Thursday, June 27, 2013

He's Baaaaaaack!

 So he did it, back at the top.
 Now Kevvie let's try not to be smug this time.
 And remember to put the complex back behind the dunny door.
And leave the tantrums to the Leader of the Opposition
And don't smile.
*wanders off singing "Oh the shark has pretty teeth dear and he shows them pearly white"*

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

What a load of faffola!


Knitting is a time honoured craft and I'd rather have a Prime Minister sitting and knitting than one biking in lycra.  Nothing wrong with men knitting either. Bluff, gruff fishermen of the Scottish Isles knitted their own patterns in highland wool so if they were drowned, it showed which village and family they came from.  Women took up knitting for the Crimean War, Balaclava ring a bell and it went on from there. All lycra does is say, "Look I'm an arse on a bike.".  I don't think Kevvie knits unless he's knitting his whining into a whinge.
At least she's not spending our money on a gift for the Windsor sprog, she's making do and doing it right. Aussie women rule!

Monday, June 24, 2013

About last week.

Thursday, early morning, 7.30 actually and freezing. I have a phone call and a panic attack thinking it's a mother crisis again. It's a little man asking me about the hole in my backyard and would it be okay to come and look at it. Yeah, no problem, just straight through the carport and past the lemon tree if I'm not home.  No problem's right, he's sitting in his truck outside the gate. Up there is what he did after ringing the council. The outside of the box is the old concrete cover which you can see in the photo below which was after they fixed the broken storm water pipe and covered that up but left the connection cover.
 This was around the 16th of April and we're now in June. No, I didn't ring up, thinking they would be back to do something about the rusting cover. I mean it's only been about 40 years since it went in and then disappeared like a Pharaoh's tomb in the desert. And don't you love the mess they left. I rang after hernextdoor had them dig up the entire length of footpath because the nature strip tree roots were lifting it and cracking the brick fence. The tree is a Magnolia Grandiflora and not a council tree, she says, snitching. 
 Now this is the finished product. It didn't look like this on Friday but he came back on Saturday and cleaned it all up. I'm still not going to stand on it, I know how deep the hole underneath is. So that is 3 days work.  On Thursday when it started, it was a riot outside my house for about 2 hours.
For one thing, it's garbage day and two trucks are expected anytime.  Hernextdoor is fighting with Council because the footpath isn't straight and any water will run straight under her brickfence. I noticed that when I was complaining to them on Wednesday after the  concreting when they used my water again, didn't turn it off and I walked the bin out to a fountain spray over my drive. I was soaked because I couldn't turn off the tap, dodgy hands, but managed to get the hose connection off so at least the water was only running not spraying. Good thing I ran the bin out in daylight instead of forgetting and doing it in the dark. So as I was saying, I pointed out the footpath all up and down and not in line with the other paths either side.
So, council truck, cement truck, bins up the road, Combi van in front of my place to make way for the other combi to be taken away which it was on Wednesday but this is Thursday and I look out to see large truck about to deliver a replacement for the absent van. (possums are going to be pissed about that, they slept in it when it rained.) Truck doesn't fit through my gate so it's blocking the footpath and half the road, the half which isn't taken up by cement truck and council truck. Don't forget the garbage trucks are due but beaten by the postie on motorcycle who negotiated all this mess very well.
BrickOutHouse is thrilled with new wreck. But it's a FALCON, he says like I'm going to swoon at the thought of offering a home to it. Don't forget I have a Combi just waiting its turn to come up the drive. Slowly it all drifts away and quiet descends until Eric the Mower turns up 20 minutes later.
IceBear decided this was more interesting than hiding under the bed and took up position on the dvd player and making another hole in the shreds of curtain. As things moved, so did he, from hole to hole. He was by this stage getting a bit desperate and finally at 2pm, he went out and had his leisurely 9pm piddle under the apple tree. I swear he sat there for all of 5 minutes and him, with a box full of lavender scented kitty litter he could have used at any time. He just wanted me to feel bad.  I didn't.
Today I passed the Falcon, looked in and thought it was a bit tidier than it had been on Thursday. Of course it is, he better get here on Wednesday and drag the flaming bin out, it's full of car junk.

She never listens!

I hear the click of that damn camera right behind me.
Don't take my photo. I hate my photo being taken.
Woman, what don't you understand. DON'T TAKE MY PHOTO!
Good now my wet nose has smeared the lens, she'll have to stop.



Thursday, June 20, 2013

Shoes and jewells

 Just to show you that I'm not against lovely shoes, just ugly ones, I'm posting these.  I never want to see feet in them. I just want to put them in glass cases and drool over them. Now if someone would just make those sneakers I liked in burgundy and put these jewells down the front, I would be a happy walker.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

What is a shoe without a foot?

Actually better looking than the feet. Is that a pleasant sight in the above image? Wrinkled skin around the heel, veins bulging, and somebody shoot the toes and put them out of their misery.
Notice the gap at the back and the high arch where the shoe doesn't fit and once again the toes are screaming for help.
Oh this poor pair of feet.  Chinese girls were forced to bind their feet to make them small and dainty and she has done this of free will.  It might look elegant from 20 metres away but up close and personal, ugly stance, veins and red pressure marks.
These squished toes belong to Emma Watson. Hermione would have been much more sensible, still she could have given Voldemorte a jolly good kicking and turned and stabbed a vein as well.
It was a toss up between these two pairs of feet to get the ultimate ugly and old spikey up above got the award. These feet do not belong to some old crone but it's a good thing ugly doesn't rise like dough. Those veins are above the ankle and heading north. Red marks rapidly morphing into blisters, scrunched toes and those awful Louboutins with spikes. A real winner.
And runner-up but only because I can't see a bulgy vein but those poor toes trying desperately to escape imprisonment and failing.  And all of these feet without the comfort of hosiery but I suppose they couldn't work out how to get pantyhose on beneath or over the Spanx.

Yes I am in a bitch of a mood, wear it.

Antidote for dealing with idiots

 Well, I had to deal with a few idiots yesterday so I thought I would look at some shoes to lift my mood. And here we have the results, obviously designed by a whole other class of idiots. That up top, I love the heel. But the back and the open toe, two of the hardest places to keep a foot looking classy so yea to the heel, nay to the rest.
Another heel I love plus red velvet and both on the most godawful shoe ever. Hate the platform, hate the buckles especially the buckle around the ankle above the buckle around the ankle which never looks good on any foot. A fat ankle would bulge, a skinny ankle would look too fragile to lift the shoe. I do love the heel, it's like a Christmas ornament.
 Skyscraper heels and platforms, gold is good, red is nice but just get a look at those spike decorations. Don't tell me you wouldn't have to learn to walk as though you just dismounted from Black Caviar or it would be shredded skin from here to next Sunday. But what a way to push through the crowds at the New Year sales. On the whole, ugly, very expensive ugly.
 Perhaps a pair of boots?  Hate the heels!  Love the frill around the top. Thigh high with zip and lace up ribbons? Definitely 50 shade of ugly and 3 hours and a maid to get them on. Black I can handle but what this last boot is made of, besides ugly, is just more ugly with a zip and a ribbon. They remind me of the film "Kinky Boots" which I loved, unpretentious little movie, great ending unlike these boots of horror.
Now next time you see a teenager with sneakers falling apart at the seams, just think of them as fashion. I can't see the heels on these and even without platform soles, I still hate them. They look like skinned bats sewn together so thumbs down on the "Morticia Addamms" shoes.
So finally, a boot/shoe that this overweight Granny couldn't break or fall off. Make it all in burgundy and you have a done deal. Synthetic leather would do and for summer, cream canvas. Do we have a consensus for a winner?  And make it a knock-off, I'd hate to contribute to Karl's conspicuous consumption of baby powder for his 'white hair' look. I don't mean sweatshop knock-off either. If only we could have a little on-call shoe maker the way we used to have a dressmaker. A tweak here and there should take care of the copyright.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

I'll be looking for servants and a lawnmower.


 My new holiday home, by the sea, on a cliff (not to close). I love everything about it from the round balcony to the square 'Widow's Walk' on the roof.


And why I won't be going there by motorbike.  I'll be using the Rolls instead.

Don't trust a blue tie.

The age pension is the government's most expensive payment. Generously benchmarked to 25 per cent of male total average earnings, accessed at least in part by most retirees, and set to balloon as the retired population grows it was to climb from 2.7 per cent of the total value of Australian production to 3.9 per cent by the middle of the century. Spending on health was set to triple.

After this year's budget the head of the Treasury, secretary Martin Parkinson, set out the problem starkly.
''We have a big gap between what the community demands of government and what it is prepared to pay,'' he told business economists. ''We have to think about savings, or new sources of revenue.''
The 1996 commission of audit was onto the problem early. Its report will be the first place Abbott's commission looks.

One of its simplest suggestions was to stop increasing the pension. It is traditionally lifted twice each year by either enough to keep it at the male earnings benchmark or by the increase in consumer prices, whichever is the greater. Instead, the commission suggested adjusting it only from time to time after reviews that would have to consider ''all relevant circumstances, including budget pressures''.

The states would need more money. The 1996 commission of audit didn't say much about where they would get it from but events since provide a ready-made solution. The states have since been given the GST. They could lift it. It would be tempting to think Tony Abbott wouldn't necessarily welcome such a radical set of prescriptions. But it would be dead wrong.
When announcing plans for his commission of audit last March he specifically charged it with examining questions such as ''whether the federal health department really needs all 6000 of its current staff when the Commonwealth doesn't actually run a single hospital''. He knows what it will examine and he must know what it is likely to recommend. He is preparing to consider bold options.

I don't usually get political on the blog but these snippets from an article in the Age yesterday rang up a red flag. We had to fight damn hard to get aged people something decent to live on and it's not exactly enough to go around the utilities costs these days.
We should be looking at this very carefully. If pensioners start turning off the heating because they can't afford it then look at the spending on health, it won't just triple when older people start arriving at hospitals with all types of winter ills. And they'll go to hospitals because they won't be able to afford a doctor unless he bulk bills and they're becoming harder to find these days. 
I just spend an enormous amount of money on food for one person less the cat and bird food. But by the time it's divided up, cooked, packaged and in the freezer, I'll only need to buy vegetables for the next six weeks or so.  I would say my one extravagance is to buy microwave brown rice but 90 seconds in the microwave as against the time on top of the stove or the rice cooker plus the hot water to wash everything up and I think it evens out.
My other indulgence, Rose's raspberry and rhubarb jam, on special, delicious and I haven't seen it for ages. No booze, no cigarettes. I don't know how people manage if they're buying those.
This article should have been in bold type on the front page but if it happens then we'll have to mobilize "Grey Power", after all it seems there are a lot of us just hanging around enjoying free money.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Flounce, it should be my second name.

If there is one thing I love, it's a lace flounce and one on a Valentino wedding dress is just icing on the wedding cake. Now I've seen Valentino go overboard but Princess Madeleine of Sweden kept him on track. I think it's a dress that must be see in real life to get the full loveliness of that lace but I like the fact that it has lace across the bodice.  I'm posting this now because we have more nuptials coming up and I can't wait to see what Tamara 'Tits' Ecclestone will be falling out of, dress wise. By all accounts it's going to be a lavish affair without any decorum. I simply can't wait.

I have found my last will and testament and can now prove to my sister that she is my executor and has Power of Attorney.  She's also medical P.o.A and looks forward to hitting the off button should I need it. I did have a friend to be executor but decided in 2005 to keep it in the family after watching her extract every groat from another person's will over and above the loot he had left her. She kind of drifted out of my life after that. Anyway in order to find out what was going on in my life at the time, I took a walk through my journal.  What an upbeat year that was, after commenting for some time I finally launched my own blog.  I went to the city for the first time in ten years. I had loads of confidence to do this and that and then there was Mother.
She was already strangling me, anything to keep me from moving on. But I was going until she was diagnosed with breast cancer and that was me done.  Nearly 7 years on and she's still hanging on tight. With so much attention on her, no wonder my diabetes wasn't diagnosed until two years ago but it was already there. I'd lost weight, down to the lowest I'd been but I can read the signs in those pages, just didn't take any notice.

One of these days I hope to regain that feeling of looking forward. I might even get on a train again. I might even find where I parked my brain and get that moving. I'm not hopeful about the weight though, that's definitely a goal post too far.

Thursday, June 06, 2013

Another present, I wish.

Just to get me into the swing of it being June already I have this lovely drop from the 2013 American Gem Traders Awards.  It's from Samuel Getz Designs in Miami, Florida and I would get on a plane to buy this and you know what I think about flying. The metal is platinum, the pendant is a 50,15 carat mixed-cut, pear-shaped Morganite accented with round, marquis and pear-shaped pink Sapphires and diamonds. I love marquis shaped anything so I love the way the diamonds and sapphires echo the pendant drop. This is a definite on my 'Drool List', near the top or over if the Morganite was detachable to wear with a pearl necklace. 

Crisis over with mother. Now I'm not thinking about granddaughter number one who jetted off to Europe Tuesday morning for two months.  Surprise phone call on Monday morning, she decided to leave from Melbourne so she could say goodbye to grandparents. I thought she had lost far too much weight but she's been in the gym learning self defence for this trip. She also worked her flights so she had no more than one hour lay-overs when re-fueling.  Good thing too since one place is not good for young exotic looking women.  If  I'd had more time I'd have been up making bags to put over her head, as it was I had to keep myself in check and not offer her several head scarves just in case. She's taking notes on what the flight attendants do while going through her French lessons on the plane.  Mother lit up like a Christmas tree when we walked in and the visit did her the world of good.  As for my former daughter-in-law, she still retains the crown of Bitch Queen of the Universe. There are very few who would come up to her level of pure bitchery. (spellcheck's telling me there's no such word, well there is now)

I have finally cleaned up the study enough to switch on the little oil column heater and lovely it is not to sit here like last year with blankets and cape on. I've even finished the ironing from last summer.  Picked up my new glasses and well worth the $70 for OPSM to put nose pads on the plastic frames I could never wear. It's a new thing for eyes like mine that need the lens a certain distance away to focus. Keep something long enough and it becomes useful.

I am so not looking forward to the election. If the politicians would look positive regardless of how they feel, it might go a lot better.  Mooning around and packing up the office now is nothing but a self fulfilling prophecy.  Get off your backsides and get out and meet the people even if they hate your guts, make them change their opinion.  Why bother, I'm talking to politicians although there's a ray of sunshine, I believe our favourite dipstick is running again, Hi, Pauline, out for another money grab. Now I've made myself sick just thinking about her. I have never been a swinging voter but this year I'm swinging north south west and east because who ever gets in will be twit knuckle one month later.