Dad's album

My sister, Beth, and I have been working on an album for my Dad. He keeps joking that if we don't hurry up, he'll be dead before we finish it. He has no idea how true that is. It's one of those things: just as soon as you think you've finished it, you come up with just one more page to do.

This is our sister, Susan doing her page. She's actually more of a scrapbooker than she thinks she is. She made a scrapbook of one of the trips the orchestra she's in did and I think it is wonderful. This is her doing her page for Dad's album. You can just see me on the other side of the table. We have this set up in the living room at Mum & Dad's place so that we can work on the album and spend time with them. It has actually worked out very well. Everyone who comes to visit gets a chance to see the process and many of them put in their 2 cents worth.

Dad is hale and hearty at the moment. As you can see from this picture, he is looking pretty good. His little brother came over from Canberra and told him "you're a fraud. You're not sick, you're just seeking attention!" (in the kindest possible way).

This is a picture I asked him to pose for last week. The card he is holding in his hand is one of thousands that we have in the garage. From about 1974 to 1994, Dad was the Chief Examiner for the Biology exam for getting into University. In the pre-computer age, he needed an efficient and cheap way to keep track of exam questions. These cards are about 20cm x 10cm and have punched holes around the edge - just large enough for a size 10 knitting needle.

The idea is that each card has the question printed on the front. Then along the top of the card, the first choice option is for which section of the accompanying text the question relates to. There is a choice option for whether the question is Multiple Choice, Short Answer or Essay, then there is a sub-section choice and a section for how the student must answer the question (display Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis or Evaluation), as you want a balance of these.

The idea was, he made his first choice (which section), insert the knitting needle into the first slot, then shake the stack of cards. The ones which fell out where all the questions relating to that section. Then he inserted the knitting needle into the question type (for example, Multiple Choice), shake the stack out and the ones left were the multiple choice. Then insert the knitting needle into the sub-section and shake (you get the idea now) and that gave you possible questions. He'd then insert the knitting needle into, say, the Knowledge slot, shake them out and that would give him all the questions in that Section, that were Multiple Choice, in a particular sub-section that would require the student to demonstrate Knowledge. It was actually quiet an ingenious system. He never translated it to computer, because the time that it would have taken to write such a database and then enter in all the data would have simply taken too long.

But by going through this process year, he could turn up to a paper-setting meeting with possible questions already determined. He could also keep track of which years the questions went into to make sure that they weren't repeated too often (as current students get past papers to practice on) and later on, he also recorded other data about how well the question had performed which would allow him to modify or replace bad questions.

Really quite clever when you think about it.

It's great to be home

I'm at home in Perth now and it is great to be here seeing the family. Zandy is with me and will stay for three of the four weeks that I'm here. My brothers are both flying in from their homes in Tasmania and Northern Territory in another week and we're having a celebration for Dad on Easter Saturday.

We've spent a lot of time just sitting chatting so far. Dad is being prompted by many people to talk about his life and things that he has done, so I'm learning new things about what he did. It's giving me an opportunity to clarify some of the stories I've heard over the years and get the story straight. We all thought that there would be plenty of time for this - even he did - so we're now cramming it all in.

Yesterday, an old work colleague dropped around and we got the whole chronological timeline of his working career. It was great because Frank would say "Graham, do you remember such-and-such and the time they did that?" and Dad would respond and we'd get the whole story with clarity of detail that was surprising since some of these things happened 35 years ago. He says it's because he forgets these things until someone prompts the memory and then it just pops into his head as though it were yesterday.

The tubes you can see in his neck are connections that allow the hospital to take blood when they need to without having to puncture more holes in his arm. He says that the arm connections were stinging, so by going straight into the neck, it is much easier. His blood count is down so they'll give him more reds next week, but his platelets are up to 101 (apparently something around 150 is normal and they don't give platelets until they are down to 10) but we're keeping an eye on him. If he starts to feel woozy then that is an indication that his reds are down and we need to get him to Emergency so they can give him a transfusion.

Now that I've seen him in person and spent time with him a lot over the last four days, I'm prepared to let go and see other people. So, I'm spending time with my sisters singing today and going to a performance of Bach's B Minor Mass tonight.

Life is okay.

A break in service for a little while

Just to let you all know, things are going to be a little interrupted for a while. I'm going home to Australia to see Dad. I'll be gone for about a month. I'll only update this blog if there is news to share - one way or the other.

Retailers: If you're planning to place an order with Scrapperdashery, I can still fulfill orders from elsewhere in the world. The only two things I can't fulfil are non-stick craft sheet sold by the metre because I have to be here to fulfil a special order like this, and solid-coloured cardstock as my distribution agent doesn't have any in stock at the moment. But all the patterned paper is still there and there are discounts applying until the end of March.

I know you'll be thinking of me and supporting me through this, so thanks in advance for that support.

Judi

For those of you who don't know him. This is my Dad. Mum took this photo of us together at Stonehenge last year when they came over from Australia to visit me. We had nearly 5 wonderful weeks where I took some time off work and we spent some great time together. We drove up to Scotland to visit Mum's Aunt and then down to Darlington to see where Dad's family left England from. The best bit for me was finding all the Hodgkins who are buried in Darlington Quaker Meeting House Burial Ground.

While they were here, Dad helped out on my studio, working on some of the plastering with me. He told me yesterday that my sister-in-law had shown him how to get to my blog so that he could see the studio and he was so chuffed to see that I was nearly completely moved in (I'm not sure that I'll ever be completely moved in).

Unfortunately, I am welcoming my own mortality this week with the news that my father has terminal cancer - leukaemia in fact. I'm 10,000 miles away and feeling rather helpless. We all disagree with our parents at some stages in our lives, and I'm no different. But they are the only ones I've got and knowing that at 40 I'm about to lose one of them is heartbreaking.

So, I'm going home to see him, let them both know how much I love them and share time with my immediate family. So, if I don't respond to queries, questions and anything else as quickly as you would expect, I am sorry and I'll be in touch with you as soon as I can.