THERAPY - BREATHE - DROOL- BREATHE AND REPEAT

Don't those legs go up a long way.

All the way up to that lovely chest.

Nice shorts, I love to unwrap my presents.

Yep, you can definitely bathe him in rose

water and drag him to my tent

in chains at midnight.

THE TIDE IS TURNING

I can see the carpet apart from cake crumbs, bits of lace, shredded paper and a layer of dust.
I can almost get the doors closed on the lace cupboard.
I have six empty plastic boxes and enough empty plastic bags for 12 months of garbage.

And I can't stand Mozart.

I'm going through 40 CDs of mum's music, most of it Mozart, before I turf the lot to the op-shop.

Listening to 10 minutes of Mozart a day is supposed to be calming to the nerves and increase the brain power of children. *raspberries*

But I feel obliged to listen just once to something that she adores.

She wants the Requiem played at her funeral.

This means I have to keep listening til I find it.

The only way to get rid of a Mozart earworm is to play the 1812 Overture, loudly.

DEFINITION OF A HYPOCRITE

That's a person who's reading every word in the WeightWatchers magazine while snarfing the whole box of Cadbury's Favourites because they were half price in Coles and they tripped me up as I walked past.

I need them, stress is becoming a way of life and chocolate de-stressing is the only way I can cope.

Trotted off to the Pink Ribbon afternoon tea, caught the bus so up there to Agoraphobia but found the old girl in bed again. A reaction to the huge dose of penicillan to clear her lung infection. Her right leg from knee to ankle had come up in a red swelling. I sat with her and missed all the pink cake which is why the Favourites managed to trip me up on the way home.

The phone hasn't rung so she's still on the planet but I have to break my rule of not seeing her on Sunday and go down tomorrow. Did I mention that this blog was going back to posting serious science stuff? Dreaming, wasn't I!

I NEED MORE DE-STRESSING

I think I might have been a bit naive to think that with mother being in a nice safe place it would make life easier for the family, more importantly me.

I saw her on Monday, lording it over the craft activities, waited while she had lunch and wheeled her down to Bingo.

Sister saw her yesterday around 3 o'clock and she was gleeful as she'd sold one of the boxes she'd made in craft. She did say she'd had a pain in the head the night before and hot and cold sweats but she felt fine.

By 8 o'clock she was deathly ill. An undiagnosed urinary tract infection and fluid in the bottom of the right lung but the nurses were onto it pretty quickly and had a doctor there sharpish. Sister went down and stayed until mum went to sleep because she refused to go to hospital, which is her right. The staff said they'd ring if her condition worsened. They did say she was an "uncomfortable colour", sister said she was whiter than white.

Today she was a lot better but with more antibiotics to take which didn't stop her giving orders about a certain piece of lace she'd like and she knows I've got it. I swear she'll be giving orders to the driver of the hearse. At least she doesn't have a phone beside the bed and I might get some sleep tonight. Her colour was still in the white zone but up from "uncomfortable" to pale.

But this shows how quickly a UTI can take hold of someone who's immune system is down when even my sister the nurse didn't notice anything wrong. With another hot summer coming up, anyone looking out for their oldies should take notice of any odd behaviour or confusion and make their doctor test for infection.

WHEN THERAPY IS GOOD

Therapy is good when he is the therapy.

Just look at those green eyes.

I could dive off his nose and drown in those eyes.

If that's a whistle around his neck,

he only has to blow,

he knows how to blow,

just puts his lips together.

JUST POPPED IN

I am very tired, the kind of tired that brings a total meltdown.

I have two ravens sitting on the fence outside the study window. Ravens are good omens, when they fly away they are supposed to take your troubles with them. They haven't gone yet, they're just sitting there looking in the window, watching me. It's getting very Alfred Hitchock around here.

I did have a post that should have been up last week. The curse of the Hope Diamond strikes again. It's not anywhere, not in drafts nor scheduled posts. Blogger ate my post.

My family ate my brain. I'm letting them walk all over me in an effort to avoid confrontation but the fuse is getting very short.

I'll be back soon or I'll send a raven from the padded cell.

FOR PEOPLE WHO OPEN BIRTHDAY PRESENTS ON THE WRONG DAY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HAWTANDREW

I hired a Butler for the day just to open

this gem.

From Dalmore Distillery's 1951 Sirius Vintage

single malt whiskey with a cask strength of 45%

10,000 English quid a bottle

I don't stint for friends

I see someone already gave you a nice tray

but this one is much better for holding the glass.

You see what I mean, frightfully modern but perfect
for the tray.

You've had a balloon ride so
I bought you a yacht.


And a sailor.
I would have wrapped him
but the paper kept getting wet
and falling apart.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

VERY HARD TO BLOG ABOUT LIFE

I'm suffering from the 'Bambi' Complex, if you can't say anything nice then don't say anything at all.

I have a sharp tongue that could blister paint from the Sydney Harbour Bridge and I'd feel right at home on that planet of Frank Herbert's where they use words to kill.

So internalising the anger that's threatened to destroy what's left of our small family has left me with a heart attack in my future and a tongue glued to the roof of my mouth.

Suffice to say, I could slap my sister 6 ways from Sunday and boot the BrickOutHouse into the Monday after.

I am allowed to give my mother money to spend when she goes out for coffee and you standing there with a cigarette ($21 a packet?) is so hypocritical.
I do have to go through her things carefully and slowly since no-one wants to help except to hire a skip and chuck the lot.
I will not throw out her clothes in case she wants to wear a particular one she remembers.
Telling me I let her overspend on bed linen while you're making off with the doona covers, the new duckdown doona and her pillow cases (40 of them so you tell me later) earned you a mental kicking.
Tellling me you want the mess out of the house when your wardrobe is the lounge room floor went down a treat.
Sorry you're whacked because you've been carting out stuff for the hard rubbish for hours but didn't I tell you to start putting it in the carport weeks ago?

I could go on but the tranqulizers are kicking in and I'm starting to mellow.

IT'S BEEN A STRESSFUL DAY

I need de-stressing and lilac fairies aren't going to do it.



Doing a wax job on those pits would certainly help so would pulling the hairs out one by one with a pair of tweezers. Nice eyes, very calming.

Definitely calm now. The Welsh stud muffin always does it. I'll just splash the water onto his shirt ala Mr. Darcy and help him out of those nasty wet jeans. Very calming. Only one thing missing, where's me gin and tonic.

Hello Mr Rudd, yes, I'm one of those disreputable tarts on welfare who've just crawled in from the pokies and is slightly pissed because I drank beer and gambled (didn't lose, broke even). I did pay the bills first and buy food. Chocolate and pavlova were on special, go down a treat with the gin and lime which I remembered after I'd paid for the beer. Paying for beer when I had free gin at home, more than slightly pissed, my father would be ashamed of me forgetting about free booze.

It was all go at the home this morning. Gossip group in the kitchen making shortbread with my mother leading the pack. After lunch was Bingo and tomorrow they're all off, wheelchairs and all, to Mordialloc Pier to eat fish and chips and fight off the seagulls. If the weather is too chilly, it's back in the train and head for La Porchetta.

She also insulted me, I think, yes she did. She wants cotton knickers, mine. According to her I have a bigger bum than she does and so I'll have nicely stretched them and she won't have to struggle getting them on. I'm sure there's an insult in there somewhere. I dealt with that the way I deal with all weighty matters, I had a vanilla slice the size of a city block. Bloody woman.

MY KIND OF SHOE

There's nothing like a shoe box full of surprises and this one is a beauty. Piper Heidsiek Brut and a crystal Louboutin shoe to drink it from. It was supposed to be the epitome of love to drink Champagne from your latest floozie's slipper but it always seemed to me to be a waste of good booze. This is better but I hope Posh Beckham doesn't see it, I wouldn't put it past her to try walking in a pair.

THE TROJAN HORSE IDEA

The large orange bit is an amoeba and it's using a false foot called a pseudopod to reel in a bacterium, green bit. The bacterium is Legionella pneumophila and is the cause of Legionnaires' Disease but instead of being digested by the amoeba, it stays safely inside this 'trojan horse'.

Scientists began using the term about 15 years ago to describe Legionella pneumophila, the bacteria eventually traced as the cause of the mysterious disease that broke out among people attending an American Legion convention in Philadelphia in 1976. It sickened 221 people and killed 34.

Epidemiologists traced the cause back to water in air-conditioning tanks on the roof of the building where the Legionnaires were meeting, but they still had trouble finding Legionella within that water. It turns out that high concentrations of Legionella were living within the protists that lived in the tanks.

Legionella were reproducing within these protists and coming out in small aggregates that became airborne in water droplets. Susceptible people breathed in high concentrations of Legionella that had just come out of their hosts and were looking for new hosts.

The image is from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Barry S. Fields.

LACE, LACE AND MORE LACE

I never thought I would get tired of looking at lace but another week of sleeping with it, stepping over it and trying to fit it in one cupboard might just do it.

My mother must have cornered the market on pins, needles and safety pins. They're in everything, jars, boxes, pin cushions and take a tip from me, never use a pin cushion that doesn't have a hard bottom. The sewing needles disappear into the soft ones and picking them up the wrong way is a surefire recipe for punctured fingers.
If my money does run out, I can always dress like a gypsy and go door to door selling pins and ribbons.

So today was my day for getting a handle on this Agoraphobia which I didn't realize was as bad as it is. I was pretty wonky going to Bendigo but I think I fooled everyone by not passing out so who would have thought getting around Mentone would have me hyperventilating and leaning against fences. I've lived here all my life so it's not unfamiliar, it's just out of the 3km range that's been my lot for the past 3 years. This morning I decided to take a bus to Dingley, not far but I haven't been there for a long time. Walking to the stop was a joy since I think I might have broken my toe last night wandering around in the dark but I put on the granny stompers and made it okay. Toe was nicely purple when I took the sneaker off though.

I always thought teenagers and mobile phones were a pain but four 30 somethings in the coffee shop were all shouting on their phones, talking to each other and drinking coffee. I had mine outside, in the open air, so far so good. Caught the bus home but should have got off at the DFO and walked through the park as the next stop meant 15 minutes of waiting to cross Centre Dandenong road but there were no hard rubbish collections in the park to fossick through. Pickings were slim this year but I did find two brand new wicker baskets. The house is full of rubbish and I couldn't resist two wicker baskets.

Next week I might try going to Oakleigh by bus and getting a train back which means changing at Caulfield. Of course, it's not a good idea to fight this while cutting back on the anxiety medication but as long as there's a cake shop where I can self medicate with food, I'm okay. It's a shame I'm trying to diet as well.

If you happen to see a fat redhead re-breathing CO2 from a cake bag, say hello, it's me.

THE HARVEST MOON

This brilliant photograph was taken by Jimmy and Linda Westlake. It shows the brightest full moon known as the Harvest Moon and the moon itself is photographed through Yellowstone National Park's Old Faithful geyser. You know the drill, click to get the best view.

Daylight saving starts tomorrow and I'm not ready.