Thank you Annie O for the feather toy.

 He likes his toys all tied together, catnip dragon, ball of wool in velvet, Christmas scrunchie he found under the chair and Miss O'Dyne's lovely bird feathers arranged to look like the real thing.

So he had good fun screaming round the lounge room and throwing feather toy and leaping like 10 lords a dancing until he was exhausted and landed on my foot.

Ten minutes later I look down at my foot and there is a river of blood flowing into my crappy old thong. It went through the holes and spread and kept spreading and flowing.

I'm still trying to get the stain out of my rug.  I had to hip hop over to my bag and get an antiseptic wipe and the river is still flowing. All he'd done was prong me with the tip of his claw but it had pierced a little vein and it was everywhere.  Not an artery, too dark for that, just a vein and I had felt nothing.

Good thing I'm used to the sight of blood and it is time the thongs went into the bin.  The cat never opened an eye or offered to help.

My eyes got gold stars.

I had several brilliant posts but I can't see to post anything.  Stupid eye drops that make the iris look like a lunar eclipse and makes me not be able to see at all.  Cat didn't believe me until I dropped the contents of the can on his paw.

Now the cost of eye glass lenses is/are "oh dear lord, I'm heading for the poor house' expensive.

Good news is I have wonderfully healthy eyes and an empty bank account.

In more good news, there is now a company that puts nose pads on plastic frames for numpties like me who need the lens to be a certain distance from my eyes which doesn't happen with plastic nose pads.   And you still can't get a decent size pair of glasses unless you throw a Britney and scream to have lens put in sunglasses.

Mothers Day afternoon went off without a bang only because they were all asleep until the tea trolley rattled.  And I have to go down again tomorrow. It's fish lunch so I have to arrive with party pies or mother starves.  We've discovered why the cook is so crap at cooking, her credentials come not from a cooking school but from being the tea lady.  I bet her fecking tea was crap as well.

Now going to feel my way around the kitchen, cook and not set fire to the pan, again.

Who has the best Galaxy, we do!

Galaxy Cove Vista
Image Credit & Copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (Deep Sky Colors)


You must do the clicky thing to get all the glory of this photo.  There's a lot going on in the sky and on the ground.  Rogelio perched above a secluded cove in the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park in California.  He used a long exposure to bring out the light from the stars and nebula in our Milky Way galaxy.  Then moonlight and a brief artificial flash illuminated the beach and inlet.  McWay Falls is usually obscured but they're just visible below image centre and the Pacific Ocean is to its right.  It's a composite image taken two weeks ago and it's the sort of thing I'd like to be looking at from my 10 star hotel room.

I am not a perching above a secluded cove person waiting to click a camera.  I'd rather someone else did it.

Tomorrow is Mothers Day afternoon at the Home, do not expect sweetness and light when I next blog.

My kingdom for a house cleaner.

Dear House,

I know it's been quite some time since we were up close and personal with the window cleaner, the broom, and sundry other dirt thingies and unless I win Tattslotto it's going to be a lot longer.

You could have warned me about the double curtains in the bedroom. They still looked good from my side albeit a lovely silvery grey instead of the shiny white they were the first time I put them up, unfortunately from the other side of the window, I saw shreds and not from the cat.

Yes, I know I promised the bedroom that first thing in the morning I would wash the good bits and remove the shreds but that was before I set fire to the frying pan and forgot the uncooked porridge in the microwave because the cat was hungry and gnawing on my foot and the back door needed to be open because he nearly went through the glass after the bird and gawd before I knew it, 10 o'clock and I hadn't even take the BGL for the morning or remembered that I was having porridge and didn't even need the pan on.

I was on my way to the curtains when the Avon lady called.  

I was on my way again when I decided to look through the catalogue in the minute of sunlight that was all we were going to get today.

Then it was lunch and I hadn't read the news online and the cat spotted my collection of bird feathers and wondered why he was racing around outside when he could play inside. So from the eyes in the back of my head where the front ones were reading I knew he'd jumped on the writing desk (as opposed to the computer table) and was making off with my best one and dropping the load on the desk to the floor.

By now I could really hear you screaming dear bedroom and I determined to do what was needed.  What was needed was an 18 year old, approximately 6 foot 4 inches who could climb a ladder without a myocardial infarction. Someone who could move a curtain rod, get the dreamcatcher down without the cat getting those feathers and wouldn't fall off the bed when the knees went.

My equipment of ladder, small broom, walking stick, pick-up stick were all needed. When did my knees get so wobbly standing on the bed? And the dust and the dirt. Just how long has it been dear House? Back to the kitchen for the hand vac.  Use pick up stick for picking up tissues from behind the bed. Before taking down the curtains I had to undo the fairy lights from the bed head otherwise they end up in the curtain.  Back to the sewing room for the scissors.  Finally the ladder, good wide steps but bending the knee to get on the bed was a cruncher.  Walking sticker unhooks the curtain rod and the curtains come off in a cloud of what could have been concrete mix it was so thick.  No wonder I've been wheezing like a 80 a day smoker.  

Sit down while the washing machine is on and pray this side of the curtain doesn't disintegrate in the water.  So far so good, umpteen metres still intact.  Back up the ladder, wobble wobble, damn where's me balance gone and start re-threading back on the rod.  Thread, thread, wobble, nearly fall, repeat until all curtain is threaded and back on hooks.  Slip the rod over the central hook.

Down the ladder and use the pick-up stick to even up the gathers, gathers are stuck, of course they are, you idiot, they're stuck on the central hook.  Walking stick takes the rod off the hook now the gathers are even and lordy the room is bright without the shredded backing.

It shows up the chandelier which wouldn't have looked out of place with the Addams Family.

By this time I'm lying on the bed, looking at the filth that has fallen on the lampshade and finally deciding that I must sparkle up the chandelier while the glass cleaner is in the same room as the ladder.

Oh crap, the ladder again.  Oh crap, the light globes are hot, because the lights are on, don't get any wet stuff near them, never mind the 3rd degree burns just sparkle the drops and get down the ladder.

So one promise kept, dear house, shame about the clothes still laying about and the jewellery not put in boxes and the bags not put back in the wardrobe and don't whinge about the window not being washed, without the shredded backing I'll need the insulation.  And I'll be sleeping in dirt tonight if I don't find the energy to change the sheets.

When I am Prime Minister, all crocks over pension age will be given their own cleaner and that will take care of the boat people. I'm surprised they haven't thought of that already.

Paaarrppp!

Who else would I think of when reading an article about farting? Especially when Kath is such an expert on such matters and so ladylike about her little adventures.  Scientists now have a growing appreciation of the importance of gut microfauna and its noxious emissions.  But one person wants to know why, since farting is wonderfully rich in sounds, soft or loud, why we don't speak through our bum instead of our mouth.

It's not frivolous because it seems that no part of the human body has evolved specifically for speech.  We just speak through the same orifice that handles breathing, eating, drinking, vomiting and burping.  Did you say vocal cords?  They're only two flaps of tissue to act as a seal to keep food and drink out of the airway when we swallow.  So why didn't evolution turn itself upside down and using the spincter as a vibrating seal, make that end the speaking part? 

Because we have a mouth, tongue, teeth and throat to make sounds, actual speech instead of the paarrrp booom of the lower regions.  That's not to say it doesn't happen, all of us know people who do speak out of their rear ends, constantly.  Footballers could go through life without opening their mouth once. I suspect some politicians do the same but are such practised ventriloquists, we haven't cottoned on yet.

Which brings us to the humble herring.  Flatulent herring communicate by paaarrppp as do other fish, whales can dong a rumble that floats for miles but it has it's problems.  Orcas home in on the sound of the farty herrings and and flatulence becomes the dinner bell.

It's okay Kath, no Orcas in Geneva.