Melbourne here I come.

These are my Dorothy shoes.

I am packing for my little visit to Melbourne, and I have had to dig deep cos my Goldie life is a very simple one filled with shorts and thongs and hats, and very occasionally a bit of a dress up but still with thongs. And that's not because I don't have proper grown up clobber, it's just that this place doesn't require it, in fact people here are so used to the casual, ok slobby, gear, that those rare times when I remember to swipe on a bit of lippy, I am accused of going on the game or perhaps attending a funeral or an Amway convention.

So I am exchanging summer stuff for wintery wet stuff and that means that I have had to dig into my London gear - boots and closed in shoes and I reckon I am gonna have to pack an umbrella too. Bugger! I am not taking the good weather with me. Funnily enough Stevie has asked me to bring some of the rain back home with me, yeh the garden here could do with a drink.

So I popped out last week and bought a new pair of black trousers and I am taking a pair of resurrected jeans and an assortment of tops and that'll do me. I am not keen on dragging a hundred weight around the airports.

And as I am packing, and counting out knicky-noos, I am shuddering at the memory of the story on the tellie last week about the current trend of people boiling up their underbits IN THE KETTLE, in the hotel rooms. Ooooo YUK. Especially ooooo YUK cos I do like to wake up with a cuppa and so I am already planning to boil the shit outta that kettle before I use it. Isn't it funny the plans we make.

I am trying to decided whether or not I am gonna be brave and try out UBER for the first time cos they have just been granted access to Melbourne Airport. But I haven't used it before cos my old phone was rubbish, and the info from the hotel is that a cab will be about 50 bucks and they had no clue about UBER although they did seem to think it would be more expensive, but that might be because they'd prefer their guest to arrive by cab. Anyway I will check it out when I get there.

And I have done a reccie to see how long it will take to walk from my place to the conference and it all sounded manageable until now when I have to factor in Melbourne rain. I am not sure I want to puddle through 20 minutes and arrive all wet and unnecessary to then sit all day in aircon listening to stuff. I will wait and see, cos the 4 seasons in one day reputation of Melbourne is well founded and it might be that I can chug along in brilliant sunshine and settle in before the rain starts.

Do you get the idea that I am excited about heading away? I certainly hope so. I love going to Melbourne. It's such a grown up place. It almost demands that you dress up and behave yourself. So I am planning on putting on proper clothes - including a bra and shoes and maybe even a bit of face paint, and eating up some delicious food and sitting and watching the beautiful people wander by, oh and if I learn some shit at the conference well that'll be a big bonus.

Botox Clinic

Live and let live I reckon. So long as it's not hurting anyone or even inconveniencing someone, then seriously I reckon you can just go your hardest. And no I am not gonna go on about the fucking expensive, non binding, postal poll about Gay Marriage, cos I just don't get the controversy about this. Yeh I know I have mentioned all this before. Nah I am talking about folk, mostly women but also men, who take their faces along for some wee injections to ease the age and make them feel better about themselves. Yeh, go your hardest I reckon.

But today rather then popping in to a candle lit, sweet smelling, calm, gentle music streaming, salon for a good needling, I found myself in my doctor's rooms along with a veritable herd of people. Dr Meena had told me to call up any time and make an emergency appointment, for the savage digging if my mind started exploding with migraines again, after we agreed to experimentally part ways last November.  I was sitting there and not getting even the least bit cross about how long it was gonna take, cos I realised that by my being, there someone else was gonna be running much later than they had planned on, cos I was a 'Fit in', so I played some games on my phone and kept my head down.

What I did quickly glean while I sat there, was that it was Botox Day. And so as folk wandered in and out, I curious about their ailments.

Dr Meena is a thorough specialist. She likes to make sure she is crossing all the Ts and dotting all the Is. But once she has decided that the Botox injections are the way to go, she goes hard and fast. Diggy diggy dig dig, and all the while she is chatting away and I am breathing like I am about to push out a 10 pounder. I bleed and she wipes up and continues to chatter and jabs in more than 30 sharps. Ouchie indeed.

It's a long way from pretty making, but hey there is not something too attractive about being head down bum up chucking into the loo, so I guess beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder.

But back to why the others were there.

I reckon the woman who wandered in just before me might have had an exploding head too, but from conversations earwigged, one bloke was being jabbed for help with Parkinson's disease tremors and another for Cerebral Palsy. I rather doubted that either of these people were gonna dance on outta there, but I hope that there might be an improvement at least. Are you wondering about privacy here? Me too but that's another post I reckon.

There are lots of things that are getting a bit of a Botox tickle if you ask Google. Cross eyes and even stinky BO arm pits. Bloody remarkable stuff huh?

Fingers crossed for us all, cos the needles are not for the faint hearted.

Security

Ever since I was a wee lass, I have always thought that if someone broke into the house while I was sleeping, I would just pretend to already be dead so they would leave me alone. Yep, this has been my defense method for as many years as I can remember. Sure that makes me a coward! Oh Well.

You know those movies where someone hides behind a dead body, or uses a dead body as a shield, or crawls under a pile of dead bodies to save themselves, well yep, that would be me. I know lots of people who look at that shit a shake their heads and make all sorts of derogatory remarks about how disgusting or lame or cowardly or pathetic, but I always think, 'That's using your brain.' cos a good dollop of self preservation is always useful.

This might be why I am such a wooooosey when it comes to watching scary shit on the tellie or at the pictures.

I have never been good at watching horror stuff and now all gore and guts has become just part and parcel of every night tellie viewing. Am I the only person who has noticed this? 'Criminal Minds' is about my limit and even then I do spend some considerable time hiding behind my hands asking Stevie if the scary bit is finished.

I remember going along to the pictures to watch a double bill, 'Misery' and 'Silence of the Lambs' with a gaggle of gals. I ended up getting such a fright that I literally fell off the chair and spent a good long time calming down while I stared at the back of the chair in front of me. Yeh I know I wouldn't fit down in the feet well anymore and even if I did, my knees wouldn't bend well enough to get down there or get back up, and maybe that's why I just don't go to horror hit at the pictures any more.

My Darling Boy was asking me about scary movies last week and I happily told him that I just don't like 'em. He and his mother find 'em FUNNY! But I just can't get passed the idea that it could all be happening to me, even the Sci-Fi weirdness, and that terror I feel is very fucking unpleasant. He went on and on about a whole bunch of movies that were either coming out or had already been released or he had watched on DVD or something, but unusually I finally had to tell him I had stopped listening, firstly cos I didn't care and secondly if I had been paying attention, I would have been shitting myself and no kid needs to watch his Ma do that!

But the point of all this is that on Saturday night when all was quiet in the house, Dog started to growl. I was bedded down for the night and didn't fancy getting up to take her out for a wee and generally she has been doing a little crying thing when nature is calling and this was a growl, a cranky sort of noise. And then there was a bark. Not a friendly, 'I am here and would enjoy it if you played a bit of ball or fed me some treaties' type of bark, but a low guttural sort of, 'Don't fuck with me' sort of bark. I opened my eyes but didn't move. I watched closely for any strange shadows flitting across the walls. She growled and barked and I lay there completely still, wide awake and waiting for someone to wander across the back deck. Yeh I pretended to be asleep, maybe dead. Maybe if someone broke in they would not look into the lounge room floor cos how often would they find some crazy old gal sleeping on the floor when a bed was available. Maybe if someone was breaking in they'd just run through the house and hopefully steal the cars.

I saw no movement and finally Dog stopped the growling and the barking. It took a while my blood pressure to return to normal and a while longer for me to think about sleeping. I wasn't game to pick up my kindle, just in case there was still someone there and they'd see the light and then they would know I was not dead.

I am not at all a scardy cat in this house, I have been here often on my own and am almost never fearful of intruders, so what was curious was that firstly I jumped to the break and enter scenario, and more importantly that my old tried and tested method of feigning deadness was automatic.

Are you a brave soul who would confront an intruder or does under the bed, breathing as lightly as your panic would allow, seem like your best option?

Perspective.

This is the view from my airbed in the lounge where I am camping while Dog is convalescing. I am thoroughly enjoying the change in perspective.

As a drawer I probably make a half decent painter. I can manage to get a bit of a sense of distance and space using colour and I know about making things far away smaller and things closer bigger, but the composition of this sort of stuff has never been my forte, and I have never been much of a planner so instead of grabbing for a pencil to do a little preliminary sketch, out come the brushes and I just get started. Yeh I have buggered up many many canvases using this avante guard method, but all is not lost cos you can just paint over it and try again. Some canvases have ended up so heavy with paint that they'd make a damn fine weapon if your thing is knocking out small children with oversized frisbees.

And as I am writing this I am reminded of an art class in perspective I was teaching some time back. It was a year 9 class and to say they didn't give a shit would have been an exaggeration, and mostly that was my fault. Firstly I had allowed them to steal all but a few of the 2 and 4 B pencils so equipment was sparse. It took a while for me to believe that they would steal from themselves, and when I finally cottoned on to it and insisted that they leave a deposit if they wanted to borrow something, it was almost too late. But the biggest problem was the boring still life shit I had set up for them to draw. I mean in retrospect, it was like I set up this weird assortment of shit as a punishment, it was too fucking hard for 'em and I was too shit to teach 'em how to go about even starting. It was a disaster. Chairs were thrown, literally, and it was mostly my fault. Yeh some of these kids were mean little fuckers, but I should have found another way. Ho hum, too late she cried.

However that's not the only sort of perspective I have been pondering. The view from my temporary camp in the lounge room is marvellously odd and interesting. I guess most of us wake up in the same bed most of the time and look about and so all the details have been well observed. The crack in the plaster, the paint chips here and there and the fading of the carpet. I am pretty sure most of us could wander around the bedroom in the dark without fear of dented shins or broken toes. Ah the familiarity of it all.

But this last week the lounge room is transformed into a wee bedsit at night, thanks to a very comfy airbed, courtesy of my camping girl. It's a long, long, fucking long way down to that air bed. I have just about perfected the ease down into a little roll over to get in and my core muscles, which I thought had long since left the building, are getting a bit of a work out, as I drag myself to the sitting position and then pull my legs up and roll over onto my knees and then once in position as if I am giving some kid a horsey ride, I manage to wedge my toes under the mattress and push myself up leading with my arse, into that downward facing dog thing, before I finally become vertical. The getting down is much easier than the getting up - sounds like a fine Rap tune huh? I am pleased Stevie has not seen fit to video this effort and pop it on you tube.

Yep the getting up is the down side of this arrangement. Each night, I am limiting the number of times I haul arse up and so desperate have I been for the loo on occasion that woe-be-tide anyone between me and the potty. If running cross legged was an Olympic Sport, I could now be a contender.

There are no curtains or blinds downstairs and so I am awake with the sun and even that has been a revelation. It is wonderfully quiet, if you don't count Dog farting and scratching and chewing up the plastic rungs of her playpen. And I am really enjoying the view from the floor.

Oh sure I will be happy to get back into my bed, but for the short term the change in perspective is the bonus bit part of poor old Dog's misery.

There that's just how close I am to Dog...yep the farting is becoming a problem.

Bring on the Botox

These are the mind sapping alternatives to Botox. Back to the Jabs next week.

Almost exactly 3 years ago I wrote of trooping off for the many jabs of Botox to turn the tap off on the almost constant migraines.

I wriggled my toes and crossed my fingers and for the next 2 years I was migraine free. Yippee shouted from the roof tops barely begins to describe how fucking exciting that was. The success rate is about 70% and Dr Meena scores an impressive 90% but that's because she vets patients so thoroughly. Good on her I reckon, NOW. At the time I thought it was all a royal pain in the arse.

Anyway last November we both decided that maybe I should try going cold turkey on the Botox and see how things panned out. I figured that eventually surely you must get to an age where the migraines just leave the building, and I already had enough shit going on with the CML and all.

So we hugged it out and she said that if the fuckers returned I should just ring up and say it's an emergency and she'd fit me in. All our fingers were crossed.

Sadly about 2 months ago, as a little aside when at Dr Jane's, I mentioned the headaches and she said, 'Get thee back to Meena.' I was resistant. I had decided that the aches were side effects of the meds for the Leukaemia. Jane got up me and said that I couldn't always blame everything on the meds and in any case I had had the migraines long before the mutants arrived.

She was right of course. But I was still not racing back into the needles.

She has since said the same to Stevie and me, more than once. He's been on and on about it too. Resistance was useless.

The migraines are fucking back, not as bad as in their hey day but I have now been chewing up over the counter pain meds all day every day for more than a month. Fuck it! What a rattler!

I made an emergency appointment with Meena so instead of seeing me in November I am off for the Jabs next Wednesday. And that won't be a minute too soon. I have twice tried the pummeling of the neck and shoulders and that has just left me bruised and a little weepy and have now hoovered up all the pain meds except for the class A stuff which can continue to gather dust in the drawer, cos I reckon I could become a stumbling mess taking that shit at night, especially while I am sleeping on the air bed in the lounge looking after Dog. I could easily see getting confused and trying to join her in the playpen. Let's face confusion is not a foreign concept these days.

I don't know why the Botox works, but it certainly seems to.

Roll on Wednesday.

Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink

A notice was popped into the letter box yesterday warning that the water would be turned off between 9am and 2pm today. They are doing, oh who the fuck knows really, it has all become white noise to me. Anyway I thought it best to be at least a little prepared and given the all day race to the loo that goes on here, the flushing of the toilet has become my priority.

So I filled the bath last night so I could just scoop out the water and chuck it down the loo. Good thinking huh Batman? Except that when I went to check out my handy work this morning, all the water had drained out through the ill-fitting plug in the plug hole. BUGGER! so I have filled it again and wonder how long it will take for it to be empty. In the short term it works like a treat, do your business and then fill the red bowl and chuck it down the big white bus and voila, all gone! Yippee.

But it has lead us to think about how we use water. There are little tubs of water all around the house. When Stevie finished his fibre filled cereal this morning, I suggested being very conservative with the rinsing of the bowl and spoon before placing virtually clean in the disher. So we used a glass to scoop out some water from the sink and washed it into the half sink and called it done. So the water in the sink is 'not contaminated' Oh dear I reckon it's gonna be a long day with the whole germy germy issue I have.

Although I am clearly not the only one with this thinking, cos the warning note gave us some advice about how to deal with a dry day. Things like being careful about lifting too heavy buckets and only flush via a bucket when 'absolutely necessary', is that Council for Yellow - Mellow, but flush those turds? were outlined, and their final suggestion was to use anti-bacterial hand sanitizer for hand washing. Now I would need to have raced to the shops to get some of this shit in, cos we haven't got any and it seems that the writer of the letter presumes that all households have it, so just use it huh? Maybe I am not that germ phobic after all. Does everyone have a little supply of anti -bac hand sanitizer? I must do better.

And then I made sure that there was plenty of drinking water cos that's what I do all day and that's why sorting a loo flush was important.

The kettle is full so a cuppa is possible and just for good measure the laundry sink is full, though for what I don't know cos it is definitely not contamination free, cos I didn't scrub it when I filled it last night at silly o'clock. But there's water there and I thought, if necessary, we could decant it into the kettle and boil it to get rid of the detergent and bleach residue. I rather hope we don't get that desperate. And I filled a tub and popped it on the other downstairs loo. Again, why I am not at all sure.

Stevie filled 2 enormous buckets and they are standing guard at the front door.

I am pleased that I got the washing done yesterday and because there was a wee storm in the early hours, there is no need to think about feeding the plants.

So apart from drinking and flushing and cleaning, I wonder what else we might use water for that I have overlooked. Hopefully not much.

I am wondering how folk manage on tank only water. They must count every drop and if they came to visit they would tear out hair watching our cavalier usage. Unlimited water supply is just a given, until it's not.

Here's another reason why I am a city girl. One that I have rarely considered.

Yep, no more than 5 minutes from a Myers and constant running water please.

 

Clumsy Chaos

I wouldn't say that I am typically clumsy. I can generally manage to haul arse about the place striding one foot in front of the other, without stumbling into furniture or falling head over tit. I can carry more stuff than would be strictly necessary to avoid making 2 trips. This drives Stevie mad cos he hovers and waits till the mountain of ill-matched shit goes tumbling out of my arms. But I am nearly always steady as she goes. I don't routinely cut myself with sharp knives and whilst I still have the scars on my left pointy pointy finger from when I was 20, learning to use a saw and I slipped - Yeh blood fountained outta that one, I am pretty safe with tools and sharpies.

But I have this theory that the wake from clumsy errors is in direct proportion to your ability to rectify any mess or disaster.

For example, if you are having a chipper smiley day and you drop a plate as you dance it out of the disher. Yeh it smashes, but you just turn the radio up louder and continue to sing as you sweep up the debris.

If all is good in your world, and you drop you keys down a drain grate, you smugly McGiver a hook from an old coat hanger and scoop 'em out, no harm done.

However, if you are a little under the weather and drop your sock under the bed, you might well sink onto the carpet and have a good old sob, after all it WAS YOUR FAVOURITE SOCK!

Or if you haven't slept well for a few nights and you break a glass, firstly it will always be a precious glass that your Nanna left you, that she drank from at her wedding in 1901, and secondly it will shatter into so many pieces that the floor looks like a sand pit.

So today after sleeping with Dog in the lounge room since Thursday, I am a bit weepy tired.

I was using the last little bit of joy I had, to cook up some filling for some wee party parcels that were a hit a few weeks ago. The cooking was done and I was up to cleaning away. Yippee.

The salt and pepper grinders were the last part of the tidying.

They stood there and just mocked me. Bastards!

They fit easily into one hand. I have carried them like that hundreds of times, maybe millions.

I casually swung 'em back to float 'em into their spot in the herbie cupboard and suddenly the fucking pepper grinder just jumped out of my hand and threw itself hard onto the concrete floor. Fucker!

It smashed into a gazzillion pieces and of course pepper corns went fucking everywhere.

I needed to get the dust pan from the garage and I worried that Dog, who has been allowed to sit out of her playpen today after her trip to the vet to have all her bandages removed, would wander over and spike herself, I was as quick as I could be - not very I'm afraid.

And then I set to cleaning it all up. Who would believe just how far shards of glass can fly?

I didn't fancy being head down bum up even once. And this was a head down bum up many times job. I swept and shovelled and then when I thought I was done, I saw a bit more of a glint a bit further away so I started again. Shit. Wet paper towels finished the job, I hope.

Stevie is never barefoot, but the Aussie girl in me sees my naked feet yomping about quite frequently and so I guess if I haven't been as thorough as I should have been, either Dog or I will be bleeding sometime soon.

Bugger. I don't fancy cleaning that up.

Escapologist.

Dog is locked back in after her wee adventure this morning. 

Dog had settled into her confinement well, or so I thought.

Yeh she cried a bit last night, but I talked her down and she popped off to sleep, or so I thought.

We went out for a wee walk, - not productive, bugger! and she had a lovely big drink on her way back to bed, and she settled there with her nanna blanky over her cos it's delightfully chilly here this morning, and I went about the usual AM kitchen shit and left her to her slumber, or so I thought.

I washed up and clean up a little and heard a bit of noise upstairs and figured Stevie was up and at 'em. But when I turned around, there was just a pile of blanket where Dog aught to be. From a distance you might think she had burrowed in to make a little cocoon of warm air to hide in, but on closer inspection she was bloody gone! Like those movies where the kid escapes out the window but tucks shit under the bed clothes so that the parentals see a lump and think all is well.

She couldn't have gone far. All the outside doors were closed and she is only 3 days into a long recovery after getting a new knee, so I know she's not running a marathon, and whilst I call this place The Big House, there just aren't that many place for a dog to hide. So I called her and wandered around looking.

Garage - NO
Studio - No
Store room - No
Bathroom - No No
Office - No
Laundry - No

Bugger

Then I recalled the funny noise from before and ran upstairs. Well OK, for full and honest disclosure I huffed and puffed my way upstairs, and bugger me, there she was in all her broken glory lying in the sunshine checking out the comings and going of people and dogs in her park.

Panic set in quickly.

The only thing the vet had been very strict about was NO STAIRS. Fuckity fuckity fuck fuck. There's a big old failure! FUCK.

Typically she takes up her position and when she sees a dog she knows who she knows will be any minute now, walking by the front gate, well she ups and scampers down the stairs, sometimes taking 'em 2 or 3 at a time and sometimes she skids down 'em on her arse, like in the cartoons and she runs like a maniac to say hello, or more often to bark like a deranged fierce maniac.

FUCK.

So I woke Stevie up - Not Happy Jan, and he had to get up and carry her down the stairs and now she is in the playpen but I have put the gates back in so she will need to high jump it to get out.

That won't surprise me.

Now I am gonna have to work out how to keep her off the stairs. To The Barricade!

Nurses - Bloody Marvels!

Just at the back of Dog you can see my pillow and blow up bed. My arm fits between the slats for a middle of the night cuddle - not very nursey  of me but the best I can do.

Yep if there was any doubt about it before there sure as shit is none now, I could not be a nurse.

I'd just wander around the ward crying and being a big dick as I tried to ease the suffering of the sick folk or I'd be pissed off and abusive towards the demanding less sick folk with undue senses of entitlement.

Nurses are efficient in their care. They notice every little thing and because of their knowledge and training and experience, they are aware of even subtle changes in a patient's condition and so act on these changes promptly and confidently. Bloody good on 'em. They know stuff and can do stuff and do do stuff that I can only imagine, unless I am watching a hospital type bit of tellie, then I can give thought to how do they do all that work in those tight uniforms and doesn't all that hairspray fall into open wounds as they re-bandage stuff, but that's only on the tellie, cos Real Life Nurses are wonderful.

Dog is being shortchanged having me as her night nurse. Oh sure in an un-nursey way I am sleeping on the floor next to her from where I can hear every little movement and moan and snore or snort. 13 times last nmight so my fitty bitty tells me. Yeh I borrowed an air bed from my girl, I mean I am not completely nuts and we have concrete floors and I am a person! but that's where my nurseyness ends.

I figure she must be thirsty and she will lick a bit of water off my fingers, but she does this only under sufferance, and she must certainly be in pain - that I can easily understand, so I am not pushing hard for her to stand up and get going like a nurse might do. I am just cooing to her and trying to be kind, but I realise that KIND might well not be the best medicine but it's all I can manage, that and fixing her some lovely yoghurt and popping a bit of chicken stock in her water bowl. Yeh I am just making shit up.

I've been in hospital more times than I care to recall and none of it has been a picnic. When I was delivered of my first new knee, and things all went a little haywire with blisters the size of my head and a migraine that made me want to call it a day, one of the nurses was so so kind, that I must have fallen a little in love with her. When I got home and I could hobble a bit, I raced out and got her this enormous Villeroy and Boch spoon bowl thing. Mary Poppins singing 'A spoon full of sugar' drove me to this.  It was a ridiculously drug driven, over the top gesture, and when I delivered it to her some 6 weeks later, when I walked in under my own steam, clear headed and cynically normal,  I was embarrassed and so was she and I did a runner cos this pressie was a sign of being a bit nutty. I guess nurses might be used to patients returning with a little thank you box of Cadbury Roses for everyone to share - at least I like to think that patients offer something in appreciation of their nursing. In any case I hope she kept it and maybe smiles when she uses it, but perhaps more likely she left it in the ward kitchen and some daft cow planted a bit of something in it that has since died.

I liked hers so much that later I went and bought one for myself.

However, there can be no doubt that Nursing is a vocation, and like teaching, if it is not a calling then the work must be horrendous. And I don't mean that looking after Dog is terrible and I hate it, but it's my dirty little secret, I am counting the days til I am back upstairs in my own bed, and she is drinking on her own and hopefully eating a little something that is good for her.  

I can only have a lame stab at being the type of wonderful that is a Nurse.

Dancing Lessons

I wonder if you can imagine this space filled all the way around with a circle of pairs dancing. Sometimes there were so many people there that there needed to be 2 circles. It was a marvellous place.

I was surprised and delighted yesterday when my Darling Boy arrived home from school with a wee stolen flower for his Mum and when he slid it behind her ear I was filled with all the joys of spring. It was such an oldie worldie thing to do. Ahhh

And then he told me about the boy - girl dance classes they were having at school and I was transported back to a simpler time, when on a Friday evening a little herd of us would make the long trek from Wynnum up to the Big Smoke, Brisvegas to dance up a storm at the now long gone iconic CLOUDLAND. 

Yeh there was the usual jumping around and flinging of arms and long permed hair, type of dancing but there was also the Progressive ballroom type of dancing where you'd waltz around or Pride of Erin about and get a look at all the fellas there. Yep it was a different time. A time of innocence - Shit I am starting to sound like a Simon and Garfunkel tune. There wasn't a fear of being slipped a ruffie or an E tab and it was not a place for drunken louts. People just came to dance and maybe meet up with someone interesting. I never met anyone I wanted to see again, but I sure as shit loved that twirling all around the cavernous hall.

My Grandie said that some of the boys were being idiots cos of 'girl germs' but that he was enjoying it. 

Then I told him a yarn about how much many people enjoy a fella who can dance. And I told him that my lovely Dad taught me to dance the old style jig and that dancing with a fella who knew what he was doing was one of the highlights of my dating life.

I was at a dinner dance at the Gabba Cricket Grounds - no not out on the pitch, but in a huge function room which may or may not still be there. It was a very formal 'DO', Black Tie and long frock and high heels, and coiffured hair.  I don't remember my date's name, but I sure do remember being dressed to the nines and having him dance me all around the floor. As soon as I trusted that he knew what he was doing, and I allowed him to lead, the dancing was just bloody marvellous. Yeh I knew what I was doing, courtesy of my Dad, but that would have been of no use whatsoever if he hadn't had a clue. I put aside my 'I'll do it myself ' persona and let him be in charge, and even though I don't remember his name I can remember how good it felt to float all about the dance floor. Yeh I do love a bit of a dance.

Yesterday, I was quite taken with the idea that amid the computers and the social media storms and all the modern technology, there is still space for simple things like old fashioned dancing.

Ah just lovely.

And then he told me of the fun he was having in another class - maybe PE or maybe Drama or Dance who knows, where they are choreographing a modern abstract dance performance and when he demonstrated a bit of the CRAB dance, well let's just say I laughed up a lung and was pleased I was already seated. I am hoping that there is not much similarity between this Crabbing and his waltzing but the balancing of it all makes me smile.

Springing.

This is today.. not bad. Some other days' results are pretty rubbish.

Spring has definitely sprung.

I popped off to the beach today to 'get in some steps' and it was warm. I popped on my silly hat and resolved not to be out at lunchtime for very much longer. The beach yomping has got to be a morning pass time as summer threatens. The water was not even the tiniest bit chilly and there were folk frolicking and fishing and yomping like me.

Out a ways passed the wave breaks was that big old shippy boaty thing that is sucking up the sand from out there and dumping it via a long boom closer in. This is quite the expensive process and I suppose it is working, but I would hardly be qualified to know. What I can say is that the sand in the wavey area where I was paddling, which is usually the 'hard sand' and therefore the best sand to walk on, especially for lazy cows like me, was not even close to 'hard' today. Nope it was sloppy and so getting my steps in was like wading through non-sticky mud. I reckon the number of steps my fitty bitty counted should have been doubled cos it was seriously hard slogging and then the steep profile of the beach, back up to the park was the final killer. I reckoned I was looking like a heart attack victim, by the time I reached the concrete path, and I can tell you I was very pleased for more than the obvious reason when my bum hit the loo.

The Fit Bit has pointed out just what a sedentary lazy tart I am. The theory is that we are all supposed to walk 10000 steps a day and I have not made that, not even once, not even on my busiest day, and some days when the tireds have slapped me around I have done very many fewer.

But it does lead me to be a bit competitive - not with anyone else, just me, and so I like to be able to tally up 300 minutes of active walking a week. Sometimes that is not easy to fit in. But a goal is a goal. Nah I am not smacking myself around too much if I fail - yeh that has happened, but it is helpful to have a record of achievement.

The walking along the beach is my favourite place, but I reckon I might have to go in search of some of that hard sand, cos as the sun is setting my legs are aching more than  my minutes of walking would indicate. Ho hum.

Cruciate Disease

Bugger! Yep my lovely girl is broken. This Cruciate ripping is most common in dogs between 6 and 8 years old, so she should have been in the clear, but sadly that's not her story.

So after a week or maybe 2 of limping around, like I was doing before I got me some new knees, all the while, slurping up serious pain meds to no avail - her not me, it was finally off to the Vet.

He had a good fiddle - don't be rude, and gave us the verdict we had been trying very hard to ignore. We had all but convinced ourselves that the problem was the quality of the pain meds we bought online, instead of the stuff from the Vets because it was just so much cheaper. Steve was ready to have it tested to see what was in it. Yep we wanted to blame something, anything.

But it seems pretty clear that by just being herself, her leg has failed. Bugger indeed!

Next Thursday will be the start of a new life for our girl.

The operation fills me with an appalling deja vu. And I am aware that she will be in terrible pain afterwards. We need to get out heads around how we are gonna manage post surgery, because at the moment she is self moderating, well as much as a running chasing anything and everything dog can be. But after the surgery we are gonna have to set the rules and the limits and I am pretty sure that the willfulness of her is gonna prove to be problematic.

Mark the Vet, said she should be confined in a tiny room, and that would mean the downstairs bathroom, but I just can't see isolating her from her family. She would not do well not being where we are. We see that she needs to be contained and so we are gonna try to tether her to the dining table so she can be with us. Her bed can be right there too and her water and food bowl. Mark the Vet said we will need to put her on the lead to take her out for pees and poos, which she will not like cos you, know she's almost human and does enjoy a modicum of privacy when shitting.

But the biggest problem will be when we disappear up to bed. 

She will not be best pleased to be left on her own downstairs, but even if we managed to carry her up to bed - a squirming 28 kgs would be a challenge,  I couldn't trust that she will stay there. I can already hear her running down the stairs to chase a whatever, in the park. It might be that the couch will call us for a while anyway.

She will of course be sedated for the first little while, but as her leg improves, so too will her determination strengthen. She is a willful, strong minded, single minded, too often bloody minded Dog. Don't know where she learnt all that.  6 weeks of sedate, in house slothing about, will be a struggle for all of us.

I hope she forgives us. 

Marriage

Do you know what? I can't see any reason at all why people get married. There, I said it out loud, well at least in this sized font.

Oh sure I got married once back in the dim dark ages. I chose to and so I did it. Certainly not for any religious reasons, even though it all happened in a church, with Father Fred waving about incense and blessing the rings and all that and people singing hymns and kneeling, all the while I was wondering if my, soon to be Father-in- law was gonna pull out a riffle and shoot me dead, and if my nearly husband had remembered to take the price stickers off his new shoes.

Yep it was all an excellent excuse to get on the piss and here's the real reason why I bothered, it was the only way my father would have countenanced me moving in with a fella. I was a child bride, only 19, and I couldn't see any other way of playing house, so I donned the white frock and the Ophelia headdress and trotted on down that aisle.

But well it didn't work out, and who could say they are surprised about that? 19 years old for fuck sake! Wilful and  naive. Perhaps the government should just stick it's fucking nose in there and say NO to any marriage if the participants are younger than say, 25 or have an IQ less than their shoe size, or if there is a family history of instability and divorce, or if the folk are too fat of too thin or too ugly or if there is inequality in the attractive quotient.

Or maybe the government should just butt the fuck out of marriage altogether.

I just don't see how the fuck it is anybody's business if 2 people want to get married. Oh sure I wonder why they bother, but am happy that there are lots of strange and bizarre reasons that push folk into the wearing of the rings. Yeh it's hopefully a more considered choice than white or dark chocolate but still, shouldn't it be a choice open to us all?

And how the fuck does someone else's marriage impact on anyone else, unless it's the bunny boiler crazy cow who wants to slice up the white dress and replace the bride's face with her own, or maybe there is some financial cut throat thing going on between the 4th spouse and the children from the second marriage, but all up, it impacts on ME, not at all, not one tiny teeny weeny bit. I just don't give a shit.

Oh sure I like to be invited and weddings are usually good for a bit of a knees up and a glass of bubbles, so don't think I want to ban 'em, just cos I don't really get it. Go your hardest I reckon, so long as everyone can go at it. And nah, I don't care if you marry a man or a woman or two men and and an elephant. If you fancy splitting up all your stuff with whoever if things don't work out, go for it - yeh Ok that's cynical even for me, but you get the idea.

I just don't get why Gay Marriage is such a divisive subject. And everyone has an opinion, but the loudest shouting is coming from the people who are against it and I just don't see how they figure it's their business. How can what a couple of fellas, or a couple of gals, who these objectors have never met, how can what these folk do impact on the objectors at all?  Perhaps it'd be different if Gay Marriages went hand in hand with painting your house bilious yellow or any rainbow combo - nah it wouldn't, it just wouldn't matter at all. I just wonder what the objectors' are fearful of? I wonder how they think that a lawful agreement between 2 people they don't know, is gonna impact on them.

I am easily irritated. Bully car drivers, arrogant doctors, useless waste of space road workers, and now politicians who just refuse to say what they think and where they stand on a very simple issue.

I have asked my Federal member Steven Ciobo directly 3 times where he stands and the political mumbo jumbo`replies just gives me the shits. The latest is he reckons he 'will honour the views of his electorate' but so far he is not forthcoming with how he is gathering that information and what that view is and what he's gonna do if that view is contrary to the Party line. All just political spin for 'mind your own fucking business'. Oh Dear! How much is this sort of representation costing us?

How much is this whole unnecessary tooing and froing costing us? I liked Magda Szubanski suggestion that we just take all the cash funding this debate and roll it right over to Aged Care and make the semantic adjustment and get on with things.

All this horse shit just makes Australians look like idiots.

Come on Canberra, pull your fucking finger out.

Admissions of a TV addict.

So while I wait and wait and wait til WILL AND GRACE is back on the tellie in September, I have been diving in to the era of the Reality, and again I am thankful for the recording part of my Fetch TV box. Yep that's what Optus supply to folk because their internet is so appalling that they need to get punters addicted to some other part of the deal so they don't kick off too much about an internet speed of less than 5 when much much fucking much faster is possible from Telstra. But the Fetch Box does allow us to record stuff and then watch it on speed dial - no ads and no repetition for idiots - you know 'Coming up.....and then after the ads a recap of what you have just watched twice! I reckon the directors of modern Reality shows must look at regular punters with utter disdain, cos they clearly reckon we have an attention span of less than 5 minutes and a short term memory span less effective than a gold fish. Or maybe they are on such a tight budget that they have had to work out ways to make 10 minutes of footage elastic enough to fill an hour slot.

Marco going off like a rocket in his little kitchen, plays while we have dinner,  while we record The Block, (although truthfully we only get interested in the 'grand reveals') and Australian Survivor - this one is my favourite. I have been watching this game on the tellie since it started, all those years ago. I like it cos very often stuff happens that is difficult to predict.

And I am happy to say that that Bachelor show where the women wear other people's clothes with the swing tags tucked in so they can be returned for a full refund, and they bitch about each other and the nastiest cow gets the most air time, and some bloke has all the power, is not on the radar. No judgement if you are watching, I just don't get it.

But we stumbled across 'The Good Fight' Wed 8.30pm SBS. This is a spin off from 'The Good Wife' which I thoroughly enjoyed. And after the first 2 episodes, I am hooked again. There's some of the old cast and the legal stuff continues. If you liked The Good Wife you might like to give this one a go.

And of course then there is my dirty little secret, 'Suits' which I record and watch on the sly cos Stevie is just not interested. I must admit though that as the Optus internet is becoming more and more inconsistent, I have missed the last 2 episodes - well parts of 'em anyway. And the skip and jump and now you see it and now you don't, recordings have beaten my patience. All the while Optus tell me that I should be thankful for the 'service' they provide - well that we pay for, cos well it's excellent! Just ask the person at the call centre in fuck knows where.

In any case when the tellie is behaving there is stuff showing that I am finding entertaining.

How about you? Have you signed up for Stan or Netflix or some other Pay TV?

Warts and all

Just say, 'Thank you' to the sock.

Well if you are a regular to this little page you will know that I have been having treatment for an irritating little virus burrowing into my foot, cos I wrote about it and it is possible that it was that post that Neil Scales the Director General of the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads wasn't much fond of cos he used something on the blog as a excuse to cancel my meeting this week. "Your appointment has been cancelled because Mr Scales didn't like something he read on your blog"

Well I'll be fucked. Who'd have thunk it? An older fella, slurping lavishly from the public trough has time to trawl the internet and just stumbled across my little page...Oh I know...he's probably some paranoid fella who has a minion or 10 to do the trawling, but I suppose once hooked on their line, he might have had a wee peek at it himself. In any case it all just boosts my readership so I say 'Welcome TMR, and if you fancy leaving a comment go your hardest.'

But I digress.

When Dr Jane was burning and scraping she did notice the general state of my feet. She might have said something like, 'disgusting', and then cos she's efficient and all, she made an appointment with the podiatrist at the clinic.

I have never been to a Podiatrist.

Sure I have have had plenty of pedicures...no not into mani/pedis cos I like to do my own fingernails, but toes and corns and heel rot, well someone else is welcome to have a go at that.

I got a fungus in one of my big toenails once and because it spread to the other one when it was almost gone - tenacious little mushroom huh? it has been more than 2 years - yep 2 YEARS since I have painted my toenails, and in that time I have been trimming my own nails and using a blade to scrape off unwanted hard bits. But in truth I am not very thorough in the cutting or the scraping and my feet have gone down hill whilst I have been doing 'em.

So as I headed off yesterday morning, I said to Stevie that I was expecting to come home with pretty feet and that it would be a pleasant scent filled place with low lighting like a spa. Yeh NO.

He was chipper enough until I coped to the idea that I was expecting him to blade off dead skin and trim my nails. 'If you want a pedicure go the Chinese'. I think I might have offended him, so I settled back and let him do his investigations of pulse rates and flexibility - all good thanks for asking, and then he trimmed my nails - not as well as I do myself and then because he finally cracked onto the fact that I can't use chemical stuff cos of the meds and skin reaction mess, well then he had to have a go with a blade. He scraped away some dead stuff and even though he kept me waiting 15 minutes he needed to make up some time and didn't think it was right to keep someone else waiting while he scraped shit off my feet - maybe he had a point, he made another appointment to finish off and shoved me out the door, but not before he presented me with the tray filled with dead skin shavings. Pedicurists don't show you that shit! They just subtly sweep it out of the way and sooth you with a bit of a foot massage, ahhh. So I believed him when he said 'Podiatrists and not pedicurists'

And because my health insurance saw me walk out without his hand in my purse, I'll go back and let him finish up.

Stevie roared laughing at my disappointment.

Who has been to a Podiatrist?
What's the difference between a Podiatrist and a Chiropodist?
What could a greenie do with all that scraped dead skin?