My version of Sunday Selections

I want a conservatory at the front of the house but I really really want an attic NOW.  Is this the most fantastic attic conversion ever?  Of course I would have some trouble getting up the stairs but what are Stairmasters for.  On the other hand I could just steeple the roof over the sewing room to match the conservatory and then I wouldn't need stairs.  I wouldn't worry about the shoe racks not with my crummy collection of decrepit foot ware but it would just mean shelves for my frock fabric that I haven't cut out yet and my mohair rugs and doona covers.  I'm one short at the moment, I haven't had it long, bought it because the price was right and it had flowers and nothing else did but gah, it's so depressing to sleep under.  I spent an hour during another watching of Lord of the Rings to unpick the lot much to the disgust of the cat who hates Orcs and likes to sit on my knee if Orcs are around.  I might not be able to sleep under it but it will make a nice house dress which won't show the dropped chocolate bits off the Magnums.  The bottom half, kind of Khaki, that's depressing but it will end up as the back of a quilt some time this Millenium.

Now shoes are beginning to become a problem with the arthritic feet and scrunching bones and most of the fluid building on top of my feet.  I grabbed a cheap pair of sneakers at KMart which felt soft enough but the Chinese version of size 11 is 10 so I really needed a 12 and I should have gone over to the mens shoes, better for the width.  Even with two shoe horns I nearly broke both feet trying to get them on.  What did I expect for $8, well not much so I had a think as Pooh did when he got his head caught in the hunny jar and came up with something brilliant.  I cut the tongue and half the front out of the sneaker, nicely rounded off just before the beginning of the toes and the end of the fat fluid part of the busted foot.  Then I put the laces back through the holes, nice laces, black with little white spots, cute. They went on like a dream, laced up with too much skin showing, a bit like putting a corset on and trying to get a waist out of a Blue Whale.  But I walked to the shop for coffee and comfortable and didn't fall off but plain.  I am planning on sticking little flat pearls around the cut edges to look more elegant, less cheap but still like the fat hippo ballerinas from Fantasia.  I'll just have to try harder from the waist up.

And with all this dreaming of divine attics and space for frocks and stuff, I haven't started Christmas thinking or cards and I've already eaten Christmas Day's mince pies.  Haven't started the Christmas brooch tree, third year running so another Millenium project but at least I'll have room for it in the Attic.  Do you think I could get away with decorating a large white cat in a Christmas fashion? 

Christmas, how do I not love thee, let me count the ways.

Mother is still here, sister is still whinging, the cat stops me running away from home and I need a full moon in the sign of money.  I don't have any presents to buy this year and I look like getting a good meal on the day even if it means I have to go to the Home.

Our resident loopydemented who it seems actually has to really hurt someone like in maybe kill is no longer waiting on the full moon to go crackers.  I have been informed that I should have more sympathy for this resident as she does not know what she is doing.  Crapola she does and she should not be in a place where she can't be under observation 24 hours.  The staff does their best but while they are controlling her, they have to leave other residents.  And what can a carer do when she is sitting beside her watching a resident have nail polish put on and the carer looks up and sees loopy drinking the nail polish.  Doc Marvin has already had words with the DON but it's up to the family for the last word. There are places, quite secure where she can walk around inside and out and that is where she should be.   Mother's roomie has very bad legs which have to be dressed and it's so painful that she cries the whole time so she didn't need loopy to come in and go to grab both legs through the blankets.  When her husband told her to go, loopy punched him full in the chest, a ninety year old man.  She punches the carers, knocked the older ladies to the ground and steals whatever takes her eye. Then last week there was the complete striptease in the day room and that's a sight I'm glad I'll never have in my memory bank.  

I will be having Christmas lunch in mum's room.  My Christmas baubles are all neatly put away. I take them out, have a look at the gorgeous things and put them back.  I will just do the usual thing and spray the dust hanging from the ceiling with gold paint with a new ornament this year, a dead spider hanging from the light. I haven't removed him, the body reminds me of that gorgeous image of the chandelier hanging from the wreck of the Titanic, gently swaying in the current.  Ornaments were pretty crappy this year and expensive. I looked everywhere for a matte plum colour in a round ball, nada.   And the cat is not co-operating.  I had thoughts of sending you all a Christmas card, a very exclusive card of a lovely white cat wearing a red velvet Santa hat.  I even cut little holes in it for his ears to poke through.  The hat he tolerated, the camera not a bit. The only way I'll get his head to stay still is to nail his ears to the wall. The other problem is getting him in a position where you can't see last year's litter all over the lounge.

I am getting a present for me.  I'm going up to DJ's and demanding they spray me with YSL's Opium Black.  None of those stupid little flicks of paper, I want the real stuff on me and if I do it the day before Christmas it should last 24 hours if I hold my arm out of the shower. I must be getting old, there was a time I wouldn't have thought 2 seconds before I shelled out $180 for this gift set. I might waver in these last weeks after all I did find a block of Lindt behind the Bombay Sapphire when I really needed chocolate this week.  I always hide the chocolate behind the gin because I don't drink gin in winter, in summer I hide it behind the port. Who says women can't handle logic.

I nearly deleted the blog

I have to start with a laugh these days or I'd never keep going.  Yes, I very nearly gave it all up yesterday. I couldn't find a thing to say, my brain is disappearing into some blackhole and it's all hanging by a cosmic string.  So I was sitting here deciding when I knocked the flat screen over the back of the table but no damage done with my foot breaking its fall.  It also took the lamp with it and all my bits of paper with irreplaceable notes and bits of blog ideas.  Lots of swearing involved in getting it back up plus prayers that nothing had happened to it.  I might have found some dill nice person interested in taking the treadmill and that would be such a nice Christmas present.  I might be inclined to tidy up the study and put down new carpet since I'm almost through to the concrete floor in places.

And mother has lasted another year.  Depression at the back of my mind just waiting for the wrong moment to gallop out and hit me.  The yawning black hole of 2016 stretches ahead,  visit, recover, visit and on and on.  She is more tired, in bed more often than not and has another chest infection.  For the first time she has all her cards finished and filed and isn't doing any more.  The boxes, usually all over her corner at this time of year, are neatly stacked. She watches only her favourite dvds and doesn't bother with the others.  And Christmas is only 25 days away but StarWars is only 16 days away so she can go after either date but not before.  Besides I haven't paid for her teeth yet.

Sister is still in pain, poor thing.  Yes, that's a poor attempt at sympathy.  And pink cricket balls?
Abbott planning an insurrection?  He couldn't plan his jockstrap right way round.  Malcolm T, sounds like a stateman, speaks with a forked tongue like the Liberal to the bone that he is.  And please someone put Dutton out of my misery and hand him a poison chalice.  Not that I'm happy with Victorian Politics, the Labor party is beginning to rival Canberra for fuck-ups.  Give us trains on tracks instead of promises not that I'll be using them.  I'm having enough trouble with bus drivers who hate walkers.

So pleased I did not fork out the loot for the ritzy walker.  I now have several other choices for the money.  I'm almost there for a dishwasher but can't afford the plumber.  A shade cloth over the front patio but what a waste if I win Tattslotto and build the conservatory I really want.  Concrete ramps at all the outside doors because I'll kill myself lifting the bloody walker over the steps but have you had a quote for concrete lately? I don't nearly have enough for that.  I keep getting junk mail for a cleaning service, how lovely but I couldn't let them in before I cleaned up and if I cleaned up I wouldn't need the cleaning service. A freestanding exhaust that goes over the stove, I could do that but I can't afford the carpenter to rip out the cupboards over the stove to put the exhaust up. That would also involve a plasterer and a paint job and God forbid that I should disturb SuperMouse who is still alive and not fried because he's made a nest out of the insulating material between the stove walls.  Which is really why I don't need a freestanding exhaust because I bought a bench oven so I wouldn't have to put the big one on.  Don't laugh, it's perfectly rational to a humanitarian.

I've missed a lot of science stuff this year including my darling boys who won a heap of awards and I've only just found out by Internet stalking because they've been overseas so often this year I haven't been able to catch up.  Thank you Abbott for dismissing Science as fiction in favour of your Bible studies.  

And in case you are wondering, the cat is fine.

Ritzy wheelie cancelled

Go Daffy, I understand perfectly.  It all started early yesterday morning with a visit to Medicare/Centrelink and if I ever find out which imbecile decided it would be a good idea to move Medicare from Southland to the middle of nowherebus, I will pull his limbs off and beat him to death.
People everywhere so I decided not to wait and get my medicare card unhooked from my mother's bank account where it's been for 6 years.  What's another few months of her paying for my doctor's bills since she's the reason I visit.
Next Southland and a walk to the bus over cobblestones, up, down, sideways and no op shop buys because of a six inch step to get the walker over.  Bus came bringing trouble.  Now I know most women can multi-task with ease but wrangling a bag over the shoulder while getting the walker up the step while touching on the myki as you turn the corner into the bus proper and fall into a seat is a neat trick.
Getting off the bus in reverse is worse because there is a drop to the pavement which I usually manage by swinging off the pole. In this case it was touch off and bodily throw the walker out the door and buggar you lot waiting to get on, me first.
Missed the stop where the lift is.  Well, says I, managed the bus so what's the problem about an escalator.  Nothing actually except for the fact that the walker begins to tower over one's head as the bloody thing reaches the top, take the brakes off and don't let the bag slip off the shoulder and make a run like you're going for Platform 1+3/4.
Still on the 2nd floor and need 3rd but I know where the lift is.  $39 for a camera battery later and I'm on the downhill run and food.  I know I should have asked for it all in a bag but I've handled large trolleys and trays before but but small walkers, different animals.  Tray and food go one way, walker goes the other.  Thank you lovely girls who picked up the mess while I stood wanting to die.  Foodies gave me a free meal, darlings.
Still going downhill, heading towards the lift, decide because of screaming in pain foot to go down the travelvator.  Done that before with large trolley, but large trolley has grip wheels, walker doesn't and is wobbling from side to side because there's no way I'm letting go of one hand on the rail. 
I'm still on the 2nd floor, need ground floor for eggs so groan all the way to the lift, gallantly let women and children go first only because of the screaming and waving of ice-creams. 
Finally eggs, lettuce and Aldi's treasure of Christmas goodies which I wasn't going in for but specials which I was, hadn't arrived yet.  Muttering under breath I finally stagger towards taxi.
Driver very kindly throws walker onto back seat where it just fits.  Throws everything else in as well, the eggs survived. Throws everything out when we reach home sweet home.
Walker in front, try opening large gate without doing in a rib.  Lift walker over the half inch to the driveway, walk half on grass and half on drive because it doesn't fit.  Lift walker up two steps, lose another rib opening front door, lift walker up step to house.
Run in grab phone and cancel order for ritzy big arse walker.  I am not going anywhere where I will have the need to sit down.

Same thing today. Taxi to Doc Marvin who falls on desk laughing when I crash into his office door after missing the half inch carpet strip.  Blood pressure up a bit 166/80, BGL up but consistantly the same up for the last two months and it's not much.  Blood test sometime before Christmas.  BGL my fault for not reading the bottle that says take two, I can't see the damn things let alone read at that time of the morning. I have a full box of panic pills but I panic if I don't have a script.  All done.
Crash walker into surgery door  because it opens in.  Nearly fall over the footpath where the gumtree has tilted it like an earthquake landslide.
Safely across the road, safely to the bus stop, safely into the bus with the help of a schoolkid.  Driver waits patiently for me to negotiate downward to the footpath.  Kerb is six inches below me so by this time throwing the walker and following is becoming second nature.  Negotiate 3 doors into the Home where I fall into a chair and get hysterical laughter instead of sympathy. And that was my mother.

So I have worked out exactly where I will be walking with walker and it's not far.  The taxi company will be safely in the black while I'm out and about. Stuff buses.  There is a plus, I didn't panic once about falling over because of my lousy balance. On the minus side it didn't help one bit with the foot crunching pain. 

Downhill run to Christmas

That's Cup Week over for another year and I bet there's a lot of feet that felt like they'd been wearing this shoe.  And for once I loved the Cup run, a female won on a 101-1 cracker of a horse trained in Australia.  That's what makes the Cup a special race, no matter how much money you pour into a horse to win, in this race it's all chance.

My sister has had her knee replacement. A brutal, brutal operation that she will never have done ever again even if she has to hobble if the other knee gives out.  Not a word to me who had it done 20 years ago, two knees 15 months apart.  She had the whole knee replaced, I kept the kneecaps because it was supposed to be easier.  I have scars 33cms long, she has a 6 inch fine scar with 4 steri-strips and no external stitches.  My surgeon worked with his own physiotherapist and the minute I opened my eyes I was exercising, as far as I know she hasn't had any physio yet but is pleased with her 90 degree bend.  After 6 weeks I was up to 135 degrees.  I know this isn't a competition but she's so bloody smug about everything except the pain.  She has pain, she rang up asking when did the pain stop, bwahahahaha!  Lovely.

Mother is still here.  She is getting new bottom teeth and with Murphy's law will be buried with new choppers. The Home has been taken over by Southern Cross Care and handover will be March 2016. 
I think that's when I went clunk, the worry about if I'd have to move her or what was going on, if anything, suddenly stopped.  Their catering staff have already taken on the kitchen and the food is the best in the 6 years she's been there.  Any complaints and the Chef comes to talk to the resident in person.  She's already worked out a menu for mum for the no teeth weeks.  I might even get myself down there for a decent Christmas Dinner this year.

I still have my saved up loot for the new big A walker.  I'm on a loaner at the moment and you lot are lucky that I don't drive a car.  I'm bad enough on the footpath with four wheels let alone on a road. I have to make a decision soon before everything shuts for the loony season but after the treadmill disaster, I'm being careful.  I have tried to walk on the treadmill with trainers but the foot still hurts like hell and will never be better.  At least the walker helps with my terrible balance problem.  I still look like I'm two sheets to the wind when walking but with something to hold onto it feels better. 

Vinnie's car has left the building to be replaced by a bucket of rust.  But I am assured that this is a collector's item and he was so lucky to get it in this condition. If I could have stood up again, I'd have rolled on the ground laughing.  But I was shown photos of newly renovated rust buckets and I have to admit they are good looking cars.  He did tell me what kind of car it was but you know me and cars, I only know they have 4 wheels outside and one inside.  Still have the Falcon and the soft top VW which I have seen painted in a rich metallic crimson and black.  I fell in love with that. He says no, basic blue and cream top, damn.  My sister is still carrying on about him making my house look like a tip but a no rent driveway for a year makes a cheap Christmas present.

I am still hoping to convince Miss O'Dyne to start a new blog about her adventures in country living but she is busy chopping trees, killing snakes and being .05 every time she collects the mail from the pub. I sat outside the local milkbar in the sun this morning and thought how lovely for summer nights if they could get a drink licence for the locals.  Then I thought about getting that bloody walker across the road, so maybe not.

As a final word, isn't life dull without the Mad Monk and Hokey Hockey?

Overdue, everything called life.

Which is why I haven't blogged for so long.

Hopefully my fogged up mind will see me through what's left of the year.

I mean who shoved Christmas this close to my breakdown.

 

Now this is a fountain.

I love this fountain and I want it in my garden.  A nice deck chair or something more sturdy for me and I could sit and meditate on the splashing of the water especially with the sun behind, making little rainbows for my wishes. It came from the imagination of Malgorzata Chodakowska.

A lot has happened at the Home which we are now referring to as Mushroom House, keeping us in the dark and feeding us bullshit.  With 2 days warning the kitchen was turned over to an American hospitality company, our tea ladies were fired but the favourite chef was kept on because they couldn't find anyone who would work Sunday/Monday for the same amount of money.  I was not offered a cup of tea  yesterday so from now on I'll take my own cup and tea bag and ask for hot water.
The one thing they have re-installed is for the relatives to have a meal with their husbands or wives, cost of $5.  This is great for the men who usually go home and don't bother eating properly.

Now we just wait to see if they tell us the facility has also been sold to an American company.  A certain mother's Doc received a letter saying his arrangement with the Council Aged Care Group would not be continued did not go down well.  He is my mother's personal doctor and the inference was that she would have to use the doctor that will go with the big new Aged Care Centre which isn't built yet.  He was busy yesterday drafting a reply that will probably blister paint.  After searching for anything regarding the sale on line, I came across a small article that mentions the land being decontaminated  since it was used as the Council Depot for Everything.  That company walked away with $1.1 million dollars.  They should have decontaminated a few Councillors for that amount.

The hard rubbish collection took no prisoners this year.  Usually they have a variety of trucks for small, medium and large but this time a huge behemoth on wheels went down one side of the street and up the other and ate everything even my sofa bed with the steel frame.  The nature strips looked as though nothing had ever been on the grass, I've never seen a collection like it, gone in 60 seconds.
Most of the neighbours didn't put out until the weekend which didn't give much time for us to have a look and make a midnight run.  It seemed the gutter crawlers were only interested in scrap metal this year.  I was very good but I'm still crying for the cupboard across the road and the hat rack around the corner.  

And I really wanted two chairs to try and make this bench, just right for meditating near a fountain. There's always next year.

Hard rubbish, I don't haz it

This is going to be me tomorrow morning after I take every pain killer in the house over the next 12 hours.
I wish I could show you a photo of the hard rubbish collection but it would have meant walking back to the house for the camera and back again.  Way too far.
Even too far to check out a nice looking cupboard across the road that the junk crawlers haven't touched.  It would paint up very nicely.  I'm being strong this year, all goings, no comings.
With all the raining this week I didn't want the sofa bed and the big lounge chair sitting out there going mouldy and Thursday was out because it was bin day.  I nearly broke every bone in my body as it was staggering out in the dark and rain with stupid bins and they weren't emptied until nearly 5 next day.
The Home was Friday and I was late home.
So Saturday, morning was sunny and I'd already hauled the sewing machine out into the lounge.
Checked the sofa and remembered to turn in on its back to go through the door.  Problem, last time I moved it there wasn't a bookcase there. 
Books are lovely in neat rows in bookcases. Books are a nightmare when they are taken out but I did have two candy striped bags ready.  Forgot how heavy books are even in bags.  Bookcase dragged to the other side of the room along with every other bit of rubbish in there.
But the sofa bed slipped along the carpet nicely and cleared the door, both doors with room to spare.
The lounge chair didn't look as big when I removed the cushions so that went out first. 
Will I wait until the BOH turns up or be Wonder Woman and get it to the nature strip.  No problem I just rolled it, as much as one can roll a square chair.  There was a bit of clunking but I did it. I found the cushions more of a nuisance.
Next, sofa bed but this time I thought I would leave it on the porch.  Him next door came in and apologized because he'd been away for a week and hadn't been in to help. BOH turns up on his way to OfficeWorks so he was instructed to buy cardboard boxes to clean up his car parts in the car port.
Old window blinds went out.  Then his mate spotted the sewing machine which I'd just taken out of the old treadle machine housing.  BOH spotted it as well and it will be on ebay sometime next week.
Now if I can just get him to take away the treadle plate and wheel I'll have more room for my feet.
It was a wrench because I'd made all my baby clothes on that machine but on top is my old Myer machine, solid steel, none of this plastic rubbish.  Everytime I move it I'm moving two steel machines and I'm getting past that.
I still have the treadmill.  Even looking at it gives me pain up to the kneecaps.  Somewhere, someone is desperate for a treadmill and I hope they find each other one day.
Now I'm going to order pizza for tea, have a hot shower and take painkillers.  Maybe  I should insert, put rest of books back in bookcase.  One shelf is done and only because I am putting them in sections this time, fantasy, crime, autobiography and crap, why on earth made me buy you.
Tomorrow the boxes of jewellery and beads are leaving the lounge room for their new home.

Of course you know what's going to happen, all this space, room to move, I'm sure to fall a over t.

Computer fixed but not politics

I just love a family gathering for the camera.  Is that a microphone I see hanging like the 'Sword of Damocles' over the little group?

Considering that Dutton was gaffing with Morrison and Abbott, we'd have enough dirt to fill in half of Canberra's lovely lake for a new refugee camp.

Wait for their new film, "Carry on up the Canberra", a comedy with subtitles that bear no relation to the words they're actually speaking.

A LNP production financed by truckloads of bullshit.

I'll be back

Goodbye Windows 10.

Hello Windows 8.1 - again.

I'm sorry I abused you so often and wished you were XP (I still do).

Tiffany Blue

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YA

HAAAAAAAAAPY BIRTHDAY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OLD O'DYNE

MAY SHE SEE MANY MORE

MOTTO FOR OLDIES

SORRY IT'S NOT IN TIFFANY BLUE

 

Fashion shoes and I are divorcing

Surely someone can slap up a fab arthritis support shoe for scrunched feet that are wider and hurtier and swollen and ugly but have a need to be prettified.  I swear mine are starting to look like the feet in Roald Dahl's "The Witches" but hurting more.

But not like these.

Or these.

But it seems I will be left with this pair.

I love Minions.  With my soon to be mine 'Blue Flash'  walker and my Converse Minions I will officially be a designated Crazy Old Woman.    Kill me now.

And my last word on this vile Government, after watching Question Time this afternoon which nearly had me upchucking over my Minions.

One on every street corner.

 

Wishes do come true

Absolutely nothing to do with this post but I would build a staircase to nowhere just for the mice.

I was reading an article by Clem Barstow, a blogger from the good old days when writing a post was an art and comments articulate.  She was recalling all the things from her youth that she wanted in her house when she eventually bought one.

I looked around my House of Havisham and decided that I had everything I ever wished for when young except for a huge all around the house verandah.
My life started in a tackroom/bungalow, moved to a house in Ferntree Gully complete with rats and snakes in the year it snowed close to Melbourne. Then it was back to Mentone to a converted part of a garage complete with rats.  In 1950 something we moved to Ma's dream house. Half bush, half swamp with no drainage and a backyard dunnie.  These properties are now selling up near the million dollar mark.
Now comes the start of my wish list.

Floor coverings.  With swampy bits under the house, lino doesn't cut it for warmth and I never was a human that could do without warm.  When the first carpet went down, I found mother lying flat on her back just enjoying the feeling.  I did the same when I moved into my home.

Heating.  Open fires never reach more than two feet in any direction.  So we lashed out and bought a briquette heater.  My father loved mod. cons. and would have been in heaven these days.  But what a pest it was trying to work out how many bricks one would need to get through the midnight spook movie on Fridays.  Believe me there was no way I was going out in the dark and up the side of the house to fill the bucket.  Then came the gas heater.  I was warm in winter.

Cooling.  Fans, open windows, sometimes a block of ice in a tub in front of the fan.  That was it.
As much as I hated the cold, I hated the hot heat of what seemed an unending summer.  We did have a swimming pool made of canvas, the Christmas we got it, the rain fell for two weeks. The trouble was the water was too cold and I was forever putting in a jug of hot water to warm it up. Talk about the Princess and the Pea. I only liked the beach in the mornings or night, any other time and I burnt like a sausage on a bbq, had blistering headaches and usually nosebleeds.
Now I have indoor air-conditioning, lovely, tick that off the list.

I have an indoor toilet.  I feel sorry for every tree cut down for making toilet paper but I so appreciate their sacrifice for my comfort. I still have the memories of banging the toilet seat to scare away the wildlife that lived underneath. The slightest whiff of Phenol opens a Pandora's box of horrors that was an outdoor dunny.

But I do still wish for an all round verandah. I'd still get the north wind up my nose but I'd be in shade, in a swing or a chaise lounge with pillows and maybe a few pot plants that I'd actually water.
And out the back, a simple clothes line strung up so I didn't have to stagger down the yard to wrestle with the Hills Hoist.

And could I please win Tattslotto so I can employ a housekeeper.  

Clem also wanted chandeliers.  I have chandeliers, I love my chandeliers and I'll love them better when the housekeeper is here to polish them.

August 3, that's 3 days closer to another birthday.

Yes I would have loved this cake for my birthday.

I would even have loved this cake for my birthday.

Did I get any cake for my birthday, nada, no, zilch, nothing.  My sister forgot, went out to lunch and didn't invite me, didn't say Happy Birthday when she dropped into the Home for her usual 10 minutes.

Nephew rang yesterday, very apologetic but then he never remembers his own birthday, I have to do it for him.  He sold a car from my driveway so said he would buy me anything I wanted.  All I want is him at my door when I need a lift or have an urgent need for fish and chips for tea, like now.

Mother made me a card and even managed to write in it with wibblywobbly writing but the 'take whatever you need and buy something nice' was quite clear.

The Divine O'Dyne sent me a present, the kind that keeps on keeping on.  Big black ribbon, check, big strong box to be re-used for jewellery, check, lovely shiny paper which ironed out nicely, check and lots of goodies inside, check.  Because this was the only present I received, I'm only looking at one thing a day.

HighRiser did not bring me back a little rock from a glacier or Niagara Falls. Shitty card for Christmas for him.

Nothing from my sister.

Phone call from youngest granddaughter, 21 in November.  Knows her own mind, just wish knowing she wants to be a missionary come Minister of some nutjob Christian Church in California where she has been studying for the past year wasn't so high on her agenda.  Already she has missionaried in Rio and plans to do it all over the world. She was very careful not to tell me exactly what Church or where it is in California.  

Sometimes it's better not to know anything at all about their lives.

Eldest went to India this year.  I really loved all the postcards that didn't arrive.

I have picked out a, not a wheelie, they're called Rollators with extra wide seat for extra wide sitting part.  Now just to sell the treadmill on ebay.  Diabetes educator has not realized I haven't been back and I'm not going back.  Walk, she said, you must walk for the good insulin levels.  The insulin might have done something but the arthritis in the crumbling foot belted it up a notch. So now I've graduated to a Rollator. I wish these people would see that the 'one size fits all' cure/diet for diabetics doesn't always work and it hasn't worked on me. 

So sad to see Bronnie's gone from the Speaker's chair, I was looking forward to another month of LOLs but here we have Darth Ruddock rising from the dead, croaking and groaning but ever willing to take the load on his shoulders.  I must be feeling better if Parliament is giving me a laugh.

A word of warning, don't ever buy a Peanut Butter ice cream Magnum.  I'm warning you Magnum, don't get all arty with the flavours or I'll leave you in a ditch.  I'm still trying to get the noxious flavour out of my mouth.  Who ever thought that would be a good idea is not human.  There is nothing good about peanut butter ice cream, nothing.

 

Please, never let this end.

Once the dam breaks, it just keeps flowing.  I'd like to know if she has a secret slush fund for hair spray.

Okay I needed a week of laughs.  Dentist, X-rays, large needles and extraction of back molar and mother.  
I thought just one week for me after fixing up all the other crap this month but no, she just didn't want to worry me. It's never bothered her before.  Couldn't ring me, no credits on the phone but forgot I can ring her.  Thursday I get a call and she has a headache again.  Thursday night I get a call from a friend who tells me she hasn't had her proper breakfast for 4 days because the kitchen ran out of Weetbix before the next delivery.  She's had rice bubbles.  This is just after I spent an hour re-doing her patient care plan about food and making it clear that she must have Weetbix and toast for breakfast.  It's the one meal she really looks forward to and if she doesn't get it, her blood sugar drops until lunch arrives, cue headache.
Our friend walked up to Coles, barely 5 minutes away and bought a box of Weetbix out of her own pocket.
I was going to put in a complaint but by the time I arrived on Friday through the freezing wind and sore mouth, if I had complained it would have been with a brick through the office window.  I had had enough.  Wouldn't you have thought that someone could have taken some petty cash and walked to Coles and bought the Residents breakfast.  Not that lot, it would mean admitting a mistake and they don't admit or explain or apologize. 

My stars at this time last year said I would have to look back 12 years to see what this 12 month cycle would bring since Jupiter the bringer of luck and whatever only travels your sign once every 12 years.  I did that and it was a great year back then, I even lost weight and I was happily divorced and looking forward to a new life.  It didn't happen this 12 months, it's been totally without joy.  I haven't even loooked to see which planet hoves into view at the end of August because it couldn't be any worse.

I did get an early birthday card, thank you to Aitkens Real Estate but it still won't make me sell you my house.  Selling up and running away with the money would mean I'd have to clean up and pack books, never going to happen.  Where would the four cars in the drive go? Would the Ice Bear cope with moving? Who would look after the filligree hamster if the stove was chucked out? 

Good old Bronnie, the only person who's made life fun for the last of my wondrous year.  

I love the smell of burning bronnies in the morning

Bwahahaha, keep them coming, they're better than Fat Joe's or the Bat Earred Monk's. 

 Hi ASIO, keep up the good work at the demo's.

And you thought being rich makes for the perfect wedding.

 Glorious Valentino lace wedding gown, $50,000

 Hand made Louboutin wedding shoes with her new name, price unknown.

Having someone park the car on your floating veil, priceless.

Happy Day Nicky Hilton Rothschild.

Australian politics is just anarchy without the bullets

Yes, that is my opinion in that photo.  

Yes, I love minions especially when they speak my language.

I spent this morning's breakfast break watching Bill Shorten in the witness box trying to answer the same question put 80 trillion different ways by the interrogator and it was Shorten who was accused of being a time waster.  
This is costing taxpayers a fuckload of money for which they will no doubt find a way to blame pensioners and the unemployed for the country being in a financial crisis....again.....still or are we out of that crisis implied in Fat Joe's first budget.
Getting to the point faster than Bill, I would like to point out that this is the 21st century and most of the world is computer savvy, a few of us might still like to write with a quill but digital is top of the heap.  So why are the relevant documents in this inquisition not on a computer in front of all concerned so that when invoice no. 639 is called to front and centre, volcanoes erupt, buildings collapse, Captains Call before it is found.  Bill is time wasting?  Flipping pages in numerous binders instead of being able to enter no.639 and instant invoice seems a lot more time wasting and money wasting than Bill trying to answer questions from when he was in Parliament and not playing at Union boss.  Let this be a lesson to all leaders of everything, keep a diary, it'll save us money and throwing breakfast plates at the tv.   
I received my Visa statement this week and couldn't remember a thing I'd bought last month so don't ask what I bought 10 years ago.

Second on my shitlist for the day.  Shenhua Group, mining, large, coal. May dragons comsume your firstborn to the nth generation for mining the Liverpool Plains, a food bowl and glorious countryside.
No need to worry yet, they won't start chopping up the wildlife until 2017 so we have plenty of time to plant the landmines, roll out the barbwire and oil up the shotguns.  Barnaby is on the job, he's very very upset with the Captain, like that will amount to a pile of cow crap.  Ah, the Captain, he who famously said, the Country is open for business.  The business of open coal mining, fracking, logging old growth forests and next Soylent Green, I mean who will miss old people and the unemployed.
I'm an endangered species, I'm obese and old, I could make so many SG dried pellets I'm practically a walking bankable asset.

Third, mother lived, again.

Full Moon July 2nd

Okay, mother really bad this time.
She had a shower last week and they had to rush her back to bed and oxygen.
This is the longest time she has spent in bed at the Home and she says she's not getting up until she feels better.
This from WonderWoman who would not stay in bed for anything and demanded a shower every day.
She's back on Penicillan injections (sp?), oxygen, big purple antibiotics, patches over her heart and oxygen.
The coughing up of bits of lung into the phone was enough to keep me away without her telling me to stay home in case I caught it. 
I don't think I'll catch what she has.

I'll be back whenever.  Thank goodness I have anti-depressant ice-creams in the freezer.

How much renewable energy could we have by burning redundant politicians, 'let them eat cake' Hockey could burn for years!

On Thursday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott used primetime radio to boast about cutting clean energy, calling wind farms "visually awful" and arguing "I would frankly have liked to have reduced the number a lot more". 1

Now, his government is kicking straight into action by rescheduling a parliamentary vote for Monday morning to slash jobs and investment for Renewable Energy Target (RET).

But here's the kicker: Monday's proposed legislation won't just cut investment in clean energy. The Abbott Government wants to redefine 'clean energy' altogether, by including burning native forests in the Renewable Energy Target. A move like this could see the open slather logging of forests that our Australian wildlife depend on for survival. Just as terrible: every native forest cut down and burnt for electricity takes away from capacity and more investment in the clean energy of the future - like solar.

That's the email I received from "Get Up" today.  Does this idiot realize how long a native forest tree takes to become "renewable" again?  Are the animals renewable, you know the ones who shelter in trees, on trees or underneath trees?  Does this troll of a politician know how much carbon trees take in and oxygen put out for us to breathe?  Does this entire political party have a brain cell between them that can estimate the damage of trees burnt and sold as "renewable" energy?  Well, the way the Mad Monk obviously sees it, most of the liberal (I refuse them a Capital) party have been living in the shadow of wind farms and have been permanently damaged by it.

Oh, here's a clue.  Let's build solar reflecting panel farms in our famous red and flaming hot centre. Too expensive  or you don't know what they are?  It's a shame you don't have a Minister for Science to explain it to you.  He could also explain about building wind farms in windy places because the wind is free.  Never mind we'll have lots of windy places when all the trees are cut down.  Perhaps the Minister for the Environment could look up "Mallee" and see what the ignorant did to that region.
Do we have a Minister for the Environment, as in for all Australia not just looking after the grounds of Parliament House and making sure no-one sneaks a wind turbine up there considering the free hot air that flows from that asylum.  Oh dear, there goes another trigger word, Hello ASIO.

It seems like yesterday.

Mt St. Helens under a layer of snow, towering above  Spirit Lake, just the place for a holiday of camping and hiking.  35 years ago, just before it blew its top leaving a horseshoe-shaped crater and devastation for miles.  The top of the volcano was blocked by a plug of hardened magma so the mountain simply blew out of the side after an earthquake of 5.1.  It caused one of the largest known debris avalanches in recorded history.  The magma caused a massive pyroclastic flow of hot gas and wind down the side of the mountain flattening everything in its path over an area of 600 square kilometres.  The debris was then carried further by the melted snow combined with earth as huge lahars flowed.

Thirty-five years later and the scars have still not quite healed.  The horseshoe crater is still visible as is the new magma dome inside the crater.  Beautiful Spirit Lake is in the upper centre of the image. At centre right of the image is Castle Lake.  At right of Spirit Lake, debris avalanche deposits surround the tiny St. Helens Lake and the long line of Coldwater Lake.
Scientists estimate the eruption released over 1.5 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and recorded a Volcanic Explosivity Index of five.

This image was assembled from data acquired by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 and the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on the Terra satellite.

Like I said, it just seems like yesterday. In geological terms, it's a blink which is why climate change deniers are going to be eating their words after another 35 years.  And please, could we possibly have a Minister for Science some time before then and preferably not Greg Hunt who can't see the coral for the reef and insists that all that coal mining and coal shipping won't hurt the Great Barrier Reef at all, not a bit. 

Let's talk

Fitzroy Island on the Great Barrier Reef.

New research into early Aboriginal stories set along Australia's coast has detected evidence of dramatically rising shoreline waters over several thousand years. It seems that sea level about 20,000 years ago was 120 meters below its current level, rising 13,000 years ago to about 70 meters below current sea level.

It seems today's sea level was finally reached only about 6,000 years ago. Linguists have also uncovered ancient Aboriginal tales about living where the Great Barrier Reef now stands.
"In the beginning, as far back as we remember, our home islands were not islands at all as they are today. They were part of a peninsula that jutted out from the mainland and we roamed freely throughout the land without having to get in a boat like we do today. Then Garnguur, the seagull woman, took her raft and dragged it back and forth across the neck of the peninsula letting the sea pour in and making our homes into islands."

This is part of an Aboriginal story about the origin of the Wellesley Islands in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria.  It's a story that can be found along every part of the coast of Australia.  But these stories are not part of the "Great Flood" tales found all over the world, the difference being in the Aboriginal stories, the water does not recede and the land does not regenerate.  The sea levels changed around Australia after the ice ages and it's well known scientifically.  The source of the legends seems to be based on observations of events and preserved through oral traditions as the sea level rose all around the world but only here do the stories exist.

They may have existed elsewhere but scholars had the view that oral traditions rarely survive more than a millennium so probably never looked for them.  Australian Aboriginal storytelling is for preserving information, handing down from generation to generation with accuracy. Of course you have to try to make a distinction from the 'fact' story and the story for entertainment.

One of the comments on this article said that "Socrates was concerned that the switch to written language would mean a decline in people's cognitive abilities." "The skills required to remember a complex narrative are allowed to atrophy when you have that narrative available in written form."

I could not read Chaucer in the original old English. I have trouble with HipHop language.  I have trouble with some parts of Shakespeare although four hundred years separate his language from english now, we are still using phrases he invented.  But we could not repeat his plays word for word without printing.  I must admit I got a bit lost in the comments after a while, my brain went walkabout but when we read the laments about the burning of the great library of Alexandria, that is something that we, who rely on the written word, can relate to.  Can we relate to the loss of an oral tradition of a catastrophe if we never knew there was one?

I still have a Sony Walkman, tapes, vinyl records but I can't watch the 16mm films of the family made in the 70s unless I go to great expense of having them put on dvds.  I can tell you the family stories but with no-one to follow me, they'll die out.  So with all the blogs, tweets, facebooks or instagrams of the electronic age, we're still behind, way behind, the Aboriginal tradition of the Dreamtime storyteller.

But we still have our storytellers, bless Parliament and its contingent of accomplished liars.

(All that waffling to make that one point.  Don't you love language.)

Why didn't I think of this?

I loved this idea but it would not do for our giant native birds like magpies and ravens.  The Mynah birds would give them a decent whack as well so the pretty cord would have to go and fencing wire used instead.  I rather like the thought of them hanging on the leafless branches for winter and I'm always resisting buying a lone cup and saucer at the op shop just because it looks pretty.  I have a cupboard full of 'looks pretty' and I'm still using a chipped mug.

But here's one for Miss O'Dyne and myself for those genteel afternoon teas in spring.  Wine glass tea cups with the added benefit of nosey parkers not being able to see the gin or plonk (in Miss O's case) or sometimes we do have tea. The Willow pattern is a bit heavy looking, I'd rather go for a nice Royal Albert or Aynsley.  Miss O and I are nothing but class all the way. 
 

Sheer genius this idea.  Your favourite tea cup as a bracelet.  Well, for me I'd have to cut up the teapot and that's the problem, the cutting up part. I suppose a tile cutter would do but knowing me I'd end up with a bucket of pretty pieces for that mosaic pathway I have also filed away as a brilliant idea.
 

Now I might have a chance of making this.  At last count I have 7 teapots and this would look great on the Christmas table.  Those cheap trees from the $2 emporium would be ideal with the added bonus of being able to use the teapot again.  So many ideas, so little time.