I missed it!

My blogaversary, October 3. Well I did have a lot on my mind but miss an opportunity to celebrate with cake.
Posting this just in time for morning tea so tuck in, don't mind manners not with my lot of commenters.
Sponge, raspberries, cream and three lovely layers.
I'll just pop out and get the paper plates and polish the silver cake forks, the large ones.
Thank goodness I didn't burn a hole in the kettle and I hope you like the Earl Grey tea.
Don't drop crumbs (with this lot,unlikely) the cat isn't here to snuffle them up.
Well, don't just stand there, get into to it.

A long wait for sanity

Well on the way back now, in part to River for giving me this award. I am supposed to give it out to more friendly bloggers which I would do if River hadn't beaten me to most of my favourite bloggers. So I am going to award it to a non blogger but prolific commenter until he is barred from commenting which happens frequently. To Robbert, poet, pest, all round fiend from Hell about certain issues but a story teller of old Melbourne life that should be blogged. I know he can be extremely nasty and deserving of a whack around the ears but in the best Elizabethan style, he threw down his cloak to protect me when, as a newby blogger, I was attacked by a right wing woman hating swine. Take your award, Rochester, Lord of Literature and Song.

It has been a while since I blogged. I'd sit down ready to write and the mind would go blank, so blank I'd be sitting here an hour later watching my pictures screensaver. First time for years I'd thought of giving it all up. The cause of all this was an outbreak of air-bourne gastro at the Home and it going into lockdown with requests to visitors to stay away. Oh joy, a whole week, at least, all to myself. Just me, me, me, me.

Well, me crashed and burned. For two days I barely left the bed except to eat, take the BGL and pee. I slept for almost 48 hours. I had pushed myself above and beyond and when I could stop, I hit a brick wall I didn't expect. Doc Marvin said it was natural. Doc Marvin also understood when I told him that going to the Home with the new arrivals had brought up a lot of bad memories of being locked up with the mother from hell for three years. She doesn't remember anything but I did and I could put it out of my mind at seeing her being so happy and alive until a month ago when I was reminded of the recent past.

I have also been plagued by dreams and memories surfacing from some parts of the brain non-active for years. I was advised by someone, not someone I remember, but the advice remains.
Sit in a quiet place (hard when I had 4 cats, 3 dogs, 2 boys and a marriage to a moron of the first water so that gives you an idea of how long ago I was given this advice).
Imagine the top of your head opening up and letting the warmth and light of the sun flowing in.
Imagine the light moving through your brain, down alleyways, stairs, around corners, down into the deepest parts that never see light.
Let the light open every closed door, light up every secret behind each door, look at every secret in bright sunlight.
After looking at each secret, deal with it rationally then let the sun destroy the darkness.
Whatever you cannot deal with, put back in the dark but never shut the door, leave a small sliver of sunlight to show you the way when you can deal with it.

I'm now beginning to think I have a brain full of swiss cheese holes of sunlight considering what has been surfacing lately. I don't deal in 'what if's', what happened, happened, what caused it, whose fault it was, doesn't matter. What matters is to acknowledge the blame belongs to all concerned, not to me exclusively. I was a cog in the wheel of life and sometimes I jammed it and sometimes I let it run away with me. Sometimes it just ran right over me and left me broken.

I believe the crash and burn was a rehearsal and a warning of what could happen, if I let it, for when my mother goes and I'm facing my life with me. At least I know I won't be putting anyone through the same thing when I depart. Departure time is planned for just after my 110th birthday, I have a lot of catching up to do and I'll need the extra time.

Aurora

This spectacular Aurora was taken by Antony Spencer from Gillingham, Dorset. The image is beautiful enough but the streak of light almost centre is a Draconid meteor.
A fluke shot as the Draconid meteors show up once every seven years but a great photograph.

Never take the piss

out of an ageing bearded aristocratic failed lothario who is in the middle of the equivalent of the medieval 100 years war with AGL.

Because MiLord Sedgwick will take out his AGL voodoo doll and stick it with a large pin bearing your name and AGL Karma will then sneak up and bite you on the backside. In my case the backside is so large I hope AGL chokes on it.

After managing to get a $30 refund from the incomps in charge, I noticed they hadn't taken out my direct debits last pension day. A pension day payment that for me is set in stone but set in marshmallow for AGL. To give me a refund of someone else's DDs, they turn off my DDs first and I am supposed to be a mind reader and remind them to turn the DDs back on.

So another call to the accounts department. A department that now has account experts to deal with complaints like mine. DDs are turned back on for the 21st of October and I am assured that none will come out before that, like pension day this week which isn't my pension day.

The money will stay in the bank until the day after the 21st, in case the nuts didn't pass the message on to the squirrels.

A nice cold beer.

Actually it was 3 nice cold beers and I must do it more often since I won on the pokies instead of losing. It's better than LSD, a beer goes straight to my head and all those spinning wheels makes pretty whirly pictures and I can fall off my chair if I don't hang on.

I did have a good reason to be at the pub all afternoon. I intended to do the shopping at Southland but guess where all those kids who were at the show last week ended up today.
Millions of the noise machines in all directions. I came in through the theatre entrance to head for San Churro's and a large cake but they were in there, in Macca's, in the pasta bar, in the sushi bar and the wall of noise would have gladdened the heart of Phil Specter.

I stocked up on the essentials, credits on the phone, tranquilizers and a block of chocolate and my knee ran off its track. So I'm in the pharmacy also known as Robber Baron Central ($34!) bashing it back to its proper place and gave up on the idea of any shopping. They were downstairs at some cartoon concert, upstairs at a lego contest and finger painting on everywhere. The noise, OMG, the noise. One more shrill scream up the back of my neck from some little ferret who couldn't get it's own way and nobody would have had to watch "The Slap" on the ABC.

I'm home now, it's all quiet and I have to do it again tomorrow but I'm going very early and running fast. Then just to put myself in harm's way, I'm heading for the home with a load of goodies for Ma who informs me tonight that tomorrow is going to be another sewing bee. Like Hell, I will bandage every finger if they even try to hand me a needle. I've spent two weeks doing jewellery for the auxillary and pink ribbon day. I think I'm the only member of the auxillary now, the last lady resigned a year ago when she hit 95 and couldn't see her knitting needles move.

Anyway they'll all be tired because they went to Mornington on a bus today, had lunch in the pub, enjoyed the sunshine and the new driver was great, to the extent of driving them on to look at Sorrento because he had the time and they'd paid for his lunch. Nice bloke, didn't drive them far enough, they made it back.

Rational thinking.

A small victory, AGL refunded the $30 it took out of my account and in only 3 days.
Since it was coming but not in the account yet, I deliberated about buying a new book.
I mean it's a book on 'Sea Glass', big with pictures.

$37.40.

4 copies of New Scientist which I read and keep one article.
3 copies of Gourmet Traveller which I read but am too lazy to cook from.
10 copies of trashy gossip tabloids which takes me 10 minutes to read.
1 box of chocolates from San Churro. Not allowed.
1 meal at the Pub.
10 minutes on a pokie machine.

Up against a book that I will read at least 5 times the minute I get it and will keep for the next ten years and look at constantly.
I really need it, I don't know enough about sea glass except for one post I made here.

It will make me happy, $37.40 for a happy.
Click Buy.
Yes, the happy is kicking in immediately.

Dog walkers beware!

This council has regulations regarding dog walking.
One of them is to take a plastic bag and pick up the poop.
So if you walk the dog all the way to the park and back past my house, why in the hell don't you keep going with the plastic bag to your house instead of propping the poop in the crook of the tree on my nature strip?

There are some who don't bother with the plastic bag but sneak out in the night to visit poop central. Once you could safely walk the footpaths with your eyes closed but not any more. And I worry about a dog that can't hold on long enough to reach the grass. Is it being dragged along without a pit stop?

We never had this problem and every house had a dog but it pooped inside the boundary and we buried it in a corner of the garden. Of course if you choose to live in an Australand shoe box, after a while you'd be pooped out of garden.

So it gets me thinking of 'Teh Olden Days". The days of dogs, horses and humans and outhouses and horse manure, dog poop and filthy footpaths and long sweeping skirts. The rich walked straight from the front door to the carriage. The rest walked along gathering crap like street sweepers and no holding up the skirt, not a glimpse of ankle or one was marked as not quite the lady. They did have dust ruffles sewn along the bottom of the skirt which was emptied like a dust buster or the lady's maid would remove the dirty ruffle and replace it with a clean one.

Well, you all know my mind enough by now to know that all I could think about on the way back from the coffee shop was dust ruffles full of dog poop. And don't get me started thinking about those damn deep treads in jogging shoes.

Spring is really here, daylight saving and my first cockroach in the junkmail.

And some sort of football ended.