*sighs*

... Well, not a surprise really, given how toxic NSW Labour had become.
But still. Fuck. At least we kept Verity. I'm off to hibernate for the next 10 years or so.

I was the skinny, pale, bookish kid ...

... Lucky for me, back in the dark ages, girls didn't fight all that often.
Just replace the physical with mental and Mr FirstDogOnTheMoon has it in one.

Seriously planet Earth ...

... I know we humans have dicked you around and shat in our own nest and all, but how about lightening up a little, eh?
Those floods up in Queensland/Northern NSW are actually a bit too close to family for comfort (though all are safe and dry-ish at the moment). And now there's bloody bushfires threatening Perth!
Enough already, I've got more than sufficient to worry about right now (and we all know it's all about me).

On Vets ...

... and their advice, regarding the medication of cats.
Cats do not like to take their medicine, this is known by all. It's why this is so funny. Ha, ha, ha, we've all been there, right?
It was a good 20 years of cat ownership before a vet told me about the 'butter method'. That's got the pill thing fixed, but Tigger's recent medication is in liquid form.
"Here" said the (rather charming and handsome young) vet, "I'll show you how, it's easy". And with that he grabs the scruff of Tigger's neck, pokes the squirty end in the side of her mouth and squeezes in the medicine (palatable, apparently, banana flavoured!). Not a struggle, no spitting out, easy as pie. Handsome curly-haired vet smiles and hands over the rest, "twice a day until it's gone".
Seriously, do vets not get it? Of COURSE it's fucking easy at the surgery! The cat is terrified and will accept anything, don't they know this? Don't they believe owners when they tell tales of medication trauma? Are they that bloody obtuse?
Fuck.
*Wanders off to find the antiseptic cream*.

That pie ...

... in the post before, it was made for a friend's birthday picnic on Sunday.
A picnic I didn't get to go to because while baking said pie I suffered a baking-related injury.
Yep, I fucked my back. First time ever. Bending down to get baking paper out of a bottom drawer.
My back went 'twang' and I thought to myself "hmmm, that feels funny" and continued on my merry way. Until, that is, I tried to bend over again. It quickly became apparent I would not be bending over again that day.
Nor the next, so the picnic was out.
Monday saw me still out of order, and so at home with plenty of kitteh nursing and pain-killers left over from Mr Brown's eye operations (yes, we horded, we are SO naughty).
Tuesday, after a day of very painful work, I popped down to my friendly local acupuncturist and was almost put to rights. I'm walking and getting up and down pretty well. Sitting for long periods is uncomfortable as is getting up after. But all in all, I'm on the mend I'd say.
Still, fark, this is old age creeping up on me isn't it?

This does not bode well for my twilight years ...

... this morning, handbag over shoulder, coffee in hand, I took a quick sidestep to avoid a severe eye poking from an pointlessly wielded umbrella (really people, once you're under the awning, put the umbrella DOWN).
It was raining this morning and the black granite (I think) pavers were slick, I slipped and came a tumbling down (rather like that rain Slim Dusty sings about).
I hit the ground hard, I felt all the muscles in my left shoulder crunch and those in my right ankle also. Lost the skin off my left knee and my coffee. Actually quite a bit of my coffee ended up IN MY HAIR!.
One person, a man by the sound of it, laughed. Dozens walked by as I sat there, legs all twisted awkwardly. One person, a woman of course, helped me up, fetched paper napkins from a nearby cafe and made sure I was alright. She also tried to give me my crumpled, half empty coffee, "there's still quite a bit left". I demurred.
Adrenalin got me to the office, but then someone said a kind word and I came over all shaky and a bit teary. I hate that.
I filled in an 'incident report' and told the boss I might go home. As I was packing up she told me the work-injury folk had called and "wanted to know if alcohol was involved".
If only, it may not have hurt so much!

Footballers ...

... they've been at it again.
Honestly, I'm beginning to get more than a little tired of this shit.
Blokes, if you are not sure if she's "asking for it" or not, read this helpful 7-point handy guide on how not to rape people. It may help.
Other men, of the non-rape type, thanks and please go and slap your fellow men upside their heads.Click to enbiggen the FirstDog cartoon - from here.

In which Mr Brown goes too far ...

... we are a spider-friendly household.
We don't kill spiders for the sake of killing them. I water the buggers when it gets very hot and have been known to save them before cats pull all their legs off.
We like spiders. At least I thought so. Until today.
Mr Brown came rushing in from the back yard, all "quick, give me Rupert".
So I did, asking why?
"I've found a spider," was all he said.
Then he came in and he showed me the pictures.Holy fuck! Shudders of revulsion and fear tremored through me. I reverted to my most primitive monkey state and shrieked "DID YOU KILL IT?"
"No."
"Go, now, kill it, kill it, kill it, what if it bites Pingu? KILL IT."
"It won't bite Pingu and cats aren't affected by spider bites anyway". (Actually true.)Mr Brown went and checked the backyard spider identification chart we keep in the kitchen (what? Doesn't everyone?). He reported it was a male trapdoor, not a male funnelweb but that did not calm or reassure me one little bit. Something deep down in the oldest, most reactionary part of my brain just screamed KIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.
But he wouldn't. He wouldn't let me kill it either. He practically gave him a little dish of cream and a pat on the head.I got Mr Brown to shake out my boots before I put them on. I may never go outside again! Errrrk, just look at his beady little eyes *shudder*

Our Passionfruit vine must have felt sorry for us ...

... We've not been expecting fruit this season, as it's a pretty newly planted vine. Still, after yesterday's lemon shitstorm, I needed a little cheering and this did the job. Yep, a perfectly ripe, fat and heavy passionfruit. Just the one, but that will do for now. Tigger, it turns out, also likes passionfruit. Just not for the same reasons as Mr Brown or me. No, she'd rather pat it around a bit. And then chase it round the floor.

Middle Class Crime ...

.... as I went to work yesterday morning and gazed at our wizened, stunted, twisted, little lemon tree, I marvelled at it's spunk and determination.
For once again it had brought to maturity a wonderful crop of about a dozen large, round and golden lemons. Beautiful things, like the golden apples of ancient myth. They were huge, bowing the sad twiggy branches of the tree. To look at them you'd think they were vampire fruits*, sucking their life force from the tree that grew them.
"Righto," I said to myself, "I'd better pick up some almond meal at lunchtime, it's curd making time". So I did, I bought some almond meal and gave the lemons a pat goodnight on our return home.
And the, this morning, as Mr Brown dressed and gazed out the window, he asked, "did you pick the lemons last night?"
"No."
"Well, some fucker has."
He rushed out to check and his cry of "miserable fuckers" rang through the street, the street full of market goers. Yes indeed, some miserable fucking middle-class, market-attending, fuckstump had picked all but 2 of our lemons. They left 2, the 2 with still a little green about them. Mr Brown tenderly brought them inside. They lie with some ripe tomatoes in a pretty fruit basket my mum gave us recently.
Who the fuck steals lemons? LEMONS? From someone's front garden??
If it was pomegranates or dragon fruit or something exotic and terribly expensive I'd understand, but lemons? You could pick up a bag of them for a couple of bucks at the bloody markets you thieving fuckers!
I am filled with rage, righteous anger, I'm seething with it. If I ever find out who did it they are going to be very, very sorry indeed. I won't of course, but I'm fantasising about it as I type.






* Full confession, once not so very long ago, I attempted to en-vampireate a watermelon, I longed to hear one growl. No dice I'm afraid, dud watermelon I guess.

Spam war declared...

... bastard spammers targeted a blue banded bee post. Fuckers!

Mournful ...

... Poor Pingu's mouth is sore.
We visited the vet yesterday, for Tigger's 2nd lot of vaccination shots, and took the opportunity to cram Ping into the travel cage too.
She'd been starting to make some off mouth movements on Saturday night. Initially I thought she'd got something stuck in there, but we couldn't see anything, not that she'd let us look closely or for long. She was still behaving oddly on Sunday morning so, off to the vets we all went.
She's got an ulcerated tongue, the tip of it, and a broken tooth. We've no idea how it happened. The vet suggested she may have licked something caustic. For the life of me, I can't think of a caustic thing she'd have access to. I did mention Ping had been licking the kitten a lot, but medical opinion is that would not have caused the problem.
Poor Ping is all mournful and hungry, but not wanting to eat, except egg yolk with a little cottage cheese mixed in. Tigger's first breakfast in other words.
So, Ping is on kitten food until the bright pink antibiotics kick in. And later we get to book her in for a little dental work. I'll just set fire to this pile of money here for shits and giggles eh?
And then, this morning, I heard the most appropriately mournful cry coming from the Jacaranda tree outside. A pair of crows calling to each other, such a sad, beautiful sound. Lovely neck ruffles too. O, and an obligatory kitten picture.

I have eleventy million kitten pictures ...

... or almost, ready and waiting to upload but they are all on the big computer which is refusing to hook up to the interwebs. Pants, arse, pants.

I'm Crushed ...

.. faithful readers with good memories will remember my devotion to Pears Transparent Soap.
I love the stuff, used it from when I was wee, and snitched a bar from my mother's pantry/store cupboard upon finally leaving home. I've been using it ever since. I introduced it to our co-habitable/matrimonial home.
You take the last wafer-thin bit of soap, mold it into the dip of the new bar and carry on. If you believe in the theory behind Bach Flower Remedies, I don't by the way, but if you did, you could argue that we are still using the same soap I took from home over 20 years ago. It's a lovely thought.
Anyway, just the other week Mr Brown opened a new box, slipped out a new bar, popped the old snippet of soap on top, to find it didn't have that concave space (created, apparently, not by deliberate, careful molding, but by shrinkage asthe soap dries). Hmmmmm.
I was next in the bathroom. It smelled wrong, strong, overpowering and wrong. It was the soap. "This isn't Pears" I declared to Mr Brown, "we've been sold dud soap, fucking Coles is selling counterfeit Pears! The Fuckers." (Not an unfair charge I contend, they've been sneaky before.) I was accused of overreacting, possible defamation, and told to hurry up we were going to be late for work.
Some judicious Googling proved me right ... and wrong. It wasn't counterfeit soap, Pears had changed the ingredients and the formula. The ingredients list for the soap I love is - Sodium Palmitate, Natural Rosin, Glycerin, Water, Sodium Cocoate, Rosemary and Thyme Extract and Pears Fragrance, a nice, short relatively natural and safe list.
The new list is Sorbitol, Aqua, Sodium Palmate/stearate, Sodium Palmkernelate, Sodium Rosinate, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (nasty) PEG-4, Alcohol, Glycerin, Perfume, Sodium Chloride, Sodium Meta Bisulfite, Etidronic acid, Tetra Sodium EDTA, BHT, CL 12490, CL 47005, Benzyl Benzoate, Benzyl Salicylate, Cinnamal, Eugenol Limonene, Linalool. A nasty list of toxicity.
I DO NOT WANT.
Turns out a shit load of other people did not want either. Pears has apparently stated it will abandon the new forumla and use one "much closer to the original".
Now I dealt with the packaging change, the disappointing, dull box and cellophane replacing the lovely proper paper individually enclosing each individual tablet. But I won't deal with the new smell, the funny "feel" (it's sort of softish, creepy) and the horrid shape. "Much closer to the original" just isn't good enough Pears, you've lost a customer of some 40-odd years.
Goodbye Pears, hello Dr Bronner's Magic Soaps! The ingredient list for the bar soap isn't quite as comforting as old Pears, but it's a shit load better than what Pears became.
Here endith my rant.

Twitter ...

... has been BLOCKED at work.
Life has lost all meaning.

OK, I'm back in, my brain won't explode even though I'm being forced to use internet explorer instead of firefox :(

Today I went slightly ape shit ...

... horrid day at work (fingers crossed only a week to go) not at all assisted by my, franky hysterical, worrying about something that might happen.
Might happen, might not, probably won't, but still might. And, if it does happen, omyomyomy whatamIgoingtodo????? The sort of worrying that has one googling pointlessly, confirming only your worst fears. And it doesn't help that Mr Brown tends to try to put a positive spin on these things, because the lunatic is an optimist!! I know, how on earth did worse-case-secnario pesamist moi get hitched to him?? Polar opposites, I've said it before.
And so, I was tense to Mr Brown on the phone on the way home and wept and wrung my hands when I got home and .... well as I said. Pointless waste of time worrying.
So, I went outside and took some macro shots of my favourite neighbourhood bees who, at this time of night, obligingly sit still(ish) for the camera.

Last night I got trapped in my building foyer ...

... for 40 minutes.
I, a colleague and 2 poor "members of the public" could not get out.
The after-hours door button just didn't work. Press, press, press. No joy.
The fire door, the access to the stairs was locked and could only be opened by one of those lucky folk with magical 24-hour access swipe cards.
Because it was after 6pm the lifts, once they had deposited you on the ground floor, would not take you upstairs again, unless you had one of those magical 24-hour access swipe cards. O, and the lift alarm button, when pressed, made an impressive noise but nobody responded.
Now, I'm not a fan of the mobile telephone, I have one but only for my benefit, that is I use it to call Mr Brown from a couple of stops away, so he can come pick me up at the station, that sort of thing. The only numbers I have stored on it are personal friends and family.
I chose to have it this way because I don't want to be one of those people who can't put their fucking phone away, can't not look at it, can't not answer it EVEN IF THEY ARE EATING THEIR DINNER! One of those folk per family is more than enough.
So, clearly I couldn't ring any work folk to come let me out, not that there were any still in the office. Lucky the colleague had her boss's number, and that boss called the building owners, to come let us out. And a security guard did eventually saunter up.
Guess who is now the proud possessor of one of those magical 24-hour access swipe cards?

Worried ...

... I've not seen the bebe poss for days and days and days.
Mrs Poss still turns up, at least I think it's Mrs Poss, looking a bit worse for wear.
I'm going to have to do a bit of googling, I'm hoping Hush has just moved on as a grown up, not been killed by a boy possum wanting to have his wicked way with Mrs Poss.
I do hope that's not it.

It's banned books week ...

... in the USofA.
We don't have anything similar, that I could find with a quick Google, here in Australia.
We should.
My American friends, your mission, should you chose to take it, is to go out and buy and read a banned book. If a book is banned in your area, go to your Public Library and ask for it! Banning can lead to burning, and that mustn't happen.

Image from here.

Today I blew Mr Starbucks' mind ...

... all I wanted was an iced coffee.
Which in Australia means a very milky coffee, no actual ice, with a scoop of ice cream. So I rocked up to the counter, having perused the menu and said "A tall iced latte please, with hazelnut, you know, an iced coffee".
I get to the pick up spot and get 2 coffees, one is plain coffee, no milk, full of ice cubes! WTF??? The other is a milky coffee, hot.
I go back to the ordering spot, explain carefully that I want 1 coffee, cold, with milk in it.
I get something a little like what I wanted ... it was cold at least.