Tuesday, July 31, 2007

HAVE A PIECE OF CAKE WITH ME

Not this cake though. It's a fungus cake made from spores and incubated at 70 degrees fahrenheit in a glass jar. After it's carefully turned out, it begins to fruit and smell mushroomy.

Now this is more me. Wide at the bottom, skewiff at the top but with stars in my hair and spots before my eyes.
The young don't know how to celebrate a birthday properly. Dancing around and getting drunk is no fun.
When you're old just waking up on the day is a highlight.
You get to check if the other half of your teeth are still there.
You map the new wrinkles that appeared overnight.
You pluck the white hairs from your chin.
You jump up and down on the scales til they beg for mercy.
If you feel up to it, you can go for a jog and count the stress fractures.
And if the universe is kind, the birthday falls on half-price movie day and you can sneak off and watch Harry Potter again. You should do this without the birthday excuse, it's better the second time round.
Help yourself to cake and have a glass of Moet&Chandon.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

MORE SPANISH GARDNER

As if I didn't do enough manual labour yesterday.

Today I was carting bricks, four of them. The same number as in chair legs.

It wasn't just positioning the bricks (I'm blaming nailpolishblues for this) but I thought I might as well vacuum the carpet before I put the chair back.

Putting the chair up on bricks was fun. I had to lift and carry the bloody thing. It weighs a ton even without me in it.

The wheel fell off the chair a month ago so the leg's been happily sitting on two books since then. This morning the other wheel fell off and broke the leg and so it riccocheted around the remaining two.

The bricks are working well but given Murphy's Law, I'm expecting the bum to fall out of it any day.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

ADVICE FOR THE FUTURE

This truly awesome advice is........don't eat Darryl Lea rocky road after Black Ice Vodka and 6 dry sherries. I'm not feeling well.

I'm sort of tired, proping my head against the computer screen tired. It's all due to my mother, the L.O.L who shall be henceforth known as the B.O.B and she was a bloody old bitch today.

First phone call 7.45, second phone call 8.45, third phone call as I was leaving the house so I didn't answer, got it off the message bank when I crawled home tonight.

Walk 3 kms in the rain. Listen to lying bullshit and make her have a shower.

Put the washing in the machine and start to drag crap out of the laundry cupboard which hasn't seen the light of day for 10 years. Realize where I get my pack-ratting genes from.

Take delivery of new refrigerator which she is not going to like because she didn't get to pick it.

New fridge is 8 inches taller and 6 inches less in width than the old one so doesn't fit in the hole under the stupid unusable cupboard where the cockroaches hold barn dances.

Grab builder from next door to dismantle cupboard which weighs a ton and I know this because I'm holding it on my head while he turns off the power because the power point is inside the cupboard which we are dismantling.

Pilot light on the space heater goes out when the fan cuts off because there's no power so I make him sit there and re-light it. I graciously thank him without swearing even though my neck is 3 inches shorter.

B.O.B. says the men have made the kitchen floor filthy. Good observation since I'm bent in half washing the tiles at the time. She points out where I've missed a tile.

B.O.B refused to look at the fridge.

I finish the washing of clothes and floor and B.O.B. and stagger to the shop to fill the fridge. I stagger home carry two litres of milk and two litres of orange juice and food.

I pilfer her sherry and buy can of Black Ice and sneak off to my sister's. I ring friend to take the contents of laundry cupboard to find B.O.B has already rung him to do just that and also buy her some milk as I've left her without any for her tea.

I didn't win Tattslotto either.

Friday, July 27, 2007

ALMOST BIRTHDAY TIME AGAIN

It's that time again, when I get out my list from 2000 and see how far I've come towards my 2008 goals.

Not far.

Not once in seven years have I been free to celebrate my birthday in a restaurant. July, it seems, is disaster month but I have enough to sneak in another viewing of 'The Order of the Phoenix' next week. I shouldn't have said that out loud, Fate is probably listening.

Divorce from husband, finalised. Goodness negated by apparently ending up married to my mother.

Freedom to do something with my remaining life. Nope, held captive by two little old ladies for six years, still in captivity in the seventh.

Subjects passed at Open University. Big Zero here but I did get the enrolment forms and the handbook so I tried.

Weight. Lost 20 kilos, regained 10, lost 6 and still trying. A definite possibility of success for this one.

Diet. Extremely good. 7 years a vegetarian. ???? years a chocoholic. Throw in a drop of booze and there's my three basic food groups.

Travel. I got off the mainland of Australia if you count going to Phillip Island to see the penguins. I did take a train and a bus in 2005 and survived the panic attack so I continued to ride.

Debt. I can't remember if I was supposed to get in or out but in up to my neck mainly vet bills since I was left the sole parent of four ageing cats. One left, hanging in there by a thread only because it's cheaper to feed him than make that last visit to the clinic.

Health. Improved. I walk, fall over, bounce. My teeth are fixed although I haven't been back for a year due to little old lady. Pinched sciatic nerve almost fixed but not quite due to l.o.l. Eyes haven't been tested due to l.o.l. I really need new glasses or a repairing spell. Nerves and blood pressure are in tatters due to l.o.l.

Personality. A work in progress. Some days I feel as though I should be wearing a sign that says "Do not prod the Viper". I still swear a lot and like to kick small children.

Love, marriage, partnership. Still a big NO. I'd rather open a vein. Become a hermit. Anything but those three.

I think I'd better extend the wish list until 2010. According to the New Age pundits, the world is due to end in 2012 so I've still got time to become ruler of the universe.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

LOOK AT ME, HOW GOOD AM I

That's because it's Tuesday and I haven't mentioned 'that book' or the film. I've been reading other blogs and what they think. Thinking about anything has been hard since Saturday and not because of 'the book'. I wasn't even thinking about buying it until I had to race to Westfield to buy a new heater for Mum's bathroom and Big W just reduced the books to $25 and I needed some tranquilizing.

I also need to start drinking, her fridge stopped working yesterday and I had to run over and cook as much food as I could save. It wasn't much and the front yard looked like a publicity run for Alfred Hitchcock as every bird within a 20 mile radius descended on the feast of thawed out pies, pasties, fish etc. Now I have to find a replacement fridge before Thursday.

To the book, which I read until 3 a.m. and enjoyed. Only Pavlov's Cat mentioned in a comment thread how J.K. Rowling writes about death, a subject adults tend to avoid with children. Another commenter said how it give children a sense of community and that is something I can identify with. I have limited contact with my granddaughters but Harry Potter is the first thing we talk about, books and films. I try not to pry into their lives unless they want to tell me about what they're doing so this is a bridge between us.

Now I'm re-reading the Order of the Phoenix, going on to the Half-Blood Prince before I start on the Hallows for a very slow read. There's a lot of people in the world who can't see the point in all of this but then I can't see the point in pornography or football so pardon me while I curl up in a corner with my tranquilizer.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

ARE YOU HAPPY BEING SINGLE?

I took that test over at http://www.blogthings.com (shut up Link) and for once it was right on the ball.

YOU ARE VERY HAPPY BEING SINGLE.

You are not anti-relationship.

You just don't need one to be content.

You find happiness from your life as it is and if you find someone you love, then that's just icing on an already decadent cake.

'Decadent cake', make that decadent triple chocolate fudge brownie cake with whipped cream on top and ice-cream on the side. I love being single.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

CATCHING UP

I've been catching up on my reading by working backwards to April's editions of New Scientist. This is actually working better than trying to read forward from that month. So in the middle of the thunderstorm we had here yesterday, mother rang and told me to get off the phone because there was a thunderstorm. At the time I was reading about a by-product, as it were, of lightning.
This pretty specimen is Fulgurite. A tree might be blasted apart by lightning but when it goes straight to ground in sandy soil, given the right conditions of that soil, it melts a path which is preserved in glassy tubes called Fulgurites. The name coming from the Latin - Fulgur- meaning lightning.

The longest know specimen was found in Florida and consisted of three branches totalling 38 feet. The best place to find them is in desert sand where the wind can uncover the fragile branches.

When they're preserved in deserts for thousands of years they can provide scientists with past climate information. Researchers have analysed bubbles of gas in a 15,000 year-old fulgurite from the Libyan desert. The gases have suggested that the soil conditions at the moment the lightning struck were similar to those in the southerly Sahel region of today.

Geologists discovered another type of fulgurite in Greenland which ran down a rocky hillside transforming the rock surface into a smooth glass. The glass was coloured blue, red and yellow and the lightning was attracted to this place because of its iron-rich rock formations.

lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

Something else that caught my eye considering the looney times our family is going through was this:

"All emotions affect our thinking and motivation, so it may be best to avoid making important decisions under their influence. Yet strangely there is one emotion that seems to help us make good choices. In their study, the Chicago researchers found that sad people took time to consider the various alternatives on offer, and ended up making the best choices. In fact many studies show that depressed people have the most realistic take on the world. Psychologists have even coined a name for it: depressive realism."

Okay, I'm with them on that. I am taking a very depressing realistic view of losing any weight off my lardarse considering the weather which makes me want food, dealing with a parent who makes me want to eat in large soothing quantities and aversion to exercise in freezing cold conditions where I might fall over except when I stagger out to buy chocolate.

Mind you I don't have to go out to fall over. I fell off the blanket box yesterday, that would be half fell off, since one foot remained on it while the other went skidding down the sharp edge. The bruise is a ripper, black and blue shin. Here we go with the depressive realism again, I've lost my ablitity to climb anything so there goes the plans for abseiling next summer.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

I'M BACK

This was the only bright spot in my week. My snowdrops are up for the fourteenth year in a row. The statue is standing on what's left of the Blue Spruce I had cut down last year.

Tuesday until Sunday, that must be a record for me keeping quiet but it was a bad week with Mater doing everything short of spinning her head 360 degrees and spewing pea soup at us. Bitch phase ended yesterday, morphing into nauseous terrified little old lady phase. This change of personality is shortening to fortnightly cycles and increasing in duration. It's never gone on for five days before.

The only dish that's been washed is the cat's since he has a habit of hooking his food off the plate onto the floor if the plate isn't clean. Good thing he's old and can't see the state of the floor. I have two shoulder bags half cut out and left where I dropped and ran. Half finished blog posts are hiding in the bottom of my bag, written on scraps of paper. I managed to change the bed at midnight on Friday. To give myself a treat, I decided to put on the flannelette sheets that took me so long to pay off last year that summer hit before I could use them. Bottom fitted sheet seemed a bit snug so I clipped the elastic only to have the whole corner rip. It was nowhere near a queen bed size, only a double so I checked the top flat sheet and it's so big it would qualify for king size. Waste not, want not, pillow cases and a nightdress coming up, not that I wear a nightie but there's always one on the bedpost in case of fire.

The fat bashing continues with articles in magazines, newspapers and on TV. My own scales contribute this morning with me throwing a John McEnroe and screaming, "you've got to be kidding!!!" We'll just forget it until next week. Dr. Rosemary is at it again, calling for a fat tax on unhealthy food. She says the proceeds of the tax should fund education and subsidise the exorbitant cost of fresh fruit and vegetables for rural people. Crap, I'm suburban and I haven't noticed I'm getting cheap vegies. According to a study by Curtin University, a 15 per cent tax would net the Federal Government $1.5 billion a year, 30 times the amount spent on health promotion. More statistics, obesity cost Australians $21 billion in 2005 in direct spending (on what?), disability and premature death. Obesity-related illnesses kill 17,000 people each year.

And if that's not enough, I read in New Scientist of a link between the obesity epedemic and global warming. Apparently fat people not walking means more car use. Fat people eating more food means a heavier (haha) carbon foot print because we eat food with more fats and refined sugars. Greater food consumption means more organic waste producing more methane. Then, like Dr. Rosemary, the article starts on health. Fat people have more back pain, arthritis, shortness of breath, increased risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, osteoarthritis, infertility, gallstones and several types of cancer. I'm sure if the author had tried harder, he could have blamed us for the Iraq war because more oil is required to fuel the trucks to bring us the food.
His final words, "pandemic obesity is an energy vortex. It is time to treat it as the potential global environmental catastrophe that it is".

Lordy, that's made me so depressed, I'll just go and have a block of chocolate and a quick vodka to recover. Just to be totally and politically incorrect, perhaps I could sponser an anorexic to offset my carbon blubberprint. Don't bother leaving anonymous comments about being cruel and unfeeling. I'm fat and annoyed and want to pull the arms off thin people. How long before we're rounded up and shipped off to those vacant detention centres for a 1200 kilojoule and 20 km hike life style change. I wouldn't put anything past this government and I expect Joe Hockey to be on the first bus inland.

Don't leave yet, the griping isn't finished. Next on the list is the electronic card to be given to families on welfare support. This is supposed to stop parents (lazy or irresponsible parents according to my other favourite nerk, Bill Muehlenberg) gambling and drinking the money that should be spent on food for their kids. Dumbarse morons in high places, as though the parents wouldn't sell the food as fast as they bought it for booze and gambling. I know this would happen because in my extended family there exists some of the most professional welfare rorters in history. Don't forget either that this same government taking this measure to protect little children is the same government giving away thousands of dollars to parents to have children in the first place.

Done with the rants, let's go back to the snowdrops.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

MY POVERTY AND PATRIOTISM

This is brilliant.

I'm going to show how patriotic I am and remove my poverty crisis.

I'm selling my mother to Asio.

If a terrror suspect survives in a locked room with her for twelve hours then you'll never break him.

An innocent man will be clawing at the door in 15 minutes.

Alternatively Asio could use her for training operatives. If they survive in a locked room with her for twelve hours, the enemy will never break them.

I'm not greedy, 1.5 million in gold bullion should see me right. Gold bullion, none of that unmarked bills rubbish, gold in the hand.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

THE DAY OF WEIGHTING

130.8kgs
Don't look at the 800 grams, it's irrelevent, it'll go eventually but all hail and welcome to the 130's.

I've always had a lot of time for Dr. Rosemary Stanton but she's wigging out a bit these days.
Her latest theory is that we should go back to wartime food rationing as she thinks a 1940's diet could control the epidemic of obesity afflicting Australia.

Now the typical wartime weekly diet was:
Meat: 900g
Butter: 450g
Sugar: 450g
Vegetables: Unlimited

Today's typical weekly diet:
Meat: 1.9kg
Butter: 1.1kg
Sugar: 1kg
Vegetables: less than 600g

I suppose she means 1kg of sugar not just in the sugar bowl but in all the processed foods as well. I would buy 1kg of sugar every 6 months for the pantry.

Dr. Stanton says, "There was very little incidence of heart disease or diabetes during the war years, and obesity was almost unknown."

Probably because people didn't look for heart disease, diabetes killed early and obesity was just called fat and nobody took much notice. There was a war on, don't you know.

It would be nice if we could go back to growing our own vegetables, fruit and kept chooks in the back yard but who's going to look after them. Working mothers in their few spare minutes not being superwomen, working fathers, wearing a light on their heads as they weed in the dark, or maybe use the kids as slave labour as a break from a homework load that would break a professor's back.

Okay maybe a bit exaggerated but people don't have the time available these days nor do some have the ability to grow edible stuff. The fruit trees around me produce without help but everything else I've tried to nurture has withered and crawled away to die in some dark corner. My greatest triumph, six cherry tomatoes in seven years of growing the rotten plants.

Nice try Dr. Rosemary although I'd really like to try the recipe for chocolate cake that substitutes pureed prunes for butter and eggs, reducing the amount of fat to 1gm in a slice compared to 80gms in a normal cake. A pureed prune chocolate cake, sounds so yummy, praise the Imodium and pass the toilet rolls.

HOW TO LAUGH AT MEN IN CHARGE

I loved this when I read it at Phil's blog http://www.venividiblogi.blogspot.com/ so I pinched it.

Guy Rundle on our favourite revered leader,

"Howard is a cynical professional politician and the polls would seem to indicate that most people now share this belief. Part of Howards' problem is that public dislike of him is now categorical - if he donated blood folks'd say he did it to get the free biscuit."

That is so true but unfortunately you could put any politician from any party in that mix and it would seem right. It doesn't have to be John Whineston Howard or P.Smirk Costello, it could be anyone, even Kevie. Thanks to the evil Bwca Dysthemia blogspot, I'll never be able to take him seriously. For ever more he will be the bland twin brother of Nigel Molesworth, the curse of St. Custard's.







Friday, July 06, 2007

BIG, WELL COVERED, ANYTHING BUT FAT

A subject dear to my heart, my lardarse and my gravity challenged bazoombas, FAT.

First from the A-Z of Consumer Pleasures, 1994.
"For women, beauty carries a moral overtone. The current ideal for women is that they should be thin, while the ideal for men is that they should be tall. Being tall is seen as a happy circumstance over which one has relatively little control, but being overweight is deemed entirely of one's own making. This has the effect of making women far more responsible for their physical appearance than men. A short man is considered unlucky, but an overweight woman is blamed for her size and becomes a target of derision. It is assumed she is irresponsible, self-indulgent and weak, a person of flawed character who cannot resist the temptation of food. Being fat or, for that matter, beautiful or wrinkled or dowdy, has become a statement of character."

Fast forward to April, 2007 to another book, "Neris and India's Idiot-Proof Diet" by Neris Thomas and India Knight (Penguin Figtree). The two woman also have a blog and a forum to help other women lose weight http://www.pig2twig.co.uk and the women using the forum and following the diet have lost 905 lbs.

But the women have critics, other women. Zoe Williams wrote an article called "You're Vain and Stupid", saying that weight was a funny old thing for an intelligent woman to be concerned with. "The real mystery is how people get away with fixating on themselves like this without relinquishing their right to be taken seriously."

I don't understand this view by feminists and I've come across it before. Why is it considered frivolous to want to lose weight, apart from health reasons, to please yourself by regaining some self esteem that judgemental people like to strip away, see first paragraph. The 1994 attitude to fat women (men too) has become more malevolent in 2007. Of course, we'd all like it if our appearance and self-esteem wasn't tied to body type but it is and women who criticise other women can be the biggest enemy.

I really don't care one way or the other about weight since I make my own clothes and whip up a piece of jewellery to match but health wise I've got to drop it. I'm doing it for me and I wouldn't like any feminist fellow traveller to tell me I'm vain and self-obsessed for doing it any more than I'd like someone to tell me how good I look when I've lost the flab.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

IT'S JULY - SALE TIME

It's also school holiday time and half of Melbourne was at Westfield having photos taken on the Simpsons' couch for movie publicity. My head....the noise....kill.

I hate sale time when July is always short of money time but this year, bargains.

I now possess 'The Princess Bride' and 'The Abyss' for $3.92 each.

If I could just find the money for the plasma TV and DVD player, I could watch them but a 7 inch viewer will have to do.

I didn't buy chocolate and I'm going to hate myself for that about 9 0'clock tonight because I cannot spend three days with my mother without the assistance of illicit drugs, booze, cigarettes or food. I don't do the first three so hand to mouth it is.

Conversation from yesterday:

Mother: Did you just ring me?

Me: I've been here all day, how would I ring you?

Mother: I heard the phone ring, I thought it might be you.

Me: I'm in the house.

Mother: The phone rang. Did you answer it?

Me: It was a wrong number.

Mother: Good, then I didn't miss you.

I'll save the story about the rubbish bin that hasn't moved from the nature strip all day.

Monday, July 02, 2007

SNEAKS

According to Sam at http://queerpenguin.blogspot.com our beloved Prime Weasel might be considering an August election.

Since the enrolment time has been revised or should that be sneakily altered to favour certain political parties who wish to remain in office til the cows come home and means that anyone turning 18 the day after an election is called can't vote.

So if you're 18 now, or moved home or are roaming the countryside in some quaint hippy fashion, settle down for a few months and register to vote.

I would like to add the losing expression on JHo's face to the memory of Jeffery's losing face and have bookends made.

Register now or I'll rip yer bloody arms orff!

DAMN BUREAUCRACY

First gripe not strictly bureaucracy but crappy taxi driver who told me if he'd known I was only going 3kms, he wouldn't have picked me up. He was also furious that I had a taxi directorate card. My regular drivers know I always tip well because of the shortness of the trip and I hate myself for tipping this pile of merde. On the good side my allowance has started again so I'm not chewing my fingers every time the fare comes up.

What really got me going today was AustraliaPost. They've decided to stop their BillManager payment system because not enough people were using it. How many people are not enough? I couldn't ask them because they sent out the letter with the wrong phone number for enquiries.

My squeal is that our council, in the only intelligent thing it's done in years, arranged for the rates to be paid fortnightly by the BillManager system. It's been a weight off my mind and almost the only way I've been able to keep the house. Complaint to the Rate department was heard politely but the council haven't put anything in place to carry on this arrangement. It's back to full payment or four equal amounts. He did tell me that the four equal amounts can be paid off weekly but after a bit of arithmeticking, that's going to leave me more than broke.

Tomorrow, more phone calls to my council rep and she had better earn her money. My mother and I can't be the only people using this system. The guy told me they can't do Direct Debit from the bank either because people don't leave enough money in their accounts. How dumb is that, DD's mean you leave the money in the bank and use what's left which is what I do with all the other bills. I tell you this is going to end in swearing, a lot of swearing.