#1834 Thursday 28 June

Ggggood-good girl!  It's a very common sound in our lives now as Kaylia expresses her positive self-image.  Somewhere over the past 2 years she has internalised this praise action ....  and now she seeks every opportunity to generate more praise for herself.  she looks for small actions like taking a plate to the sink .... or rubbish to the bin.  I think the habit began at school but she now uses it everywhere.

This bit is for Andrew and Catriona ..... Andrew really got stuck into using the firewood splitting machine while they were here in October last year.  They split a mountain of wood and stacked it all neatly.  Now that winter is here we have been BURNING firewood big time.  I think the fire in the house has been burning for at least a month or more now.  At night the fire is loaded up and set to "slow burn" and then it springs back to life in the morning.  Today I took the three firewood bins down and used the splitter rather than taking from the stack.  It's a marvellous machine.  I would not even contemplate using an axe on the blocks of wood that surrender to the power of the splitter.

I have come across an amazingly bad bit bureaucratic legalise today.... yesterday we received a letter in the mail from the provider of an essential service ... water .... it was advising us that we were probably receiving this service at a much higher pressure than was desirable.  The letter included a list of frequently asked questions.  The first paragraph began with a description of the organisation's legal basis for operation .... that it had a license to provide a service that must be within defined parameters.  The next sentence then stated that if the organisation failed to meet that requirement, then "the customer was exempt" and the organisation did not have to meet the requirements!  In other words .... the government requires us to do a job ... but if we don't do it then it's the customers problem ... not ours!  Needless to say I was flabbergasted by this bit of "logic absence".  I rang the organisation and was pushed up the line because no-one could deal with the issue.  I finally had a phone call from a knowledgeable person today who agreed that I was quite correct!  They don't act on that strange idea ... but the person said "Yes ... that's how the rules are worded."   The idea that we can have a multi-billion dollar corporation providing the community with an essential service .... and that corporation is operating on a complete logic dis-connect!  Incredible!