought that everything was ok, and that he would just lay there for a few minutes before trying to get up.
Then he can´t remember anything untill he woke up in hospital, but a man and wife in a car passing saw him lying on the ground, and called emergency, and he was taken to hospital. They soon discovered that his arms were the major problem to deal with and they transfered him to a big hospital with the best doctors. But his arms were so badly crushed that there were no way to save them, and they were amputated at the shoulders. The doctors did a very fine job and he has only a minor u-shaped scar on each shoulder. The funny thing is that he still has got hairy armpits, which looks so rediculous and funny if he doesn´t shave them :biglaugh: 
Per doesn´t recall being asked what to do with his arms, so we guess the hospital got rid of them somehow.

I have also thought about donating my body to science. I thought that maybe it would be interesting to see if being a footuser causes the body and bones to develope differently.
But I also like Brett´s idea of his skull on a shelf. Maybe you should just donate your body and get your skull placed on the shelf next to Brett´s. Then people could push them against each other and you could be kissing with your bony lips forever :eek_color::biglaugh::loveshower:


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## Knave

I am way behind. No, I didn’t read that book. Oddly, I started reading one of those books, not that one, but the girl who kicked the hornets nest or something like that, and I didn’t finish it. I don’t remember why, but I really disliked it, which is uncommon for me. So I never tried another. 

I can only imagine you answering the door that way! I think we’ve all been caught doing something a bit odd by the delivery man. I was singing, loudly with headphones in, a song from dirty dancing while dancing with my weed eater once. Lol. I’m sure they’ve seen some interesting things everywhere. 

At my house we are so rural that they will just leave the boxes. There is one lady who won’t bring them over to the door anymore either because the geese chased her into my laundry room. Oops.


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## Spanish Rider

> What he saw was me wearing a small top and shorts. My big belly was naked and I had plastic bags with dough on my feet


:rofl::rofl::rofl:
This visual is epic! :bowwdown:

Louise, I am a friend of our dear, sometimes goofy, Sue. I am American, living in Spain. I find your life story quite inspiring, so I have been lurking around this thread.

Please, continue...


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## tinyliny

Every morning I check in here, for my first dose of laughter. the Dough story is so funny.


This is a much lesser 'dough' story, but here goes:


When I was a teen I used to make bread for my family; 6 loaves a week! I put the massive ball of dough in a large plastic bowl, and into the oven to warm it for rising. I turned on the oven, intending to have it on for only a couple of minutes, then turn it off and let the bread rise for a half hour or so. However, I forgot to turn it off. The smell of burning bread mixed with the disgusting smell of burning plastic , and the black smoke curling out of the oven brought me alert and to the oven, and I whipped open the oven door ready to yank out the bowl of bread dough. 



But, it was gone! it was simply . . gone. In it's place, a blackened heap of burnt dough sat directly on the metal rack, and . . . 

at the bottom of the oven a blue lake of liquid plastic! What an ordeal it was to clean THAT up! the oven smelled like melting plastic every time it was in use, for months!


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## louiseh1985

Hi Knave

I didn´t like the books af first either, and only after seing the movie of "The girl with the dragon tattoo" ("Men Who Hate Women" - in swedish) I gave it another try.
And this time I liked it and shortly after I read the to next in the series.

It is comforting to know that I´m not the only one making a fool of myself in front of the delivery guy :biglaugh:
I would love to have been the fly on the wall while you were doing your little performance and when the woman was chased by the geese :smile:

We also live in a rural area and there would be no problems in just leaving the boxes on the stairs or in the barn, but for some reason they are not allowed to without us signing for them.
I suspect it is just because they won´t miss the sight of all our foolish acts ...


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## Knave

@tinyliny I have one for you along those lines! I was married young, and my husband and I were in that first married struggling place. We weren’t getting along great ourselves, and we were living off cowboy wages. 

I decided I would spend less money if I made our bread. I had a cookbook that was intended for large crowds. No worries, I would divide everything down and make all of this bread. I accidentally forgot to divide the yeast, so I decided that I would make all the dough for all 25 loaves and freeze it. 

It didn’t work out so well. 😂 When my husband came home every counter was filled with dough that was rising like crazy before I could knead it all. I was crying over the waste of resources, and instead of anger he started to laugh. He laughed for days over walking in on my mess. We only got two loaves out of all the dough because it was ruined by the end of the day.


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## louiseh1985

Hello Spanish Rider

It was really quite a sight. I´m so happy that I couldn´t se myself :smile:

I wish I could tell you that it was the only time I have made a fool of myself, but that would be really far from the truth.
Sometimes my missing arms are to blame, and sometimes they just tend to make a little misshap bigger.
What else can you do but laught :rofl:
Maybe I will tell about some other stupid things I have done through the years in this thread.

Sue is very sweet and funny, and I´m sure she would like to be descriped as "goofy" :smile:

I have so much fun writing in this thread and I would like to continue. You are very welcome to join in and just ask if there is something you want to know.

Why are you living in Spain?


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## louiseh1985

Hi Tinyliny

I can´t help laughing at it either.

But as I was just writing to Spanish Rider I´m sadly used to getting myself in stupid situations.

It´s good to know that I´m not the only one :smile:

You surely had your own dough-catastrophe :rofl: and I´m so pleased I was not to clean that oven.


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## Spanish Rider

Louise, I live in Spain because my husband is Spanish. I met him while in college, studying in Madrid at the university for a year as part of my International Relations degree to become a diplomat. That was way back in 1990...

We have 2 boys, ages 18 and 15, but I am the only one interested in horses. I used to ride hunter-jumpers, but I broke 5 bones in my back 4 years ago. My recovery took years, and my brain is still riddled with PTSD, but I have a new-found appreciation for the simple things in life, like being able to get myself off the toilet, and now walking without my cane and corset. Nothing, of course, compared to what you do on a daily basis!

Getting back into riding was a very slow process, and frustrating. It is hard to explain to people how much pain you are feeling when you look perfectly fine. In act, I looked even better than before the accident because, after more than a year in a corset, my posture was model-like. Although it sounds harsh, I often thought that it would have been easier to have wound up in a wheelchair, simply because that way people would visually see that I was injured and could not be expected to do the things I did before. By looking at me, you would never know that left leg is not held on to my lumbar region by bone, but instead by a fibrous mass of fascia. My trainer, who I adored and was a very good friend of mine, implied on several occasions that I was not making an effort. Like I said, frustrating. So, this past December, I changed trainers, disciplines and horses, and started riding Dressage. Nothing fancy, of course, but my new trainer has found the right horse/saddle combination that has enabled me to ride pain-free for the first time in years.

But, again, nothing compared to what you do on a daily basis.


Oh! BTW, my son was on a student exchange to Norway with a family in Sandefjord, and they went to Sweden for a day trip, although I can't remember exactly where. I know they took a ferry. Curiously enough, the father of the family, a mechanical engineer, adapts cars to people with all sorts of disabilities for a living. My son, who will start engineering at college in the fall, was very interested in the process, but I think he has his heart set on spaceships.


P.S. And Sue knows that I am equally goofy.


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## louiseh1985

Hi Spanish Rider

I´m sorry to hear about your back, but also very pleased that things are getting better for you.
Beside three months in a leg cast (mentioned in an earlier post) I have never had anything seriously wrong with me.
It must have been a very hard time for you, and I think you are much tougher than me.
I have never had to fight pain or fought to get back to my normal life. Living without arms is normal for me, and I have never felt ill or disabled.

I completely understand that it must be difficult to convince other people that you are not tip-top though you look that way. I have a friend who suffers from some sort of arthritis, which means that she has physical limitations though she looks completely normal. People often mistake her for being lazy and it is very hard for her. She oftens says that she would like to have an arm or a leg in a cast in order to show people that there is a reason for her not working as much as other.
In my case it has always been clear to other that I had no arms, which (sadly) makes people who don´t know me, want to protect and help me. I know they do of a good heart, but I hate it. If I need help I´ll ask for it! 

I hope your son had a wonderful time in Norway - it is a lovely country. We have friends there that we visit around once a year, and we love Norway and it´s people :smile:
I find it very interesting that your son will study spaceship-engineering. I would have done the same if I were him :smile:


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## tinyliny

My first exposure to Swedish culture was through the movies "The Emigrant" and "The Immigrants". With Liv Ulman and Max Von Sydow . I saw them when I was a teen. Made a big impression on me. And, the Swedish sounds so like English that I feel, after a few hours, that I should be able to understand it.


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## SueC

tinyliny said:


> Every morning I check in here, for my first dose of laughter. the Dough story is so funny.


Brett and I are literally in stitches every time we check out this thread! 
:rofl: :rofl:

I'm laughing so much I am at risk of falling off my horse when I go riding!

:falloff: :rofl:




> This is a much lesser 'dough' story, but here goes:
> 
> 
> When I was a teen I used to make bread for my family; 6 loaves a week! I put the massive ball of dough in a large plastic bowl, and into the oven to warm it for rising. I turned on the oven, intending to have it on for only a couple of minutes, then turn it off and let the bread rise for a half hour or so...


At this point when we were reading this over our breakfast in bed over here in Australia, Brett and I were both envisaging a massive oven-shaped loaf with metal racks embedded in it, and the problem of how to get it out of the oven in one piece! :rofl: _Pass the spatula, please. Isn't there a bigger one anywhere?_

That would have been a Guinness Book loaf, and surely would have qualified for the "artisan" label! 

Of course, cutting it would have presented some difficulties. An axe is really too crude for an artisanal loaf, no matter what its size. Maybe a really long, really sharp chainsaw would be better, such as we used here when building our lovely house. (You do realise, of course, that as far as our horses were concerned, we were building a _giant gingerbread house_, so we had to put an electric fence around it when building! :rofl: And once of course Romeo got in, and ate part of the dining room, etc, and all that.) It worked so well for carving into straw bales:


*Cutting tinyliny's loaf option A*


This might have been quite the thing for that imaginary oversized artisanal loaf, what do you think?

Another option for slicing the imaginary oversized artisanal loaf that naturally presents itself for consideration is this one:









*Cutting tinyliny's loaf option B

* @*louiseh1985* , your imaginary oversized artisanal loaf cutting suggestions for footusers?


It's a shame your dough was in a plastic bowl; otherwise this imaginary oversized artisanal loaf (IOAL) could have been a glorious reality.

And I am truly weeping over the loss of this potential reality. :-(

But the unfortunate fact that you were using a plastic bowl and the oven had been too hot too long for the rising process and therefore you could not just turn on the oven and cook the thing does remind me of another story.

I was in high school in the 1980s when microwave ovens became a common domestic appliance. My friend Michelle lived across the road when I was boarding in Perth for my senior high school years. She went to a different school where you had to wear funny hats, but we were good pals. And her household was one of the first to get a microwave.

Poor Michelle came over to my abode all agitated after trying to make a self-saucing pudding at her house, using the new microwave. She made the recipe, sat it in the microwave and set that appliance to high for 30 minutes (as you do), then went to the living room to telephone a friend while waiting for her pudding to bake.

And after 20 minutes, there was a sharp burning smell that alarmed her, and tendrils of black smoke were creeping into the living room.

When she came over to see me, she was as white as a sheet and had the fear of death in her eyes. "What am I going to do, Sue? My mother is going to _kill_ me!"

The inside of the microwave basically looked like a coal scuttle from which evil wreaths of smoke were emanating. There were entire strata of baked-on, almost pure carbon. I say almost pure, because there were of course the corollary carcinogens...

Microwaves were expensive those days. I'm sure Michelle laughs about it now!


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## SueC

Dear Louise

Happy Sunday to you and Per! 

Ah, Monty Python!  We looked at the sketches you mentioned again, always worth revisiting. We also like that classic one with the black knight, "Come back and fight, you coward, it's only a fleshwound!" ;-)

All of the animal people here are going to enjoy this old sketch from around the same time. Have you seen this one yet? You seem the likely sort to already know it!






Ah, the Swedish Chef; the pancakes sketch I have also watched so many times but it still nearly hospitalises me with a ruptured diaphragm. :rofl: Even now, to fully enjoy it I have to pause it often so I can finish laughing at one aspect of it before the next funny thing happens. :rofl:

A few years ago, a friend showed us this - also hilarious.







Oops, it's lunchtime so I'm going to have to post this bit and come back later; Brett is making kangaroo stir fry today. We have our usual Sunday guest, who brought the dead kangaroo a few weeks ago and I hung it off a tree branch and cut it up (because I'm Ms Anatomy) for the dog and also some good cuts for us. It's our game meat here, like deer in Europe. This one had a fatal accident and over here we don't like to waste anything, so this is quite normal for extra-rural Australia. So you see we are not just about spiders, snakes and man-eating crocodiles here in Australia. This, too, is just the beginning...

mg:

Would you like to eat with us? ;-)

We also make good desserts etc! Click below...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157687753093115

There is no kangaroo in the desserts though.  Mostly chocolate or fruit as a main component.

True story: We sent a tin of Canned Koala to an overseas friend last week! :rofl:


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## SueC

...OK, continuing after our lunch. And then we are all watching the conclusion of _Wonderfalls_, which we have on DVD. Great little series, about a girl from a very conventional middle-class family who's got herself a philosophy degree and now works in a souvenir shop and lives in a caravan... and statues and toys start talking to her when noone is looking, giving her advice on how to live her life, with hilarious consequences. (We also love _Dead Like Me_, by the same writer/producer.)

When I read that bread baking / postman incident of yours, I literally cried laughing. First of all I was thinking, when you had the feet in the dough and the doorbell rang, _Typical, that notorious Murphy is also doing business in Sweden!_ And then imagining being in the postman's shoes - bwahahahaha! :rofl: And then your having to sign, in that condition! :dance-smiley05:

I wonder if the postman has free psychiatric consultations as part of his employment conditions. He may need them after this little episode. 

And then _this_:



louiseh1985 said:


> But I also like Brett´s idea of his skull on a shelf. Maybe you should just donate your body and get your skull placed on the shelf next to Brett´s. Then people could push them against each other and you could be kissing with your bony lips forever :eek_color:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> :loveshower:


You know, and we thought _we_ were weird! And we'd never met our match before, other than in each other. And then there was you two. But here you've actually completely outdone us! :happydance: This is pure genius. You deserve an award for that one!!! What a brilliant idea!

The other thing of course is, down at the anatomy lab they can still have the advantage of studying my prize-winning brain with its completely outlandish connections, as it can be conveniently removed from the skull with a little bone saw doing a little circumnavigation just north of its equator. This needs to happen when everything is still fresh, of course. The scalp etc can be skinned off first; I think I'd make a good decorative shrunken head; it could be an anthropological talking point at cocktail parties. It also fits in with our ethos of not wasting anything. So with the exterior wrapping and the brain taken care of, you'd then drop the skull into one of those laboratory antheaps especially for the purpose, and get the ants to make everything squeaky-clean for you.

And then you'd just re-attach the skull top with a few hinges, and you'd have something to put on the bookshelf that would also make a convenient storage place for things of sentimental value. And of course, then people could be pushing our two skulls together in bony kisses for many centuries. :clap::loveshower:

An alternative method used at one of the universities where I worked, for cleaning skulls and skeletons for creating anatomical displays, was to cut off and extract as much soft tissue as you could, then wrap the whole thing in a plastic bag and leave it in the sun to mature for a few days in summer. After that, you needed VapoRub and a clothes peg for your nose so you could open the bag, tip out the contents and run away. When it was a little safer to come back, you would deposit the skull (or other bones) in a large cauldron of water, add some detergent, and boil everything for a good while until everything had fallen off and the skull etc was hygienic and presentable.

I am actually currently preparing an anatomical specimen of a horse skull, as well as a horse hoof with all the articulating bones in place. We had a fatality here last year unfortunately, and since we did an open burial, we just needed to go back and collect what we wanted half a year later; and that's just getting cleaned up a little more right now. I do have to say that the hoof and bones specimen is _incredible_; I've seen that so many times in the textbooks, but to see it on an actual specimen is a still a huge _aha!_ experience. When I mentioned this to our farrier friend, he nodded and said, "Yeah, you've not really seen that until you've seen the real thing."

_The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo_: Yeah, I don't know why they re-named it for the English language edition, Stieg Larsson wasn't mincing words with the original title. I've always felt that Europeans are less keen on beating around the bush than people in Anglo countries like the one we emigrated to.

@*Knave* , if I had tried to read one of the others first, instead of the first book, I really wouldn't have gotten started either. I do highly recommend both the US-made film of it, by the director of _Fight Club_ (now that was an interesting film!), as well as the Swedish mini-series which we watched with English subtitles. Brett and I actually, in this case, preferred the US screen version to the European one; a large part of it for me was that the overseas crew actually saw, and showed us, Sweden and its landscapes and cities, while the Swedish production seemed to take that for granted and ignore the landscape.

And as a non-Swedish person interested in landscapes and towns I've not seen, that was a deal-breaker for me. I also really loved Mara Rooney's performance. Brett says the direction was much better in the US version. We did like the Swedish production as well, but the other one was our favourite.

Which one did you prefer, Louise?

Now, about Per's accident, before I finish for today. Gosh, Louise, I know Per was really unlucky to get into that accident, but when you described the mechanics of the accident to me, I am amazed how lucky he was to actually survive it. Imagine if he had hit the trees directly at that speed. Or if he'd hit them sideways. :eek_color:

I am wondering whether the crushing of his arms in the slingshot situation he found himself in acted as a sort of crumple zone that slowed down the rest of his body and kept him from great harm to the core of his body on impact. The rolling would also have helped. In any case, it is extraordinary under the circumstances that Per was not carried out in a _Karlsbad Kista_. :shock:

Brett want to know if the motorbike was OK. :rofl:

:hug: from both of us! 

Sue & Brett


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## louiseh1985

Hello Sue and Brett

I´m pretty sure that you are the only people I am ever going to know who ships tins of canned coala overseas :shock:

We would indeed like to eat with you :smile:
Both per and I loves food and your meals and desserts look wonderful and so tasty.
And we have never tried Kangaroo, but we would love to :smile:
Afterwards you can come to Sweden and we wil serv you moose.

But I will have to warn you: We have very bad dinner table manners involving feet on the table and so on :rofl:

Monty Python is the best! We have seen everything the have done over and over again, and we can´t stop laughing. I´m sure if we had hands we would slap our thighs till they were the colours of the swedish flag, so we are lucky that we don´t have any :smile:

I have never seen the Marty Feldman sketch nor the Sesame Street but they are very funny :rofl:

You are right that the postman should have free psychiatric consultations after our little incident yesterday.
He would probably be used to being bitten or chased by angry dog or Knave´s geese, but seing me must have been really tough. I wonder how he managed not the keel over rolling around laughing at our doorstep :confused_color:
I hope it is time for his summer holiday, so he can gather strenght before coming back to our house.

Per and I are extremely proud to be as weird as you and Brett :cheers:
You know we Swedes are often described as a little to correct and boring, but under the surface - oh dear ....
But if you need any sort of inspiration just let us know.
I have actually thought a little more about your skulls on the shelf. As you wrote the top would be put back on and attached with some small hinges and the skull can be used for storage. What if you put the skull on a small pedistal and installed some kind of mechanical device in the jaws, you could fill the skull with candy and be used as an oversized Pez-dispenser :rofl:
I´m sure the kids would find it very amusing to pull down your jaw and then see you spitting out a piece of candy :rofl:

Now to "The girl with the dragon tattoo" or "Men who hates women" or "Män som hatar kvinnor".
I haven´t seen the US-version movie, but I love the swedish version and I think that Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist was excellent.
I probably din´t notice the lack of showing landscapes and so on, because we see it everyday, but I get your point. If I watch a movie from US or Australia I would also like se see these things.

Is Brett a car-guy or motorbike-guy?
I know Per is.
But you can tell Brett that the motorbike would have needed a very skillful mechanic to get back to life. 
Though it didn´t hit the trees (Per was thrown off and flying through the air) it roll over a hundred times and was a total wreck.
You are probably right that his arms acted like some sort of crumple zone that took the heavy beatings and I´m so glad he didn´t have to be carried out in a Karlsbad Kista.

Funny enough. Per is at IKEA right now to buy a new door footle for our toilet door. As I was going to the toilet this morning and grabbed the footle it broke right off and I was just standing there with it in my toes :shock:
I really must have super-power-toes 

:hug: to you weird and wonderful people from down under :hug:


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## SueC

Happy Monday Louise & Per! 

We have also been having more thoughts about those skulls. It is good to mine their potential more extensively.

The mechanical device in the jaw for creating a candy dispensing function is an excellent idea; children would love it. We had anatomical display skeletons in every science teaching laboratory, and it was normal that in the course of arranging your classroom, you would add some safety glasses to your skeleton and wrap it in a laboratory coat and give it a jaunty hat to wear; and that you would give it a change of attire on a regular basis. The students even give names to such skeletons; one was called "Fred".

Also there are these plastic anatomy dummies, just the trunks of the bodies with a cutaway section to show the organs. And some of my sweet 14-year-old girls (Sarah and Shannon, total cuties) made our dummy some paper underpants which they had adorned with the most beautiful colours and patterns, "Because even our dummy doesn't want to be embarrassed, and isn't this a Catholic school?" :rofl:

Getting back to the skulls, overnight my brain has been thinking about the possible installation of some mechanical tracks in the bookshelves so that our skulls can do a bit of sliding around on their own. I was born in Munich, so I think this famous clock is probably the influence for this line of thought:






Brett says it would be great for after dark to subtly illuminate the skulls from the inside using a candle-flicker effect, similar to a Halloween Pumpkin. Maybe some tealights, or some electric fairy lights that create a similar effect. He also thinks they should randomly produce an evil cackle. No Glockenspiel, just silence randomly interrupted by an echoing snigger, and perhaps a bit of creaking.

He also says he wants a little iPod and speakers concealed in his skull so it can say, "_You are all doooooomed_!" This phrase, he has also told me many times to make sure I get it, is to be inscribed prominently on his tombstone in a good readable and imposing type-face. (He is very particular about his fonts, since he trained as a graphic designer and IT nerd.)

I am sure we can all come up with many more wonderful skull ideas. 


You were asking if Brett is a motorbike or car man. Well, none of the above!  inkunicorn: Brett did not own either when we first met, he was living in the city and is a firm believer in public transport, and this helped him pay off extra mortgage with the money he saved, so that by the time we combined our efforts we had paid off that first modest mortgage before we turned 40, and were able to buy our little farm outright (but got another modest mortgage for our owner build). So now we don't both have to work fulltime anymore, and I run the farm, and grow and make delicious food and do my writing, while Brett works part-time to pay our very few bills etc.

Brett was rather fond of commuting by train, although Australian trains are museum pieces compared to European trains, and soooooo unbelievably _slow_! :shock: He also had a bicycle he rode around a lot recreationally and sometimes to work. Now that same bicycle is used to help herd our cows along the public road to our neighbour's stockyards whenever we sell a batch of cows. We are also supposed to be using our bicycles to ride up a local hill a lot for cardiovascular training, but had a busy time a while back and still need to get back to it.

How are the trains in Sweden? Do you like them?

And have you worked out a technique for bicycle riding and steering for foot users?

Brett and I have a small car we share between us, a Hyundai i20 which uses very little fuel but has very good performance. They have engines these days where one half only kicks in when you need the extra power, like when you are overtaking people or when you want to accelerate quickly. This is so much better than the sewing machine motor I had in my first small car! You can comfortably drive across the Nullarbor in one of these, and it's a handy all-rounder. We have a roof rack on it for transporting larger items, and we also use that to transport back some larger sections of fallen trees for firewood - more fits into the capacious luggage compartment, especially with the rear seats folded back.



This sort of car also has a safe rear compartment in which to carry a dog. Jess looooves riding in the car, and will get a chance to this morning, because we are going shopping and for a walk and coffee in town. She loves to bark at big trucks as they go by.



When we are coming home she makes us stop the car at our far property gate several hundred metres from our driveway, so she can jump into our paddock and race the car back to the driveway on the other side of the boundary fence! She takes this very seriously, and looks like a greyhound in a race when running. She likes it when we sound the horn and it makes her run faster and look maniacal. For good measure she will do a loop around any livestock for "dessert", once she has raced us to the gate.

If you are wondering where we put our shopping and horse food when we are travelling with the dog: The back seats and floorwells! 

One question you had about our house construction a while back is whether strawbale houses could be built in Sweden. The best climates for this construction are not overly wet, and windy enough to dry out the lime plaster quickly if it gets wet - like we have here, and like they do in the US grain-growing belts where this building style was invented. Still, with care, you can erect a strawbale house in a lot of climates.

You may like these links:

Swedish Straw Bale House

http://www.strohnatur.at/straw-bale-hobbit-house-in-sweden-2/

You might be able to do an excursion to one of these; the international strawbale contingent are generally a friendly and sharing lot, and we ourselves are an open environmental house and have lots of information on our building online. We are not unusual in that lot!

The dog is making eyes at me because she knows she is going to get a ride in the car this morning and a walk and adventures in town, so I'm going to wish you a good day for now! :wave:

I have a request: Please tell us all about your interest in horses, how it came about, what experiences you've had with them, the riding you've done so far etc!  You can probably tell you are talking to a bunch of horse nutters here!

:cowboy::charge::falloff: :rofl:


Big hugs

Sue & Brett

PS: Re your table manners: No worries!


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## SueC

Since this is such a campfire, I'm just going to write a little note for another friend. This one is for @*Spanish Rider* !

Online, one sort of has to piece together people's stories from various bits and pieces that come up in discussions one happens to catch. So I read your little intro summary on this thread with great interest!  It was nice to have a little piece of your love story as well, which resulted in your living far from where you were born, and having a really international life (from what I can see!), and an apprentice astronaut, and another lovely boy (even if they do eat your cake! ). I noticed from your clip doing passage and Spanish steps on beautiful Presu that there was a real documentary presenter's voice cheering you on from the side, and you confirmed that you are indeed married to that voice! 

One of the many reasons I am married to Brett is also the way his voice just mesmerised me on the other end of the marathon long-distance telephone conversations we had in the early stages of our relationship. :dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:

He actually sounds like a BBC presenter and has this rich voice and unbelievable telephone manner... and you know, also weighing in were things like that he could actually spell, and had a great vocabulary - as you can probably appreciate, as a language buff! (Nerd mating criteria! :rofl

I agree with Louise that it is actually harder to try to deal with having an accident that is very life-changing and involves a lot of pain, than to deal with cards you were dealt at birth, don't involve physical pain and have always been your personal normal. I'm admiring Louise and Per and you for how well you are all dealing with some pretty big negative things life has thrown at you. Watching the clip of you on that gorgeous horse is already lovely not knowing anything of your background, but considering the hole you had to climb out of physically and emotionally to get on the back of that horse, I am in awe of you and at the same time so happy that you got there despite some really nasty obstacles. :happydance: 

Life is neither fair nor unfair, it just is. And really crappy things often happen, but how wonderful is it when that crap turns into compost you can grow amazing flowers in! :loveshower:

I saw a lovely saying this month:

_Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain.
_
And _y'all_ do it so well! 

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: 

Very best wishes, and lots of love to _y'all_! :hug:

Sue


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## louiseh1985

Hi Sue and Brett

We are pleased to know that you are ok with our bad dinner table manners. Otherwise we would have to ask you to turn off all light to eat in complete darkness.
But I´m sure that you would offer to eat with your feet too, as a nice gesture to your guests from up above (do you say so down under?) It would also be a good training of your fine motor toe skills and thus come in very footy for our upcoming foot-tennis double :lol:

I´m sure your skull-show will end up being a turist destination which in popularity will compete Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera :biglaugh:
I would surely love to see it, but It would mean you would have to die, and please DON´T do that. I´ll visit the Opera House instead ( I would love to see that anaway, because my father was architect and from Denmark, and he told us endlessly about Jørgen Utzon, the danish architect of the Opera House)
The tracks are a very good Idea and Per can help you install them. He has (with a little help from a friend with arms) just installed tracks in the ceiling of his workshop, and in the tracks run small electric winches which help him lift bigger car parts around the workshop.

As I mentioned Per is so much a car man. He loves spending hours and hours getting his feet and toes black as coal while repairing and restoring old cars. His heart beats for BMW´s (they are from Munich just like you :smile and right now he is working on a BMW 635CSI from 1980.
He has also got a lift installed but because the ceiling is quite low, the car can only be raised about 1 m. But it is perfect for him since he lies on his back on a rollerboard with his feet in the air when working on the cars :smile:

I think that Brett´s idea of "You are all doooooomed!" on his tombstone is so funny :rofl:
Per often joke that on his tombstone it should say "I told you I was sick!" :lol:

You ask about swedish trains ...
I think it´s been ten years since the last time I travelled by train, so I don´t really know how they are.
I believe that around the big cities it works ok with newer trains and so on, but by us in the country there is no or few trains and they look quite old too.
I have never been fan of public transport because you are always seated so close, that if my nose sudden itches it is almost impossible for me to get my foot to the face. It is much easier with a car and also I don´t have to struggle to carry stuff too far around.

I have been riding bicycle since I was 7-8 years old. For shorter streches I can ride without arms like you armed people sometimes do, but it is too uncomfortable for longer streches. My father modified the handlebars and it much higher, so I could lean my shoulders against it. By pressing the left shoulder forward I could turn right and visa versa. Per has modified our bikes the same way, but we don´t ride them very often. Only when we are visiting some friends 5-6 km from us we ride them, because we always get a little too much (some would say much too much) to drink to drive our car.

It is very interesting to read about "The swedish straw bale house".
I would really like to go se it, but first I need to get out of this present whale-body  

My interest in horses is much the same as with other animals. I love animals and when I grew up we lived in a small closed down farm and we had a couple of pigs, 3-4 cows, chickens, cats and a couple of dogs. All was just a hobby for my dad and he loved caring for the animals after a busy day at the office.
It is something like that I dream off here at our place, but I also would like a couple of horses. When I was a child our neighbor had a couple of wonderful horses and once in a while I tried riding one of them, but all the time he were holding the leash and we just walked slowly around. He also had a small carriage and I tried that too, and it was so romantic.
I can´t get much closer for now cause I haven´t made up my mind yet. I am going to gather information and not make any decisions untill I am sure what to do. And I have got plenty of time because soon (I hope) we will have a little baby to help spend our time :loveshower:

Hugs to you and Brett :hug:


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## SueC

Hello Louise and Per! :wave:

Brett's birthday was today and it's past midnight and I am craving toasted cheese sandwiches as a midnight snack before going to sleep. So I am about to make them! I wrote up the day for my journal and I'll post a link here in case you want to spend a vicarious day in an Australian mountain range! 

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page62/#post1970571069

It will also show why I use so many emojis and that they are actually spot on at communicating what words do not. 

Will return to chat tomorrow sometime! Have a decent day! :hug:


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## louiseh1985

Hello Sue and Brett.

First of all a big and warm :happy-birthday8: Brett from your new swedish friends.
I know it is a day late by now, bur better late than never :smile:
You seem to have had a fantastic day and you look so beautiful and lovely together and it makes us so happy to Watch.

The pictures are wonderful and I really wish I were there. However you should be lucky I wasn´t, cause you would have had to push and carry me most of the way :smile:

I´m amazed that both of you are so fit and slim with all that lovely food and desserts you seem to enjoy all the time. It is my kind of Paradise, but I would weigh 200 kg before long :|

It is Midnight now in Sweden and still 20 degree Celcius outside. It is so hot - around 30 degree during the day (you are probably laughing at me now, but usually swedish summer is around 20 degree at day) - and I really would like to be with you on that mountain with 10 degree.
There is also extremely dry here in Sweden and on the news tonight the main store was that there is almost 100 big wildfires round the country right now. Thankfully not near us.

We are going to have a busy day tomorrow, and I need to get some sleep.
So goodnight from us

Big (late) birthday :hug:


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## SueC

Dear Louise & Per (_:music019: Sitting in a tree..._ do you know that one? :rofl

I was amazed to discover upon waking up that I was still alive. :eek_color::dance-smiley05::vs-king: I was even able to _walk_ quite normally, with just the odd little _ping!_ coming from my right Achilles tendon. Not too bad for a person of my advancing state of decrepitude! :rofl: I have to laugh so much now at the apprehensive horror with which I woke up the day I turned 30.
:rofl: :racing::winetime::falloff: :rofl:

That was soooo long ago, and I really needn't have worried, because I discovered since then that I am actually a _person_ first, the age thing is just incidental and sometimes a little inconvenient and amusing - all that creaking! :hide: _Was that you or me, darling? Do we need to go in for a service, or will an oil change fix it?
_
I am hoping like mad you can still think of me as a somewhat long-toothed Antipodean sister in our international superfamily by adoption, because if you think of me as your weird Australian aunt, I am going to be a _great-aunt_ in under two months, and I am not quite ready yet for such a title! mg:

I can of course be a great _aunt_, but a _great-aunt_ is another matter entirely! :hide:


How am I going, have I used up my emoji allowance yet??? :think:

I better break this post so I don't invoke the wrath of the emoji deities!


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## SueC

Brett thanks you for his birthday wishes and says he will still count them as the same day as long it is the 17th of July somewhere in this world, not necessarily in our or in your country! 

We have had our usual tea and then, this morning, home-made honey cluster and cinnamon muesli served with blueberries, grated apple and (for me) yoghurt! I will even be getting out of bed for the day soon. Holidays are great!









Brett has gone and fed Romeo for me, which he does often when he is home. He thinks we should buy a special cement mixer to mix up his special feed, because it is quite a lot of work to do it by hand. And now I'm thinking about how we would go doing it by foot. We would definitely need a bigger feed bucket then, but it would be quite an exfoliating spa experience for the feet, I'm sure! All those natural ingredients: Short-cut wheaten chaff, soaked pony cubes, canola meal, copra (coconut) meal, bran, vitamin/mineral mix...



We are very impressed with Per's ceiling tracks for his workshop. We are even more impressed that he can work on his car with his feet from underneath - so much dexterity is required to handle tools, and there isn't a single opposable digit in your household, and this would still be true if you had an aquarium full of octopods for jar-opening duties etc.

Humans and other primates who came down from the trees lost their opposable toes and their prehensile tails which were all very useful for swinging off branches and grabbing stuff.










I was thinking the other day when I considered your umbrella problem that it would be so handy/footy/taily if you at least had a prehensile tail! But of course then you would be getting even more baffled looks when you are in public. On the other foot, think of the little practical jokes you could play just whipping out your prehensile tail whenever you needed it!


















How wonderful that your father was an architect in Denmark and a fan of Jørgen Utzon - we are fans too. We love the Opera House, it looks so incredible, and we saw a documentary with Jørgen Utzon talking through the architecture for this piece, which aside from the exterior, was never really completed to his specifications but changed around from his plan. But it's still such a marvellous building, it seems to have a personality of its own and to give off vibes when you're sitting on the steps next to it looking down at Sydney Harbour - an experience we can highly recommend.

If I told you what I think should happen to most contemporary architects, I think I would get a forum infraction, so you will have to imagine my thoughts on the matter! Buildings can be done in a way that lifts everyone, like the Opera House or our straw house or a log cabin or many traditional houses or a hobbit house etc etc, and instead, all these monstrosities are being created all over the place that suck the joy out of everyone, but stoke the egos of their designers.









Re your: "_I think that Brett´s idea of "You are all doooooomed!" on his tombstone is so funny








Per often joke that on his tombstone it should say "I told you I was sick!_"

Brett was like this:







and said, "Oh, that's such a good one, I never thought of that one before!"









And perhaps we could work on doing a demonstration model with the skull show using realistic plastic skulls for now, and in due time a few decades from now (hopefully no earlier) the placeholder skulls could be replaced with the real deal, and this means we could enjoy the show ourselves too!









Thank you for all the interesting things you wrote about trains and bicycles etc etc! 

That was a really good idea that Brett and I should try to eat with our feet in honour of our guests. The only thing is, then we really would need to turn the lights off, although of course that would complicate things even further - because we are very much afraid that most of our food would end up on the floor and that we would make holes in our cheeks with the knife and fork trying to locate our mouths with our feet! And that wouldn't be a very guest-friendly spectacle, unless you enjoy Monty Python sketches, but you do, so I guess we don't have to eat in the dark after all!









We have a visitor and I must now unfortunately get out of bed. We hope you two have a lovely day, and send you best wishes for your breathing and your current challenges with gravity!









Sue & Brett


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## SueC

PS: A lovely thing for hot weather: Put frozen berries (I like strawberries and/or raspberries best for this) in a milkshake jug, about two thirds of the way up; pour in orange or cranberry juice etc to the level of the fruit, top with a little plain Greek yoghurt if you like, and whizz with a blender stick. Instant 100% natural fruit slushie / soft serve ice, and sooo delicious and cooling. I almost live off this stuff when it is hot here! One milkshake jug makes two serves so you can share. :hug: 


PPS: If I'd had to push even a garden gnome up that mountain yesterday, I would have needed an ambulance!


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## louiseh1985

Hi Sue and Brett.

Thank you Sue for giving me this picture in my head of you pushing a garden gnome up a mountain :shock:
I can´t get rid of it and (at least in my head) it is so funny :rofl:

Of course you will be my antipodean sister 
You are so much too young to be aunt. And with you as my sister, our little new baby will have the best aunt in the world :loveshower:

I can´t remember reading how young you are, and it is bad manners to ask a woman about her age. But somewhere (I guess but not sure) you wrote that you passed 40 ?
If that´s true it can´t be very long ago, because you look so young and fit and beautiful :hug:
So I´m guessing 41 ...
That would also explain that you woke up after yesterdays mountain climb and was able to walk quite normally.
Here in the north we have got a saying: "If you wake up in the morning without hurting somewhere, it is because you are dead"
So we should all be very pleased with our body hurting a little in the morning :smile:
Somedays I also have a weird "ping" in my right ankle. It doesn´t hurt and it comes and goes and it really doesn´t bother me. But one day when we where having soup for dinner, Per got to laugh so much he almost couldn´t eat because everytime I brought the spoon to my mouth my ankle went "ping" :shock:

Even I am impressed on Per´s footskills when it comes to fullfilling his dream of restoring these old cars. It really goes to show that where there is a will there is a way.
Of course many repairs by foot will take much longer than by hand, but he always end up getting it done. One evening when he had been working for hours on some exhaust-thing I went to the workshop with a cold beer for him. When he came out from underneath the car I asked him if it wouldn´t be much be easier with arms, and he said "Sure, but I love doing this, so actually it is better the longer it takes".
I love this man :loveshower:

Hahaha - I love the idea with a tail :idea::clap:
It would surely be taily.
But what if all people had tails on which you tell their mood and so on like on a dog? What would the world be like if we couldn´t lie about or hide our feelings? 
It would be a lot different from the one we know.

The story of Jørgen Utzon and The Sidney Opera House is truly fascinating but also a little sad, because Utzon never got to see the finished building. 
As far as I know also some of the exterior was changed from Utzon´s original design. Particularly the big window sections at the entrance are nothing like what he had come up with.
One other very interesting thing is that the structural engineers didn´t know how to construct the shells, but Utzon came up with the Idea of building them from uniform prefabricated blocks, and that he was inspired by peeling an orange.

I do so agree :iagree: with you on your thoughts on contemporary architects. It is like they have only learned to draw straight lines and wrap everything in enormous amounts of glas. It is so boring ...

I think the plastic skulls is perfect for the next many decades. And you would get the chance to modify the excibition and skulls to perfection before the real ones take stage.

For many years we have have been on 2 weeks holiday with Nicole and her husbond Andreas, But because of mine and Nicoles big bellys we decided to cancel our tradtion of being on summer holiday together this year.
But yesterday Nicole called and asked if we shouldn´t go anyway, and that she had already made preparations. Per and I thought about for a few minutes and called her to say that we would be happy to go.

I´m looking forward to tell you much more about it tomorrow, but now I have to go to bed.

Hope you are sleeping like an angel by now, and that you and Brett will have a wonderful thursday :hug:

PS: I´m looking forward to try to make your fruit slushie very soon. It sounds so delicious :winetime:

PPS: About emojis - why aren´t there a "big toe up" in the list? "Thumbs up" is so useless :biggrin:


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## Knave

I love your saying! I do think we should all be sore in the morning.

I hope your trip is so fun!


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## Knave

Apparently it was an assumption I made when I said the girls could do things with their feet. As I rewrap the little one’s toe I say “spread your toes.” She never can. Like truly, she does not know how... it is frustrating. Lol. It is sad too because I have to spread them and I constantly press the wound.


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## SueC

More good wishes for the little girl's toe, @Knave!


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## SueC

Dear Louise and Per

That sounds super fabulous, that you will be going on that holiday together anyway! It sounds just like what everybody needs, and I think _especially_ because you two temporary-whale-ladies are not feeling super comfortable; it will be good to have fun, and you and Nicole can do each other's hair!  And meanwhile, the gentlemen who got you in this condition can bring you little treats! :loveshower:

I hope you are sitting down because I am going to tell you my age. :rofl: And this is a little bit like when I took my late Arabian mare to a local agricultural show ten years ago when she was 27 and looking so marvellous. We did just two classes for fun, and she came third in a large halter class "All-breeds 5 years and over" (and second in an all-breeds 5+ ridden class, and we'd not competed in 10 years!). Well, she was definitely over 5! I got the judge to guess her age when she tied the ribbon on, and she guessed 17 and nearly fell over when I told her the mare's actual age.









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/horses/photos/img_9210.jpg









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/horses/photos/IMG_8645.jpg

So now that you are sitting comfortably: I turned 47 in March. :happy-birthday8:

This is a bit weird, because of all the things I thought about that when I was younger, and they're not really true. I mean, look at Brett too. I am definitely old enough to be an aunt, and perhaps even a great-aunt, but I am very happy and honoured to be your well-preserved Antipodean sister and your upcoming ankle-biter's great Australian aunt. ;-)










Part of it is the same as when you want to look after a horse or dog extra well: Good nutrition, lots of outdoors exercise without overdoing, lots of rest and relaxation (and this became especially important for me personally in the last ten years or so), lots of nature immersion (you Scandinavians have an excellent reputation for understanding that), lots of mental stimulation and problem-solving, good socialisation, love, freedom, fun and play.

Apart from that, hair dye. ;-) Not too much war-paint. I am naturally dark-haired and pale-skinned, and I have always liked to play on that contrast. A childhood friend with those same basic genetic traits spent her life dying herself blonde and going to tanning salons, but I prefer if anything to accentuate what I have, rather than go opposite to what I am.

I don't use any anti-wrinkle creams, just a good basic natural-ingredients moisturiser without synthetic goop or artificial fragrances in it, the kind you can get in the health shop (and sometimes in supermarkets now) and is for your whole body, but I only use it on dry bits like my face and hands, or on bits that have been in contact with soap - and I use a very mild, neutral pH, fragrance free soap, otherwise I get rashy and uncomfortable. A friend of mine who is also well-preserved - better preserved than me, which she says is because she didn't grow up in Australia and its harsh sun - has a motto that soap is generally just for hands, face, armpits, feet and the bottom, the rest should only be rinsed in warm water, unless really dirty or extra greasy.

A trick I picked up in my 20s when I asked an acquaintance in her 30s whose lips _always_ looked great was to find a good lipliner in a natural lip shade, and use that all over your lips, and then either a very sheer lipstick you blot, or just a lip balm over the top; and I basically just do lip liner all over and a sun-protecting lip balm. The lipliner is kind of necessary in Australia because the sunlight tends to fade our lips out, and lipstick alone over margin-lined lips just looks fake.

With make-up, I use very little, and always go just one shade more intense than what I naturally am, for contrast - this was especially important when working with people in a classroom, because that way they can correctly read your facial expressions from the back row. So pale skin, a light pale foundation (no powder). Just one shade redder lip liner than (original) natural colour. Dark eyebrows = dark brown eyebrow pencil / liner, brown tone eyeshadow, lighter shade on the inside near the nose, darker shade on the outside. You use all those things to communicate, so it's important that people see especially your eyes, eyebrows and lips clearly when you are talking to them and they are a little further away. If you get it right, it should not look particularly made up.

So that's about all I can tell you about beauty and make-up, except two wonderful quotes. One of them is, "_A smile is the best face lift._"

The other is from Roald Dahl's children's book, _The Twits_. After describing how Mrs Twit was an unpleasant-looking woman, and her husband Mr Twit was an unpleasant-looking man, Roald Dahl explained this: 

“_If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely._”

I actually think that is very true. None of my older friends look awful, no matter how old, and I really do think that the kind of people who end up looking awful (other than because of unfortunate accidents or diseases) are the people who make these grouchy faces all the time and who have bitterness and discontent inside of them all the time and who enjoy trying to make other people miserable, and it really does end up carved on their faces.









https://pics.me.me/if-a-person-has-ugly-thoughts-it-begins-to-show-9409415.png

Don't you think?

Apart from that, the only other thing I can tell you about getting a bit older is that you have to start being a bit careful when you are ironing, so you don't accidentally iron your hands or your elbows on auto-pilot. 

By the way, we love love love this saying you introduced us to last time:

"_If you wake up in the morning without hurting somewhere, it is because you are dead._"

This is truly excellent.  And so I am definitely not dead, and haven't been for some time! ;-)

About your pinging ankle: That sounds very entertaining. I have knees that can make crunchy sounds when I bend them under load; they've done this from my teens on so I don't think it is age-related, although it will probably get exacerbated with age. :dance-smiley05: But I think we could start a special orchestra as well as a circus!

I'm going to need to come back later to take up Utzon (yes, you're right!) again, and to ask some motor questions of Per - primarily, us non-motorheads gather that the reason he likes these particular BMWs is that they were pre-computerised and could still be worked on "normally"? And that they were designed to last? I use that sort of washing machine, you know, totally non-computerised, can repair it yourself, lasts forever instead of that @#*@%$ inbuilt obsolescence!

_A thing of beauty is a joy forever._

Have a superduper Thursday yourselves! And say hello to your Mum from me!

:hug:  Sue & Brett


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## louiseh1985

Hi Knave

I hope your sweet little girl will be fine very soon :loveshower:

It is probably quite common that you armed people "forget" how to control tour toes.
When looking at babies it strikes me that they are moving and grabbing with both finger and toes, but when they grow older they "forget" the ability to control their toes.
I deliberately say "forget" because the ability can be woken if needed, just as my husband Per shows everyday.

I don´t know if your daughter will benifit in anywat from training her toes, but surely it can´t hurt, and if you all could have a laugh with some toe-games it could be worth while :smile:

Can you spread your toes?

:hug:


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## Knave

@SueC my littlest one loves that book! He is her favorite author, and she said even his autobiography is interesting. 


Louise,

Yes, I can spread my toes. I thought everyone could until working on her poor little foot. Maybe this is why my husband says I have monkey feet? It is more because I pick things up with my feet or use them when needed to hold onto something with one more hand I think. They are disgustingly stained though and cracked, so it could be that. 

The feet games will be worth a good laugh at least when she is healed!


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## louiseh1985

Dear Sue and Brett

I can´t believe that you are 47 :shock:

Are a year shorter Down Under ??
Like when 7 dog-years equal 1 human-year.

Or are you just very good at photoshopping ? Because you do certainly not look 47.

I will certainly wright all of your good advice on how to stay and look young behind my ear (as we say in Scandinavia).

I don´t use much make up either. Just a little eyeliner, a little eyeshadow, and a little of toning my eyebrows. I rarely wear foundation and almost never lipstick or lipliner, because if I have to use my mouth to hold or lift something it is so unpractical. By the way I´m only using my mouth if there is no other way out.

I use cream though I have never experienced dry hands :rofl:
But I like to put cream on my feet after a bath and almost every evening before bed.

Now I need to take a little detour, while I´m writing about cream.
Per and I like to do small funny pranks on each other.
Last fall I pranked Per by putting pink nail poilsh on his toe nails when he was asleep. He was to get up very early to drive to a car-show and I knew he would be in a rush in the morning. I hid the nail polish remover and he didn´t have time to try to remove the nail polish in another way, so he had to go to the car-show with lovely pink nails, and he had a lot of funny comments from his car-buddys :rofl: 
But of course he had to pay back ...
One day in winter he came home from work and gave me a present. I opened it when we sat in the couch, and it was a little jar of some nice and expensive hand (foot) cream that I had wanted and talked about for some time. I was so happy, and I immediately tried applaying it on my feet. I admit I was a little dissapointed by the lack of mousturizing effect, but I didn´t want to show it to Per. When he went to the toilet I applyed another coat, but still I wasn´t impressed, so I went for a third round, too.
It was then time to go to bed and we slept late next morning because it was Sunday. When I woke and were lying on my back in the bed, I put up my foot to rub my eyes, and then I suddenly woke up very quickly :shock:
My foot had the colour of milk chocolate!
At once I looked at my other foot and it looked the same. Then Per (who evidently had been awake the whole time) started laughing, and I asked him why I had chocolate feet? 
It turned out that he had emptyed the cream jar from its original content, and filled it with self tan lotion :icon_rolleyes:
I tried washing and rubbing it off but of course it didn´t help at all. The next two weeks I had chocolate feet while the rest of by body and face were swedish winter pale.
Don´t ask if people looked even more amazed than normal when using my feet in public :evil:

I really like your quotes on beauty, and :iagree: that true beauty comes from within - some of us are very pleased by that fact :rofl:

Maybe we could open your amazing skull-show with some music exclusively performed by our bodies making weird sounds :music019:

You are right about Per´s love for older cars. He loves the mechanical work and not the computer work.
He says that a good car (and in your place a washing machine) should be kept going with a hammer and a wrench.

I promised to tell you about our holiday, but I am afraid to fall asleep with my toe on the keyboard thus sending you millions of zzzzz´s.
So it will be tomorrow.
But I just want to tell you that I read your sentence: "And meanwhile, the gentlemen who got you in this condition can bring you little treats!" for him and he reacted by putting his index toe in his ear. Thankfully he is not flexible enough to put a toe in each ear, so he can´t claim that he didn´t hear your command :biggrin:

Goodnight / goodmorning from us :hug: :hug:

PS: I trust that I am not going to accidently iron my hands and arms when I get older :lol:


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## SueC

Knave said:


> @*SueC* my littlest one loves that book! He is her favorite author, and she said even his autobiography is interesting.


Oh, he's so, so good! We love all his stuff! He also wrote some really dark, macabre stuff for older readers, including one on a jilted wife committing the perfect murder using a frozen leg of lamb she put in the oven afterwards and served up to the investigating police! :rofl:

Have you got _Revolting Rhymes_? :rofl:

Louise, if you don't have all his books yet, this is the time to get them. You will do this: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

And before you know it, your impending ankle-biter will also be doing this: :rofl:


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## Knave

@SueC I have not. She told me that he wrote some adult books. I haven’t even read her collection yet. Maybe I will start one tonight. I know I put off other kids books for a long time to finally read them and find them amazing!


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## SueC

_Revolting Rhymes_ is well-known fairytales with a twist... here's just one example...

*Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf *

As soon as Wolf began to feel
That he would like a decent meal,
He went and knocked on Grandma's door.
When Grandma opened it, she saw
The sharp white teeth, the horrid grin,
And Wolfie said, ``May I come in?''
Poor Grandmamma was terrified,
``He's going to eat me up!'' she cried.
And she was absolutely right.
He ate her up in one big bite.
But Grandmamma was small and tough,
And Wolfie wailed, ``That's not enough!
I haven't yet begun to feel
That I have had a decent meal!''
He ran around the kitchen yelping,
``I've _got_ to have a second helping!''
Then added with a frightful leer,
``I'm therefore going to wait right here
Till Little Miss Red Riding Hood
Comes home from walking in the wood.''
He quickly put on Grandma's clothes,
(Of course he hadn't eaten those).
He dressed himself in coat and hat.
He put on shoes, and after that
He even brushed and curled his hair,
Then sat himself in Grandma's chair.
In came the little girl in red.
She stopped. She stared. And then she said, 
``What great big ears you have, Grandma.''
``All the better to hear you with,'' the Wolf replied.
``What great big eyes you have, Grandma.''
said Little Red Riding Hood.
``All the better to see you with,'' the Wolf replied. 
He sat there watching her and smiled.
He thought, I'm going to eat this child.
Compared with her old Grandmamma
She's going to taste like caviar. 
Then Little Red Riding Hood said, ``But Grandma,
what a lovely great big furry coat you have on.'' 
``That's wrong!'' cried Wolf. ``Have you forgot
To tell me what BIG TEETH I've got?
Ah well, no matter what you say,
I'm going to eat you anyway.''
The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.
She whips a pistol from her knickers.
She aims it at the creature's head
And _bang bang bang_, she shoots him dead.
A few weeks later, in the wood,
I came across Miss Riding Hood.
But what a change! No cloak of red,
No silly hood upon her head.
She said, ``Hello, and do please note
My lovely furry wolfskin coat.'' 

*Roald Dahl, Revolting Rhymes *




​


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## Knave

@SueC I read the poem to the girl. She said she “loved” (important to her I used that word) it, and she said thank you so much for sharing it. She didn’t know about this book and now she will have to save her money.


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## SueC

Awwww, @*Knave* !  All this laughing will be making her toe heal more quickly for sure.

And here's a trick you ladies can play on your DHs. Louise, don't let Per read this; surprise him, bwahahahahaha!  Unfortunately, my DH is wise to this trick so I can no longer employ it; _yours_, however...

It was when we were first married, and you know how occasionally, one of you has to get up to pee in the middle of the night? Well, I noticed Brett groggily leaving our cosy haven, and my brain, always on the lookout for a suitable opportunity, did some improvising and bid me to reverse my physical position by 180 degrees, so that I was under the sheets with my head at the foot of the bed and my bare feet lying innocently on the pillow. Before he left we had just been spooning comfortably, which made this even more effective. It was pitch black because my husband uses some sort of echolocation to navigate to the bathroom in the night-time. It is one of his many superhuman skills.

So anyway, he came back to bed and tried to spoon up again, and something wasn't right. He was in a semi-comatose state, and you could hear his brain creaking with this sort of cognitive dissonance that he simply couldn't fathom the reason for, not in his decidedly un-awake state. He was making these half-asleep puzzled noises and trying to snuggle up to my knees, and soon I couldn't help myself, I was shaking the bed with suppressed laughter. I managed not to make any sound for a little bit, but couldn't stop the bed from shaking, and it was so funny that soon I couldn't stop the laughing sounds either, and Brett woke up and figured out what I had done. :rofl:

He says I am _upholstered in naughtiness_. He has such a way with words! 

But give this little trick a whirl, it has interesting results!

And now I must unfortunately mow the lawn... :icon_rolleyes: :dance-smiley05:


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## tinyliny

So, Louise, When is your due date?


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## SueC

Happy Friday Louise and Per! 

My Friday is done and I am cosied up in bed with reading materials and a laptop. 

Sorry to have shocked you with my comparative antiquity. :rofl: Our years aren't shorter here in Australia than Up Above, and we even live on the same planet! Here's another scenic deviation we can take: When Brett and I were first married, we did a little research into planets and started celebrating a Mercurian Anniversary every 88 days; because a single revolution of Mercury around the sun takes only 88 days, compared to Earth's 365 point something days. So we enjoyed a lot of Mercurian anniversaries until we finally lost track and got busy with building our house etc.

No Photoshop either; if you go close enough on the originals available by clicking on the display photos, you can see that I actually have a fair few character lines around my eyes these days!  But because I do not see those when ironing, thankfully I have never ended up with accidental facial burns.

Which leads to another question, of course: Why should you never call an Irishman when he is ironing? (I usually demonstrate this one by bringing an imaginary iron to my ear while saying _Hello?_ in an Irish accent just before yelping in imaginary pain.)

I do not yet look 47, but you never know, one of these days I might wake up in the morning and have made up for the ten years younger I mostly look, in one short night of frantic catch-up activity and rapid telomere shortening, and I would get one hell of a shock when brushing my teeth!

Like dropping a lobster into boiling hot water, instead of bringing the lobster to the boil gradually. _Eeeek!!!!_ vs not paying that much attention.

Speaking of ironing, and of your PS: :rofl: I just knew you wouldn't let me get away with that one! :dance-smiley05:

By the way, thanks to the high-powered Australian sun and my penchant for going horse riding and hiking in T-shirts (long sleeves would make me perish from hyperthermia), the skin on my arms and hands would pass for 47, especially in Europe, so I suppose if my arms fell off people meeting me might think I was even younger, but I think that would be somewhat inconvenient, because then I would have to go to foot school like Per did. (No wonder he fell in love with you. For starters, there's that huge mind and personality, plus a personal 24/7 foot tutor, all rolled into one just when he really needed it! ;-))

You were talking about Michael Nyqvist, and my brain was going _rrrrrrrrrrrrr_ because I knew we'd seen him in something else as well. He is very good! And then it came to me: _As It Is In Heaven_! We saw it with subtitles, you speak Swedish so would know it as _Så som i himmelen._ That was such a wonderful film! 

Brett and I were laughing so much yet again because of your pink nailpolish trick and Per's chocolate tan foot revenge plot! :rofl: :rofl:

And I was begging Brett, "Please, please let me have that _Mosquito_ film I took of you years ago on holidays for this thread!" It is so funny; he is considering the matter. inkunicorn::blueunicorn:

There are other things I'd like to write in response to your last epistle, but that will have to be tomorrow, as I am not a night owl and can feel my batteries rapidly winding down at the moment!

So I will wish both of you a decent day and excellent upcoming holiday! 

:hug: Sue (& Brett says hello!)


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## louiseh1985

Our due date is August 29.


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## louiseh1985

Hi all

Thank you so much for all your posts :smile:

Early tomorrow morning we are going on summer holiday for the next two weeks.
Our holidays are always down to basics, so no internet either, and thus no posts from me.

I wish you all a happy and wonderful sommer :happydance:


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## louiseh1985

Hi Sue and Brett

I have never heard of Roald Dahl before but the poem is so funny, and I am surely going to catch up later :biggrin:

Your "180 degree turning in bed" was so funny :clap: and I will definetely try it out on Per, next time he goes to the toilet in the middle of the night. It may have to wait a month or two, because right now we have bright nights here far up north, and he will probably notice if I turn around.
But when it gets dark again, I am sure Per will not notice until he reaches out for me or lies close to me.
Like Brett he also somehow manage to go to the toilet in the middle of the night in pitch dark, and almost in his sleep.

Please say hello to Brett and thank him so much for his phrase "upholstered in naughtiness", I love it :clap:

I also love yor wonderful crazy idea of "Mercurian Anniversary". I wish we have thought of that, cause these anniversaries really can´t be too many :loveshower:

From now on I will just picture you without arms and then you are 35 to me :shock::rofl:
Maybe there is a market for Per and I in Australia for people who will have their arms removed to look younger, and need to go to foot school :rofl:

Michael Nyquist was one of our finest actors. Sadly he passed away - much too young at age 56 - last year after fighting lung cancer 
"Så som i himmelen" is a lovely film and I have seen several times.
By the way you wright swedish very well - maybe we should continou in swedish :biglaugh::idea:

You have really got my crazy brain into wondering what that Mosquito film is all about, and tell Brett he might be better off by showing it to me, compared to what my sick imagination will come up with :rofl: 

We are getting up very early in the morning to go on holiday and I should be asleep now. 

:hug: from Louise and Per.

PS: I have send you a Private Message :smile:


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## SueC

:hug: Have a very happy holiday, all of you!


inkunicorn::blueunicorn::loveshower::thumbsup: :clap: :starbucks::music019:










PS I have included your two currently mostly invisible happy dancers in the holiday grouping above; I'm sure they will have a good time as well and will be practicing their happy dancing for their imminent arrivals on the actual planet!


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## Milestev

I just joined this forum and saw your post, Louise. I love everything about Sweden, especially the folklore and I am in awe that you are building a beautiful home with your growing family in that part of the world. It would be a dream to have a barn in Sweden. I remember reading about the Tomten in my beloved childhood books and how they would look after the farm and tend to horses in the midst of the night. It must be a very special place growing up with these traditions and lovely stories. I wish you warmth and all the luck in the world.


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## SueC

We're missing Louise and her lovely posts, but she has a really good excuse in the shape of a baby girl! 

:loveshower: :loveshower: :loveshower: :loveshower: :loveshower: :loveshower:




:happy-birthday8::happy-birthday8:


























:dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:


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## antnafk

Hello Louise, after having seen all your stories I could not help asking how is your life now with a child (many congratulations for the birth). If it is not very daring, it would be interesting to see how you develop daily at this stage. I was fascinated by the stories you told and the truth, if it is not annoying and you have time, it would be great if you kept telling us more about your life.
A big greeting and I hope you are doing well in everything.

~Anthony F. (student of environmental engineering)

PS:Sorry for my bad English, it probably looks weird for an English speaker (I used the Google translator)


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