CARBON CREDITS ANYONE?

This was taken over Yass last night and then the hailstorm hit Canberra. That's as far as I've got with the news today. I hope our Canberra bloggers are unharmed because I know they'll have been out in this to get some great shots.

I have some carbon credits for anyone who needs them. I was doing the ironing today and wondered if I was wasting water putting it in the iron or would I be better spraying it on the clothes, then ironing or going way back to when and sprinkling it on the items and rolling them up for an hour or so like my mum used to. That seemed to much of an effort so I just put the water in the iron but it's a small iron and I haven't got much ironing so there must be some carbon credits there for a big ironer (is that a word?).

I've got this ironing thing right down to practically zero. I hang my dresses up on the bathroom door, smooth down the fabric and leave til dry. Never iron tea towells except for the ones the cat eats off on the lounge room floor. Ironing takes 10 years off anything and as my tablecloths are heirlooms, I don't use them, they don't get dirty, I don't wash them so no ironing. There must be a saving of at least 50 credits there. Nightdresses are for emergencies only and I haven't had any emergencies so there's another 20. No husband, so no business shirts not that I didn't cheat with the Blight's. He was so rotund that I only ironed the fronts, by the time he got to work, he would have ironed the backs himself. That could be a good 200 credits there.

The only things I iron with loving care are my pillowcases, all 600 of them. Kidding, 200. I like ironing them now because they're mine and I don't dribble on them, snot on them or snore on them, like I said, no husband. I don't fold and iron in creases, effort and extra carbon emissions, just smooth them with my hands. Lovely silky soft cotton with pretty flowers and lace and no oily head resting marks. That will have to be minus credits there and I did iron a table cloth but that belongs to last year's carbon credits because that's how long it's been in the bottom of the basket.

I could run this country's carbon credit market without raising a sweat. What do we need John Howard for again?

NEW HOME PAGE

This cloud is called the Morning Glory. It comes to Burketown in Northern Queensland every September and October. It stretches up to 600 miles and moves at speeds of up to 35mph.

Glider pilots love it and call flying in it as cloud surfing.

The Cloud Appreciation Society is now my new home page.

Optusnet has decided to merge with my hotmail and ninemsn to give me a whole new outlook with a new piece of windows rubbish that I probably won't understand. They let me personalise the page, mauve, nice but with the optusnet yellow all through it, it's not exactly peaceful. But to get to this homepage, I have to load the optusnet/ninemsn garbage and sign in, all of which takes forever. I'll keep the hotmail, they send me recipes.

The only good part on the page is the weather but from now on I'll put my head out of the window to see if it's raining as I click on my cloud page.

MY DDDAY

I have a little rant about my mother every now and then otherwise I'd be creeping out in the moonlight strangling small nocturnal animals.

This was my day.

Unscramble the usual scrambled morning phone call.

Fall in shower after shoving can of food into whining cat.

Walk slowly (bum and leg hurting) the 3kms to nut house.

Have fight with sister after telling her not to lose my book. Advice I feel is justified to someone who's thrown out TWO telephones.

She's brought the vacuum cleaner back with the news that it's not sucking up. Sprinkle carpet powder to check theory.

Spend fruitless half hour looking for phillips head screwdriver (nail file doesn't work).

Look in laundry for screwdriver and find water leaking into the washing machine. Turn off taps and power point.

Go through mental map of when I cleaned the sewing room (well....doesn't everyone keep screwdrivers in their sewing room) and bingo! Plastic box, 2nd shelf, near the window.

Undo cleaner which is harder than it sounds because I can't sit on the floor. It needs a new belt.
Can it wait until Thursday, no, cleaning lady comes on Wednesday.

Call cab, grab ATM card, check fridge before she can get in with "Can you......."

Get new belt, spot cleaner for carpet, pay phone bill, trek to opposite end of Westfield to Bi-Lo.
Too many good specials to leave so buy another green bag.

Bypass custard tarts because I left mother getting a jam sandwich for lunch.

Buy a fresh rolled apricot and macadamia chicken roast because she couldn't remember how to cook the frozen one.

Joy, two taxis at the rank. First one is the driver who brought me here so he gets a tip for remembering where to take me home.

Mother trundles into kitchen to make the jam sandwich I left her making an hour ago.

Check pills after hysterical phone call late Friday night.

Ring Chemist. Pill boy is new and mother confused him. He was to hand her the new docette, she was to hand him the outdated one. A simple operation that ended with her keeping the old one and him taking back the new one. I understand his confusion.

New docette will arrive tonight so I have to stay and check it.

Halfway through unscrewing vacuum, I am called to the kitchen to crawl in the pantry and retrieve the frypan lid. I finally get it out with the broom which is how she got it so far in there in the first place so she tells me.

Mother says she's tired and goes to sleep.....again.

Back to vacuum, trying to remember knack in getting new belt on. Swears, a lot. Right, put it around the roller first then take roller and belt to the steel thingy. Put roller back in its slots while pinning machine to the carpet with both feet. Screw the whole lot back together......again.

Sprinkle carpet with powder to check sucking up is working.

Carpet powder is missing, retrieve from mother's walker, sprinkle and sucking up is fine.

Feed cat - hers.

Feed mother.

Ring cab which arrives at the same time as Brick Outhouse. Take cab in preference to folding into a VW.

Feed whining cat - mine.

Feed me. I have been gone eight hours.

DOGS, WHALES 'N CRAP

Whales are big and notoriously difficult to study in depth. With the Atlantic Right Whale population down to 350, researchers are trying to determine what is happening with their reproduction. In 1999 there were only four new calves in the population and only one in 2000 rising to 19 in 2006 but still not enough to ensure their survival. The causes of low birthrate can be anything from pollution by hormone disruptors, detergents or antifouling agents and one way they could be tested was by collecting whale faeces. From faeces researchers could determine sex, genotypes and hormone levels but find whale crap in an ocean isn't easy.

Cue the dogs.

When the state of Washington banned hound hunting, the dogs were retrained to look for endangered species, ie. look for faeces then track them, but it was found that air sniffing dogs trained for explosives and narcotics were better. Detector dogs now help conserve animals from the Rocky Mountains to Brazil. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration provided a grant to see if the sniffer dogs could work at sea specifically in collecting whale crap.
It worked beautifully, the dogs sniffing out one load an hour compared to humans collecting one or two per day.

Fargo is a star, a 6 year old Rottweiler with an impressive resume. He was trained as a drug sniffer specialising in cocaine before moving to wildlife research. He has looked for bears, sniffed out illegal elephant tusks and spent time in the Mojave looking for desert tortoises. He then transferred to sea work with the whale researchers near the Bay of Fundy on the Canadian coast. His only problem was sea sickness. He wore an orange life vest and stood on the bow of the ship ready to catch a scent at anything up to a nautical mile. Humans have to get closer to smell the heady aroma of oil, crushed crustaceans and the sourness of whale.

Cue the Crap.

The colour of the booty changes with the seasons and the prey. In Spring, it's bright red from the diet of fat-rich copepods. An Orca's crap, if you want to know, is more snotty green brown and just as aromatic. The sample is divided and posted to various laboratories for testing of marine biotoxins, protozoan parasites, hormone levels, DNA which can be matched to individual whales and fat levels for nutritional value. One of the tests showed paralytic shellfish poisoning, caused by eating shellfish contaminated with toxic algae. Dolmic acid from diatoms can cause seizures and coma and hundreds of Sea Lions have died in the Pacific from this. Then there are the protozoan parasites, Giardia and Cryptosporidium which the whales could be picking up from human and animal waste dumped in the oceans near large cities along the coast. Orcas, for instance, have the highest PCB levels ever recorded in any mammal.

While the whale research goes on, Fargo has move back to the Mojave Desert to locate bats.

Next time you see a 2 year old peeing in the shallows, don't sweat it, there are bigger things out there.

PHASE NO. 57

That's what it feels like.

Vicious old harriden has given way to nice daffy old lady.

Daffy old lady with a five minute short term memory who rings at 8.15 at night to find out what time it is, morning or night because she's been asleep.

We have the pills fixed, almost. She takes half in the morning, half at night with no in-betweens to confuse her.

I'm not sure how much pain she would be in without the morphine but she is noticing pain under the shoulder and down the left arm. She can't hold a pen or write with her left hand, that hurts.

The morning phone calls are more like they used to be. I can hold a conversation with her even if it's the same one I had the day before. She is laughing again, something that's been missing for a while.

She's still like a CD with a scratch and her brain jumps a track, my mind reading skills are improving. When she says 'you know' I usually do.

But it's hard to wind down. I'm still expecting the tongue lashing every time the phone rings. Sis assures me that this won't happen again. The more she forgets, the happier she becomes. Unfortunately I'm not forgetting, not until this mood goes on for another week or so.

She hasn't forgotten to be pissed off about Aunt Selma, that could go on forever.

"THE EARTH WILL PAY FOR THIS"

I just loved this. It brought back memories of having to bath four cats. It was during my 'no dangerous chemicals for cats and kids stage' when I decided to use herbs to rid the animals of fleas, er, just the cats not the kids.

First catch all the cats and cage them. Boil up the herbs, rosemary was one that I remember and let them cool but not cold. Then pick out the cat most likely to rip your arms to shreds and that's the first in the tub. If we left that one to last, fear was magnified to terminator strength and we had no hope of avoiding lethal injuries.

It was one to hold and one to wash and both to scream abuse when the claws got moving. Then it was a big fluffy towell, usually mine and the cat was handed to one of the kids to dry it off while the next victim went in the bath. After they were all washed, I used the hair dryer to finish off the fur. I wasn't stupid, I made the kids hold the cats for this. The combing out of dead fleas was supposed to be next but the herbs weren't up to killing off the industrial strength vermin this lot used to pick up.

It wasn't long before the spot on the back of the neck lotion came on the market and I didn't care how much it cost (it was plenty). We flea bombed the house, the cats, the dogs and the kids. Flea free at last, then the kids brought home lice.

ELLESMERE ISLAND

The first image above is of the Ayles Ice Shelf, Ellesmere Island, Canada in 2005 before the break-up of the ice shelf. The image directly below is the ice shelf as a new ice island 66.4km2.
The ice shelves in Antarctica and Greenland are fed by glaciers but the Ayles Shelf was made of compacted thickened sea ice approximately 4,500 years old.*

According to Dr. Luke Copland from the University of Ottawa's Laboratory for Cryospheric Research, almost 90 per cent of the Ellesmere Island Ice Shelves have calved and floated away since 1900. There is now insufficient new ice formation to replace what's been lost.
The calving of the shelf only took an hour and was captured in images by the MODIS satellite. As with the "Loose Tooth" in Antarctica, there were low frequency seismic recordings during the break-away.

It's believed a combination of unusually warm air temperatures, long term regional warming, high offshore and alongshore winds (opening up ice free water), record low sea ice conditions and the loss of a semi permanent landfast sea ice fringe all contributed to the event. Dr. Copland thinks that blaming human-caused global warming is premature but doesn't rule it out.

As at January 2007, the Ayles Ice Island is frozen in the sea ice of north eastern Ellesmere Island. If it breaks free in the Arctic Summer and reaches the Beaufort Sea, its size could cause problems for shipping and oil platforms.

*An ice island is floating ice which has broken away from an Arctic Ice Shelf. An iceberg is a piece of ice which has broken away from a glacier.

Ellesmere Island rang a bell when I was looking at the ice shelf images so I took to rummaging around in the foot high stack of papers on my desk and found this. It's a satellite image of the Borup Fiord Pass with its huge glaciers. The yellow dot marks a sulfur spring seeping up through the ice.

In June 2006, Stephen Grasby of the Geologic Survey of Canada led a team to observe these sulfur springs to compare them with possible sites on Jupiter's moon Europa. These sulfur rich springs are teeming with microbes and while it's not the same as Europa, it's close enough to provide a testing site for remote sensing and exploration techniques in the same way the Antarctic dry valleys provided testing conditions for Mars. (the report can be found at The Planetary Society's weblog)

See, I'm not all pretty boys and donuts and anybody in Melbourne tonight will know why I'm posting about Arctic and ice shelves.

ANOTHER BEAUTY

Wrong, it's not another bloke, it's a frog. It's been preserved in amber ala Jurassic Park (that ala should have an accent on the a and I'm surprised blogger hasn't done it for me, slackers).

The tree frog appears to belong to the genus Craugastor and is only one centimeter long.

The amber could be as old as 25 million years since it was recovered from earthern deposits dating back to the Oligocene Epoch. According to researchers, they would love to try to extract DNA from the frog but the specimen is too valuable.

HELIX

This is the eye of the Helix Nebula. The image is from the Spitzer Space Telescope and is about 700 light years from Earth. NASA Scientists think the red haze around the dead star is from the dust of colliding comets, the cosmic survivors of a sunlike star that became a white dwarf.
Helix is a good name but I would have called it Godzilla's Eye.

I'LL HAVE MY COFFEE HOT

A fellow blogger is in raptures over her new coffee espresso machine not unlike this one. Very shiny but a lot of work for a cup of coffee in the morning.

I prefer mine served on a balconey by a willing slave. The coffee can be luke-warm but he's not.

In his other hand he's holding the croissants. Perhaps he should have put more clothes on, he could take a chill in the morning air, perhaps not.

WHEN I WAS YOUNG

In my last post I mentioned that my copy of "The Sea Around Us" was falling apart. The view above of the Ninety Mile Beach in Gippsland, Victoria is the reason. My sister and I used to take the train to my cousins and we would all go to this beach.

We would spend all day walking along the beach, to the beach, home from the beach. We hardly ever saw anyone. On one side of the sand dunes, it would be so scorching hot, we'd be jumping from grass hummock to hummock. On the sea side, the wind would be blowing a gale. It's the only place in the world where you can get 3rd degree sunburn and frostbite at the same time.

We never swam here. You could see the rips from the top of the dunes so we would spend the morning digging the biggest hole in the wet sand then dig a channel for the sea to flood into our private pool. We almost drowned our youngest cousin by putting him in a hole and watching the tide come in. A couple of Nuns out for an evening stroll made us take him out. I make no apologies, the kid was one of the worst whingers ever born and it was a consensus decision by all concerned. Thanks to the do-gooders we spent the next week dragging his stroller up and down sand dunes.

It was the perfect place to sit and watch the waves roll in. I used to try and pick which were local and which had rolled in from New Zealand. We used to listen to the weather report every night and pray for storms. Cornish wreakers had nothing on us when we heard the wind come up and the surf get louder. The pickings weren't much but our imaginations were. An old boot had us looking for the body. Dead sea creatures were subjected to rudimentary necropsies. The biggest storm we ever experienced left the shoreline littered with all sorts of gemstones which I learned later had probably been dredged up from the off-shore oil and gas explorations.

Only kids would know why we would take an hour to drag home a piece of driftwood to sit on when the holiday shack had plenty of chairs. Sometimes my aunt would turn up with lunch but mostly she stayed away and left us alone. I suppose she thought we'd all stay together and be safe but we would get bored and wander off to do something that interested one and not the others. That was one problem with the beach, you could walk for miles forgetting that the wind was at your back until you turned for home.

I haven't been back, too much development and too many people now. I'd never get away with singing off-key into the wind.

ANOTHER WOMAN OF SCIENCE

Rachel Carson was an American zoologist and marine biologist. In 1936 she became only the second woman to be hired by the, then, U.S. Bureau of Fisheries for a full time professional position, as a junior aquatic biologist.

She was 29 years old and caring for an aging mother, the next year her older sister died and she became responsible for her two nieces.

She became Chief Editor of Publications with the re-named Fish and Wildlife Service in 1949. As well as her work for this agency, she was writing for herself and "The Sea around Us" was published. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 86 weeks (I still have my falling apart soft cover later edition). It won the 1952 National Book Award and was made into a documentary film that won an oscar.

She then began writing full time and at the death of one of her nieces, took responsibility for the 5 year old orphan son as well as continuing to care for her 90 year old mother. She moved to the countryside and began to research pesticides especially DDT which led to her writing her most famous book, "Silent Spring". She used the book to highlight wildlife mortality with the over-use of pesticides like dieldrin, toxaphene and heptachlor also linking these to human cancers.

The book was published in 1962 to a predictable outcry. She had threats of lawsuits and was derided as an hysterical woman who would see the earth returned to the dark ages. The chemical industries, (Monsanto, Velsicol, American Cyanamid) the Agriculture Department and some media went on the attack. This was despite her repeatedly saying she was not calling for a complete ban or withdrawal of helpful pesticides, just a more responsible attitude to use and an awareness of the impact of earth ecosystems.

Halfway through the writing of the book she was diagnosed with breast cancer and she died in 1964 at age 56. She didn't live to see the banning of DDT in the U.S. in 1972.

The Rachel Carson Prize was founded in Stavanger, Norway in 1991 and is awarded to women who have made a contribution in the field of environmental sciences.

Criticism of her work never stopped as developing countries battled infectious diseases nearly eradicated by DDT. But it was the indiscriminate spraying that she disagreed with. Research now shows how quickly pests become resistant. In 2006 research done on the larvae of anopheles gambiae shows they can survive outside puddles sprayed with insecticide, in the moist or wet mud several metres from the sprayed area.

In 2002 Ronald Bailey reviewed "Silent Spring" and concluded that the classic had not aged well. You can read it at http://www.reason.com/news/show/34823.html He does a nice hatchet job but I think he misses the point that science doesn't stand still and this was an amazing book for the age. It pointed the way down a road that has many side streets and it doesn't diminish her work in any way.

One of those attacking chemical companies is still making headlines, Monsanto is pushing genetically modified crops and making the pesticides to spray them.

VE HAF WAYS

Blogger certainly does, like locking me out of creating posts until I signed up for Beta.

If I have lost one full stop or comma, I'm coming after them.

It had better be idiot proof.

"labels for this post" That's easy mine come under froth, bubble and utter crap.

Not changing the layout, black doesn't show the dirt.

Okay, tits crossed and let's post.

PRETTY

This is the Island of Sark in the English Channel. It's three and a half miles long and one and a half miles wide. The map's boring.

This is much better. The Island of Sark joined to Little Sark. Property ownership is based on a feudal system whereby the Island is leased from the Crown by the Siegneur - King of Sark - and is divided into forty portions, one of which is the Seigneurie - King's Palace.

It has no cars. There are no roads, just dirt tracks and short cuts across fields for the transport which is horse, bicycle, tractor or public transport, which is horse and cart.

There is a prison which can hold two people and you can still be hanged for stealing cattle. There are local gemstones including amethysts which can be found on the beaches.

If you visit Little Sark, there are the remains of the copper and silver mines, called The Pot. The Gouliet Caves are massive and extremely beautiful but it's not advised that you wander off as people have disappeared in the network of caves.

LOST:MY MARBLES

I had to go out and shop for my Mummy today. I've filled the freezer with food and written it on paper and pinned it to the freezer door.

Yesterday she told the Brick Outhouse that the reason there was no food was that $50 worth of meat was stolen from her supermarket delivery truck on Thursday.

He rang me, frothing at the mouth that someone would do that to an old lady.

I almost made it through Sunday without my blood pressure dangerously near stroke level.

On Thursday, the store misplaced two pork butterfly steaks worth $9.58 for which I will get a credit next time I place an order.

Today I had to call the doctor to see if we could put her tablets into morning and evening lots instead of through the day. He's away on 5 weeks leave so I talk to substitute doctor and it sounds a lot like talking to my Mother. There is a letter in her file about breast cancer and it has her name on it but it's not her hence the confusion.

More confusion when I try to change all the medication with the chemist tomorrow. I also found out that the capsules she told me were for cholesterol are actually mild anti-depressants. I'm going through every tablet and capsule she takes and finding out what each one is for.

Memo to family.....do not listen to Mother.

On a much happier note. The Muriels are pregnant after three and a half years of trying. Let's hope it won't take as long for them to be able to have a marriage ceremony with all the trappings.

Take that Howard and up yours Ruddock.

THIS AIN'T RAMSEY STREET

Well if it was some fictitious street in some fictitious neighbourhood then I would have Henry on one side and someone equally as delicious on the other.

Instead I have been blessed with a controlling nag on one side and a pain in the arse on the other.

Controlling nag comes in this afternoon wanting to know if I've heard a duck quacking at night. It's keeping her awake so naturally she's hunting it down. Quickly hiding my trusty duck hunter quacker maker, I tell her no. Deprived of a witness to this nocturnal Daffy, she decides to have a go at my tree on the fence line.

Given it is not the most beautiful of trees but it was free and it's a battler in summer and winter, I don't mind it. I mean anything that grows in this garden without food and water is a survivor and should be given a medal not insults about its ragged shaggy mangy branches. I like its leaves that look like a deranged Rasta after a particularly good smoke.

I think this was the real reason for the visit. She's re-doing her garden, Yuccas and cactus and my monster is peering over her fence. I've already cut down two trees on the fence to please her although I wouldn't have if I hadn't wanted to and cut down the pine tree to please the arsehole on the other side so this one's staying.

My Feng Shui book says I should put up mirrors to deflect negative energies away from the house. If I deflected her negative energy I'd have enough mirrors up to guide the space shuttle back to earth. Whining bitch has been this way ever since I first met her. I've watched every woman in the street fight with her but never bothered myself. I learnt long ago that punching marshmallows gets you nowhere.

I allow her to remain superior in her own mind, anything that small should be cared for. Besides she's older than me and in nature's way should die first. I'm sorry the cat's too old to climb the fence and piss on her Yuccas.

JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE FRONT

This is brilliant, a aerial view of Uluru. I've never thought of how it would look from the air and it's very different from the cute guy I clicked to upload. It has been that kind of weekend staggering over into Monday.

I've had to put up with a visit from the Blight which meant tidying up everything just to prove I don't need another him to look after me. He still managed to give the place a once over as thought he still owned it. Now I can officially call him a little twit. He's shrunk or should that be diminished. He was wearing shoes, I wasn't but I still found myself looking at his forehead and I've never been as tall as him. It must be the weight of all that money sitting on his shoulders. he's going to be a little old man, hahahahaha, what a hoot, all that money and he's never going to be anything other than a fat wizened up little twit (you can be both).

A visit to Mummy was the icing on the cake. As usual I stopped at the bakery for coffee and yes, I had a donut but I didn't have two. I'm improving. What I did have was a sneeze so grabbed the tissue from inside the bra, usual place since it will never fall to the ground. Also pulled out a cockroach. Now it wasn't inside the bra when I put it on, I'm not that dopey so it must have been in the kleenex box. I tell you somewhere in space is an orbiting 'roach. It's 2kms to the bakery so it's been warming itself on my ample boob for 2kms and I never felt a twitch. All clothes will be inspected from now on.

At least there is one bright spot on the horizon. I'm meeting up with a Brownie tomorrow and much hilarity will be heard from Surrey Hills. We both talk so much we'll probably have to use one of those timers that chess players have, to get equal mouth time.

A VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION

This is a ridiculous time of the night/morning to be posting but the Smirnoff Black hasn't had the desired effect and I'm not passed out cold.

I just remembered the sliding door was still open to the world of weird sex stalkers and marauding possums so I went to close it. Really to put the security system in place which happens to be a bloody big iron bar that leaves exactly 5 inches of open space for the cat to wander in and out.

I put my foot in the laundry basket, in the dark. Well doesn't everyone leave a laundry basket in the lounge room? Yes, I did hurt my foot, thanks for asking and I hurt it standing on the packet of pegs in the bottom.

It's been three years since I last bought a packet of pegs and they're good pegs and they cost a lot and I've just remembered I've left dresses hanging on the line. They'll be okay unless the wind picks up then it's 'Hello Oz' or 'My Life Before The Mast' as the Hills takes off.

Now PEGS, the very important question. Does one leave pegs on the line or does one take pegs off the line and put them in a dinky little basket? Personally I believe in tough love and leave the blighters (sorry been watching spitfires on ABC) to the weather. My friend takes them off and pops them into a custom made calico bag with 'PEGS' on the outside in cute fabric.
She probably has pegs inherited from her Grandmother, she takes that much care with them.

The only problem with the 'leave them where they peg' is that I have a line full of dead 'uns. It's a bit like a country fence strung with dead crows. Some skeletons have been there since before plastic ones were invented. I like the continuity of history.

I'm also too lazy to get them off the line.

ELEPHANT IN THE FAMILY

I'm trying to ignore the elephant in the family. NOT my weight although I'm ignoring that as well and that stupid biggest loser is starting again. Hate it with a passion I usually reserve for pavlova with cream and crushed raspberries. Now the elephant which is my Mother and who I have been trying not to post anything about. The elephant which is driving me crazy (which or who? which one, Dodgy?)

She shut the cat between the screen door and the front door. The cat's fat, the space isn't. The Brick Outhouse was not amused when he got home. The cat didn't leave his side all night. In fact she slept on his socks so the only thing that was injured was her sense of smell.

She rang me this morning to ask if she could put her shoes in the dishwasher to clean them. I have become an accomplished mindreader in the last year and told her she couldn't put them in the washing machine either. Can't keep a good elephant down, she washed them in the sink and hung them out to dry on the balustrade. If you ever get the chance to buy shares in Homeped Shoes, grab it. A tank could roll on those shoes, let alone my Mother. Along with cockroaches and John Howard, add Homeypeds to the nuclear war survivors.

She was surprised to find out today was February 1. Her calendar is defective, it hasn't finished January yet.

She's lost her TV guide again so she's going to ring me at 6 every night until she gets a new one on Sunday.

She is not deaf so there's no need to raise my voice to screaming pitch every time she rings.