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.

The demo was cancelled.

I was half way through Southland carrying Ma's worldly goods on my back, as usual, when she called and said the demo was cancelled so I didn't need to come. Obviously someone at The Body Shop did their homework and found out the home was 'high care'.

Then the rains came.

Well it was entertaining, the thunderstorm and resident mix.
Norman going round pulling all the curtains to stop the lightning coming in to get him and Eva pulling all the curtains to keep the thunder out.

Then the lights went out.

Some noticed, most didn't probably because all the curtains were shut. The lights came back on, flickered and went off, came back on. The last time it rained like this the ceiling fell in so mother kept her eyes on the roof.
The road out the front has a habit of flooding in a storm so there was a rush to get the cars re-parked. The last time two cars got caught with water in the engines. It's the huge gumtree that's blocking the drains but the Council says no to taking it out.
The escapee did it again. Hopped the fence early in the morning and was off. He doesn't know where he's going but he knows he's going.

Isn't this just typical Melbourne Show and school holiday weather?
I asked the BOH if he remembered me taking them to the Show. He said he didn't remember much except that I had harnessed them like a horse. Que? Light dawns as I cast my mind back and I was much better at lateral thinking in those days, I used the dogs' leashes and clipped them to the back of their belts. For some reason he thought that was worse. I thought it was brilliant.
He then brought up a list of complaints about his childhood clothing being 'daggy'. I reminded him that his mother did dress him at times, most notably for his kindy photo. The first and only time she did anything remotely motherish during his school years. Red skivvy, jeans and a mohair jumper that mum had knitted, shame his mother put it on inside out and we could see all the seams in the photo. He's currently hunting for the photo so he can have a piece of his mother.

I hated going to the Show. I never had a good time ever. Yesterday with it's strong wind reminded me of horse/pig/sheep/goat odour and straw in the eyes. The boys weren't all that interested and the BOH with his farming blood would nearly upchuck if he got too close to any animal that smelled and usually found the only horse/pig/sheep/goat pile of crap and stood in it.
I suppose the fondest memory was telling son to watch the horse. He said, "what horse?" and turned around and nearly disappeared up the back end of the biggest draught horse I've ever seen. That learned him to listen to his mother. Thank Ceres, they were never much interested in agriculture.

Hard rubbish and more rubbish

Not a lot of good pickings around this year and boo-hiss to the neighbour who put out what looked like a nice glass topped patio table then loaded it with all their other rubbish. I nearly had the BOH ready to nick round the corner with the torch and drag it home when we copped a thunderstorm. Heavy rain meant the pink heart shape fluffy stool on legs would have been a soppy mess and heading for mouldville and I really wanted to give it to his girlfriend for Christmas or a farewell present.

There wasn't much on my nature strip, 3 television sets large, 1 tiny 6" black and white which broke my heart to dump because I bought it with my very own earnings, microwave which decided not to turn off except at the wall switch, 1 computer screen and a 40 year old refrigerator with the doors off as per instructions. That went in the first hour, mould and all. I am such a pack rat that the BOH practically had to wrench the 3 wheel washing trolley out of my hand but it still had 3 good wheels and I'm sure at some stage we'd have found another wheel. Besides the new one isn't as strong and I bet it won't last 25 years. He was eyeing off the garden gnomes but I promised mum I'd put them in my garden, they can go when she does.

I haven't posted much, err, not at all. Life has been slightly difficult. Visits to the home have become too much like a walk down memory lane. Four years of crazy mother multiplied by 6 new residents have had me clawing at the windows to get out. Mother, of course, doesn't remember the four years at all. So I have been mistaken for a African male nurse and a husband of one newby. Said husband is about 98, hunchbacked and 3'6". One of sister's patients came in and she said, lovely lady, go and talk to her. A bit hard since she arrived on a Friday, had a stroke at the dinner table on Saturday and the funeral has come and gone. Another newby is Lennie who is constantly on the look out for a pair of scissors or a knife to cut himself out of his wheelchair. And the resident escape artist/full moon strangler managed to find a wooden stake and a hammer that the builders had missed. There was some fancy talking to get those away from him.

I'm not ridiculing them, I'm letting you all know what you're in for. It's giving me anxiety attacks and I like to share my hysteria. My coping mechanisms of eating, gambling and spending are in freefall. I wasn't well yesterday, the sun was streaming in over the bed, I was warm and I was relaxing but I could hear my father's voice, "Your mother needs you". Crap, says I, but the voice kept on and on until I was ready to tell him to stuff his harp in his mouth. I get up, dress, get a cab and she's in bed. Bad for her, good for me because I didn't have to cope with "The Others". She'd had a crippling attack of rheumatoid arthritis in the knee and was in severe pain but glad to see me. My father's photo over the bed had a stern look. He never does this to my sister, just me. Damn deathbed promises to look after the old bat.

I think I might go down tomorrow just to see how the woman from "The body shop" copes with a demo of their products. I don't think she's done her homework about the residents unless she has a degree in Doolally.

You're never too old or stupid

What do you do with a 90-year-old who gets breath tested and blows a reading of 0.230?
The police charged her with high range drink driving.

1. She's 90!
2. She can still drive!
3. She can still find the car and turn the ignition!
4. She has enough breath to test!

I know grown men that couldn't do what she just did.

Just watch the highway at Bateman's Bay on a Friday night. Look for a weaving bicycle.

Time, I need more time.

It's not my design but I have everything ready to make it, except time and brain function.
This blog used to be full of science posts and I know there are at least four drafts that I haven't whipped into shape because my brain won't work. My jewellery isn't working because I don't have a work room anymore so trying to separate glass (expensive) from plastic (not) beads continues on the lounge floor, tables and soon I'll resort to the ironing board.

After the Home visit yesterday, I left with my sanity hanging by a thread. No, I am not patient with the residents when I'm trying to explain things to mother. The full moon was four days ago so you'd think the effects would have worn off by now but they're still all doolally. It's not the same place as it was when mum went there. Staff has changed and the new are good but agency staff didn't give mum her pain medication at 7.30 a.m., two days running it was 10.00 a.m.
The activities staff spend half their time hunting down the escapees instead of doing activities but that's a bit hard when my mother is the only one who can help with the cooking and the craft. It's crazy that the old girl has become the smartest one in the place. To the extent that she is being mobbed by oldies who like her and the weekend escapes to the Chapel room to make her cards in peace and quiet can't come round soon enough.

I never thought I'd say I'd miss the happy place it was but there were enough on the ball to have a laugh but now it's a drag to walk in the door. It's a drag to be in my own house which isn't quite mine anymore. I keep looking at the washing on every chair, my brain says put it away but the body wants to sit down and cry. My nephew's been here a year, he's nice but he's here and I would truly love him to have his own place with his own things around including every piece of clothing and every sock but he doesn't earn enough to get a bond, 6 months rent, utilities put on or find rent every week.

So, how's the diabetes going? Badly.
So, how's the weight loss going? Badly.
So, how's the walking every day going? Badly.
So, how's the depression going? It's good, really good, ramping up to a full blown open a vein head in the gas oven attack and the only way out is to eat my way through.
So, how's the diet going? Baaaaaaaaaaaaaadly.

Space eye

So you're floating around Earth at about 17,000 mph and between 173 and 286 miles up on the International Space Station and you're taking snaps.

And what snaps! This is the Viedma Glacier part of the ice fields of Patagonia. It covers 610 square miles and is one and a quarter miles wide at the tip where it flowly into Lake Viedma.

The ice fields are the largest mass of ice in the Southern Hemisphere, covering 35,000 square miles.

Working for the Home

I do these stupid things so I don't have to help on the fund raising days when I'd rather sit and eat the food.
I've been putting cameos in little lockets and brooches and fiddling with chains and bails and my hands don't work like they used to.
And I haven't even started the glueing stage which is a whole other world of frustration and fingers glued together.
Dumped the 5 minute Araldyte, it takes longer than that to put an 8x6mm cameo in the setting.

The old dears are raising funds to buy a coffee machine.
I hope you lot aren't rolling round the floor laughing, it was bad enough me doing that.
They want it for the days when it's too cold to go to the coffee shop.
I don't know whose idea it was but I have a feeling it was my mother and if she thinks I'm going to train as a barista, she can think again.

It's one of those nice ideas that are going to be hell to make work. The staff have already taken the kettle out of the activities room since one of the residents likes to take it to his room. The microwave is so high up, the short visitors have to ask the tall ones for help. Not to mention what will happen to the cappuccino cups. I have taken so many cups down there and believe me, they have a half life of about 2 days before disappearing into the ether.
Harris Scarffe had lovely pink rose mugs on special this week so I bought them for mother but she was only allowed one and I've taken the rest hostage. When they break that one, I'll take down another.

Stupid weather forecasters made me miss the sausage sizzle today. What happened to cold with rain? It would have been lovely in the courtyard, dodging wheelchairs and sauce bottles. Instead I stayed home and spend loads of her money on card making thingies. She has to get started on Christmas, it is September you know.

Which card are you?

You are The High Priestess

Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.

The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluxuation, particularily when it comes to your moods.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Kristina Logan "The Dot Queen"

She loves her dotted glass beads, dotting with a shaped glass rod instead of glass stringers so that she can be precise. After each dot is placed she starts melting them at the same rate before adding the next layer and finally adding transparent dots on top of the opaque dots. The surface tension squeezes the dots into diamonds and squares according to how tightly spaced the original dots and transparent glass were placed.

But she doesn't just use the beads for necklaces, in her hands they can become anything. The Amber tea pot is 16.5 x 16.5 x 9.5 cm and is one of a series.

And don't the dotty beads look gorgeous as candlesticks. You can see here the surface dotted beads and the worked dots under transparent glass.

The large green bead in the 3rd row down is her famous cactus bead. Every dot of glass positioned equally across the surface. I couldn't scan the photograph of her work bench but I was happy to see I'm not the only person who works in a 2 foot square space in the middle of a room full of equipment.

Look into my eye!

I used to make up my eyes like this, now there's too many wrinkles to get that youthful dewy look. Not to mention getting up close and personal with a hand mirror which usually means a poke in the eye at some stage.
But strike another off the "to do" list. I had my eyes tested today and I have healthy eyes.
No change in the long sight and only a slight change in short sight as in, hold the book 20 centimetres further away.
They do a retinal scan now which they keep as a record to check with the one I'll have every year. Very strange looking at a photo of the inside of my eyeball. Lovely clear veins, nothing bad near the macular and no floating bits anywhere.
No glaucoma either.
Very fuzzy sight for about 3 hours afterwards which made eating lunch hilarious and curiously made getting up the bus steps easier, for once I didn't trip.
So much for Diabetes Educator predicting gangrene for the feet and approaching blindness.

I will only post link

"It is a big change for the 5ft 2in mother, who requires a mobility scooter to go shopping and wears XXXXXXXL.

Last Christmas she feasted on two 25lb turkeys, two maple-glazed hams, 15lbs of potatoes (10lbs roast, 5lbs mashed), five loaves of bread, five pounds of herb stuffing, four pints of gravy, four pints of cranberry dressing and an astonishing 20lbs of vegetables."

If you can stand it read the rest but not if you've just eaten.

Memory

When Mum hit the nursing home, she was lucky to remember what day it was but two years on and she is almost entirely with it. Almost, it's been handy having her short term memory fritzed since I can tell her the same thing every visit but her long term memory has sharpened.

I bought her a book of the history of Mentone published by the Historical Society and I've been told the most amazing things about the family which I've never heard before. Just flicking through the photos has jogged memories to the surface and Brindisi Street where the nursing home is now, has been a busy street since the 1900s.

From out of nowhere she told us a story about our father. There's not much that stops my sister in her tracks but this did. He worked at the pre-fab building factory at Holmesglen and we think this must have been in 1955 since a lot of the work was building the Olympic village for the '56 games.

The main bus along there was the Ventura, still is, and there was an awful accident where a truck tore along the side of the bus, ripping it open. According to my mother, at least 7 people died. The men from the factory came down to help. There was a small girl with her leg trapped underneath a seat and my father, having driven buses for the past few years, knew all he needed was a screwdriver. One of the blokes had a work bag but wouldn't give him the tools and I don't know what Dad did, but he got a screwdriver. He had the seat off the little girl and she was out in no time. So, knowing Mum's memory, why do I believe this? Because my father instead of giving the bloke back his screwdriver, threw it at him. Now that is my father.

I asked her why she had never told us this and she said it never occurred to her to tell us. That's what it was like in our day, you didn't tell kids anything. It explains a lot about why the old boy used to get hysterical if we were five minutes late from the bus or train. And the first time I went out with friends in a car, there was a crash just around the corner from the house. Mum told me then that he nearly wrecked the house for fear it was me. When sister and I went on a cruise, he raced to the cabin to count the life jackets and it was all downhill from there. We had a cabin too far down to have a porthole so he raged in anxiety for the whole 14 days we were gone. The day we docked, my mother looked exhausted because he'd been at the wharf since the early morning to make sure the ship didn't turn turtle 5 seconds from home.

We didn't tell him about the sewerage problems on board or the fact that they had to keep the engines running in every port we went to since they weren't sure they could restart them but he did ask questions when it caught fire on its way home to Greece. He was too polite to ask questions about why I came out of customs carrying a large wooden spear and supporting a drunken yob while my sister carried his suitcase. He should really have said something then, I married the drunk.

Still glassing

Fashion designer Donna Karan is giving luxury consumers a version of her Golden Delicious fragrance, at a price, a wow price.

The perfume which sells $42 can now be had in a million dollar wrapping – the most expensive perfume bottle created to date.

DKNY and designer Martin Katz worked together to create the million-dollar perfume bottle, which is carved from a combination of 14 karat yellow gold and white gold. The bottle is embellished with nearly 3,000 gemstones – including 15 pink diamonds, 4 rose cut diamonds, a 4.03-carat pear-shaped diamond; a 3.07-carat ruby and a 7.18-carat oval shaped cabochon sapphire from Sri Lanka. The precious stones are set in the gold apple-shaped flacon in the shape of the New York skyline.

All net proceeds from the seven-figure bottles of Golden Delicious will be donated to the Action Against Hunger charity. Before being sold, the million-dollar bottle of Golden Delicious will go on exhibit around the world.

I still don't like her fashion clothes.

The best for last

Janis Miltenberger makes divine glass objects. This chair called 'Softly Held' is 34 inches high x 9 inches length x 9 inches width. Nearly 3 feet of intricate glass making and I love the flowers.

This chair is called "Sweet Discovery" and is 37 inches high x 9.5 inches in length and 9.5 inches in width. The image below is a detail from the top of the glass chair.

I do love these candlesticks though, it is the birds again.

As much as I like the candle sticks, I have to go for her drinking glasses. Not that I'd ever drink from them, I'd be terrified to even pick them up. They are gorgeous.

For more of her work click on and drool.