I am a slow starter.

It's a bit obscure but this is a clue about the movie watching today.

Saturdays are self indulgent quiet affairs here in the Big House. Stevie heads off to do battle with the little white ball and I please myself.

Except that today the ironing basket was hollering at me and because sometimes there is just no escaping it, I sucked it up and set up for my most loathed pass time.

The only half decent thing about ironing shit is that I can catch up on rubbish TV.

Over the last few weeks I have fallen upon a bit of Rocky action as I played the Tellie shuffle, while lounging the afternoon away on the couch, and there it was again today.

Somehow I have never seen any of these movies all the way through, so I settled in to have a look see. The clothes were all hanging and looking good, so I had my computer on my lap and was reading stuff and playing some cards, and shoveling in food and drink,  but mostly I suspended disbelief and grunted with each punch, and hid behind my hands and just so didn't enjoy all that brutality.

I can't or rather will not, watch boxing on the tellie and would just never go to a bout live cos well, just yukky no, so I am not sure what I expected really, cos god knows the possibility of a Stallone Oscar winning performance was pretty small.

But I will say that those fellas were definitely FIT. Or maybe they were enhanced? I don't now and I suppose it is all so long ago that no-one would care now anyway.

And as I rather doubt that Mr Stallone or the Mr Lundgren - Russian Giant, would have been experts at pulling their punches, some of that action really must have hurt like hell. Yeh of course the blood and guts would have been applied but it looked pretty real to me. Blood and spit flying is not pretty.

I don't know if there is a Rocky 5 or 6 or 11, but I rather think that I have seen enough. Spoiler alert! I was surprised that the first fight today finished in a funeral, but the final outcome was no surprise, so I am tempted to think that if you have seen one of these movies, you might well have seen 'em all.

Have you seen all these movies?
Would you sit through a Rocky Marathon?

When is child abuse funny?

There has been this You tube story rattling along this week about some shitful American couple who blended their families to become anything BUT the Brady Bunch. I don't even know how they did it, or more importantly WHY they did it but they set up a You Tube channel and put up videos of them abusing their blended 5 children.

Well I'll be fucked! and not just because such people do such dreadful things but because they managed to find 75000 similarly flawed fuckers to subscribe to their channel and at last reporting they were raking in $350000 a year from this disgusting little venture.

I looked at a montage vid before the details came to light, and to my untrained eye, there did not seem to be too much joking going on. Taunting and sadness and frustration and physical abuse. I willed it to stop. I was lucky cos I could turn it off. But what of the kids?

I read today the the birth mother of the 2 smallest kids has taken them back and there is an odd explanation for how she gave 'em up in the first place, but ho hum - shoes and walking a mile comes to mind. But the other 3 belong to the woman in the filming family so I guess they are stuck and as the targets of most of the abuse are now out of the house, I guess they might all be watching their backs hoping that they are not next.

And so all this is appalling, of course. But how come it went on for so long?

I don't know anything about You Tube except that occasionally there are very funny vids of monkeys throwing their own shit at grandma, and as I was not the Ma in focus, I laughed up a lung. But I reckon that there must be some content filter which edits out some stuff - naked romping with animals maybe? or overt violence maybe? or rape scenes? I fucking hope so, cos this is available to EVERYONE, yeh kids and all!

So my question, on a par with what the very fuck is wrong with those parents, is how is it that these violent degrading videos of children  are permitted to be aired on a free for all site and for such a lengthy period?

How are filters applied? I am not at all tech savvy so perhaps there is a programme which can be used to pick up this footage, or maybe the computer just cottons on to milliseconds of too much nakidity. I really don't know. But if, as I imagine, PEOPLE are in charge of the filters, then what the fuck was wrong with the people who looked at this shit and thought, ' Oh Well, it's harmless cos the parents are filming it all - must be crocodile tears from the kids, let it run.'

I would be very pleased if anyone who knows about You Tube Filtering could explain it to me.

PLEASE.

I don't understand Tattoos.

The real world has seemingly has passed me by cos it's a long weekend here in Queensland and I didn't even know it. The first I heard about it was when a friend of mine PINKY POINKER who writes a fabulous blog, www.pinkypoinker.com.au  mentioned it in relation to something else completely random and I have been back pedaling ever since.

So we went to the Spit cos there's a wonderful off leash dog zone as big and as wonderful as my lost mind.

Now I always come away from this place relaxed and calm and usually full of wonder.

Today I wondered how people just refuse to pick up their dog shit.

Oh sure very occasionally Dog will squirt out something closely resembling dirty mud water, cos the salt water she slurps up by the gallon goes right through her, and this is impossible to collect cos it disappears into the sand almost immediately. But when she drops a solid one, we are there with bags in hand.

Today there were 2 dogs galloping around and for our whole visit, we didn't see who they belonged to. The followed us up the beach and back again and stopped to play with random dogs and shit all the way. Yep little piles of Dog Dirt were left like Hanzel and Gretel's breadcrumbs, and when we left, these 2 dogs were still there unattended.

I have heard of people dropping off their kids at patrolled beaches and heading into the casino or the pub, but I am shocked at the idea that folk with dogs would be equally cavalier. Anyway it made me a little cross, cos these piles of poo give purpose to people's argument about no dogs on the beach and that is irritating. Oh Well.

And while we sat and watched the day away, I noticed people and their tattoos. Of course the beach is an excellent place for a tattoo perv.

I don't like tattoos.

I don't understand tattoos.

I am a flighty bitch and just know that I don't want to wear ANYTHING at all EVERY FUCKING DAY OF MY LIFE - Easily bored, I suppose.

And my eyesight, even with my specs is not good enough to distinguish the intricate details - surely there are details, so all too often the markings just look like dirt to me.

And then I wondered if the folk who get tattoos all up and down their legs, get 'em so they can see 'em or so everyone else can see 'em. Which way up is the right way up? And if the right way up is so everyone else can see it, what joy would there be in looking at an up-side-down something on your thigh everyday. Yeh I don't get it.

And then there are the piece meal bits with space and stuff missing and I just hope that one day the canvas will be completed, cos I don't get a bit of this here and a bit of that there. It's a bit like decorating a room and doing a bit of the wall and then the ceiling and then buying a chair and putting it next to salad bowl and a crossword puzzle. One thing at a time, and do it well I always say. I like it when a project is finished. I like drawing a line under things. I don't like half done.

Except half done would have been better than 'job done' on the bloke who was covered from arsehole to breakfast, all over his head and face and shoulders and chest, and then, well I just had to look away. Who does that to themselves?

I can sort understand someone trying to disguise and ugly scar with something pretty and I can certainly understand women who have had double mastectomies who get artistic things tattooed all over their chests, but this mutilation of your face, I just don't get it. I mean no-one is that ugly.

People gave him a very wide birth and perhaps if I was 'in the know' I might have been able to interpret the stuff all over his face, but he was just scary and that surely must have been his intention. 'Look at me! - Don't you dare fucking look at me!"

Once I had seen this fella the rest of the day's body 'art' was of very little significance.

I don't care that people get tattoos, their body and all that, but once done surely there is an expectation that people will perv, except that this bloke wanted people to look then look away. Intimidation! Seems like a permanent way of pointing a gun at the world.

Old Family Recipes.

The kids were down last weekend, and I do very much love to feed 'em up. Yeh I have officially turned into my Nanna, that lovely woman who used to spoil me with all sorts of treaties. One of my earliest memories was being with her almost every Saturday morning and we'd 'walk up the terminus', that was where the old trams stopped at Camp Hill, and she'd do the weekly shopping at the butchers and grocers and candlestick makers. Well I made that bit up about the candles, and then on the way home we'd walk through the BP garage and she'd let us buy a little white bag of lollies. They cost a couple of pennies and I loved it that I had my very own little baggie of goodies. It was a treat indeed.

I think I might have mentioned before that whilst she was a sweetheart, and there were somethings that were her specialty in the kitchen, like her chrissie plum pudding which hung in calico in the laundry from October til the big day, there were many famous failures too. She was an expert at buggering things up, and I am not sorry not to have those recipes, but I would like to have written down the pudding recipe instead of just hanging around waiting for my turn to lick the bowl. Mine were a maggoty mess and I have not ever bother to replicate them.

Anyway, I made the kids pancakes and berry compote for breakfast and they both raved about how good it was. Zig whinged that too often his Mum's pancakes were a bit crap and it was only then that we all realised she had been making up the recipe and had missed the essential ingredient of an egg, so basically she had been making flat little rounds of clag glue...oooooh yukky. But now she knows. and maybe I should write some sort of recipe down all the same, except that I just throw stuff in til it looks right, so amounts would all be a bit of a guess.

And that's just like my Dad's plum sauce recipe which goes so well with porkie's spare ribs. This is a Stevie's favourite especially on a Saturday after golf. This is what I am whipping up today. Except that like any of my 'recipes', Dad's has remained a bit of a secret. Oh I know the ingredients list but the amounts are a mystery. It's a slow cook thing which allows all the flavours to meld and it's only as it cooks and I can smell it, that I know I have got it right. It is often a bit of a crap shoot - never truly awful but often a bit off.

So here's the recipe I think.

Saute one large chopped onion in plenty of butter.
Add some crushed garlic - a couple of cloves.
Stir in some mustard powder - maybe 2 big teaspoons?
Empty in a bottle of plum jam - not the cheapest, but not the most expensive either.
Throw in a couple of tablespoons of Red wine, red wine vinegar, soy sauce, and I usually put in a splash of balsamic too.
Then it needs to simmer, very low heat for a couple of hours - about as long as it takes to cook the whole foiled oven baked spuds.

The really good thing about the plum sauce is that it freezes well, so if it's a good one, I chuck the left overs into a zip lock baggie and freeze it for next time. Yippee.

Here's to comfy Saturday nights with Dad's plum sauce.

De Clutter Regrets?

Starting again.

More years ago than I care to remember, but it was definitely after 1989 cos that's when I became single and so the wardrobe of the married woman became obsolete, a very gay friend of mine was going to his debutante ball. He asked me to be his date, or give him away, or present him, or something. Some of the details are a bit of a blur.

He wore my wedding dress. The whole enchilada. And I wore some sort of tuxedo. Cross dressing was the order of the day. He was more into cross dressing than drag queen and so his makeup was demure and I might have drawn on a Mo.

We made a very dashing pair.

There was the presentation line, ahhhhh.

One of the blokes looked amazing from the front and riotous from that back cos he was sans girdle and slip and actually sans back of the dress.

It was a bloody marvelous evening.

I imagine John took my wedding dress home and maybe he used it as bedding for his cat?  I don't know and I don't care. I have never missed it.

But as I started to crochet something this week I have been wondering about a beautiful shawl I made when I was but a girl. It was a lovely thing that I wore with pride over many winters. It went with everything, and I can still feel the glamour I felt when I threw it with gay abandon over my shoulders.

I must have thrown it out at some point, or maybe I just left it behind when I did a runner from the marital home. But I miss it.

So now that I am sure I have remembered HOW to crochet, I am wondering WHAT to crochet, and the idea of replacing that shawl is a pleasant one. I guess I will see how it progresses, cos I definitely lack persistence these days and it might turn from a huge project into a sampler like we uselessly made in primary school. I fucking hated the waste of time and effort of those things and the memory of my third grade teacher telling me mine were shit, still lingers, Cow!

My girl suggested that I might like some of her crocheted squares she has squirreled away, and too quickly I said no, but now I am re-thinking it. Maybe it would be a cool thing to make a something out of hers and mine. I am sure that whatever colours she has used will blend with mine cos we both jump onto the same side of the colour wheel. Yep this seems like a good idea. And I have / maybe had, cos I am not sure if I still have it, a cardigan which is / was, very ordinary except for some lovely ribbon threaded randomly through it. This is an idea that is entertaining my mind so I might start collecting remnant bits and pieces if indeed I could stumble over an old fashioned haberdasher.

The unexpected advantage of this project came to light while watching the tellie last night. There was some story about women and exercise and the usual shit was sprooked except that the fella ended with the good news that even doing exercises with your THUMBS was good for increasing white blood cells. So fingers flinging about some thread for a few hours at a time, must be like running a fucking marathon. Brilliant!

Are there clothes from before that you still remember fondly?

Squeezing in all sorts.

Easter and souvenirs and parcels are coming. It's quite the smorgasbord.  

Well bugger me, if all of a sudden my darling boy seems to have gone from boy to big fella, overnight, in an instant.

Of course this is not true, but it sure as shit seems like it to me. Friends in the UK this week are wondering where the last year - their little fella's first year, has gone and I am wondering where the last dozen years have gone. Time really does just slip by.

The kids are popping down tonight for an Easter catch up and a holiday review, but mostly it's for Pa's big birthday. We are all gonna head out and eat lashings of seafood and have a jolly old time at the same place that made the news last week cos some dick did a runner without paying for his expensive supper.

But I digress. In preparation for the kids coming, I set to making up their bedrooms, which was more of a job than it should have been, cos the lovely lady who looked after Dog while we were away likes to iron all of my sheets, but is never too concerned about where she stacks 'em afterward, so I had to unfold every fucking one to see what size it was and once I started I figured I might as well get 'em all sorted. Yeh they don't look nearly as well sorted as before, but at least I can find the different sizes easily enough now.

The kids negotiate which room they want when they get here, even though the blue one was always meant to be for Zig and the purple one for my girl, so the smaller double bed is in the blue room.

And as I was making the beds I was thinking that he really should be in the blue room cos the bed is smaller. I had a happy few moments thinking of him tucked up, curled up with so much space to spare. I remember reading him is bedtime stories and listening to his little boy secrets and playing eye spy - or is it I spy? I don't know. But I do know we both fitted neatly into the bed and he'd sometimes just drift off to sleep while I was reading, ah...and then I remembered.

He is now the tallest in our family!!

Yep! I am the widest but he is the tallest. I guess that means he and I are due the biggest beds?

And then I wondered how people in days gone by ever managed. Whole families tucked up in a tiny bed a la 'The Waltons' or 'Little House on the Prairie' and I can only imagine that none of 'em snored. Can you just imagine a snorer in one of those log cabins? I reckon the family would all line up to whack the offender on the noggin with a skillet. And what did they do for privacy and when did adolescents have time to wonder about body and mind changes? I mean it wasn't always wonderful sharing a room with my sister, but there was no other expectation then. The 5 of us all shared a bathroom and a toilet and I imagine it was sometimes a pain in the bum, but I don't really remember it being much of an issue.

Perhaps snoring is a first world, 21st century condition. Perhaps all that sniffling and snorting has evolved to fill the extra space in the bed.

Taking Leukaemia on holiday requires some strange preparations.

The Birthday Helium Balloon came with us for 3000 kms. It was one of the easiest things to pack.

No I haven't morphed into a travel blogger, I just thought I'd share a few hints I found useful this holiday but not so much for you as for me, cos if I write it down then I don't need to try so hard to remember it, cos let's face it packing changes as we get older. The stuff a carefree 30 something takes or a clueless 20 something takes, is far different to what I need when I am packing up Leukaemia to go on tour.

As a late teenager, I packed a red bikini and a pair of thongs and figured I'd find a towel when I got to the beach in Cairns. Oh who am I kidding, I didn't even consider a towel. I have a great photo somewhere of me petting a kangaroo in said RED, and all I can imagine is that that was all I took with me, cos all around me the locals were sporting their winter clobber and mine was the only skin to be seen. Yeh I was skinny then.

Sure, as I got a little older more, was necessary in the bag, but not a lot more, especially after the nappy / bottle paraphernalia phase was finished.

I went to Dublin for a girlie weekend and the 3 of us agreed to take the smallest bags as carry on cos we just didn't want to be dragging shit around. Somehow we wedged 'going out' gear and flash shoes and all other bits and pieces - even a hair straightener, into tardis bags and off we went. I suppose truth be told it didn't matter too much, cos I do recall sitting in some fake american diner type of place on the sunday morning after the night before, being so appalling hung over that not one of us gave a flying rat's arse about what we were wearing, quite possibly a pair of knicky-noos on my head, so playing 'What's in the bag?' would have been completely moot.

And I spent a number of fortnightly holidays in Greece, when I took togs and a sarong and thongs and a couple of T shirts. I wore the sarong to the beach over togs during the day and then folded it in half to make a shortish skirt to 'dress up' for dinner at night. When you book a last minute holi it often means going the next day, or even that afternoon so no packing thought is possible.

I have packed up whole houses and moved to the other side of the world twice and I am pretty ruthless, and quite canny about what will fit where, and I think in all those thousands of kilometres only a tea pot was ever broken.

But now packing is more troublesome.

Now I need to plan for possibilities, and not only good ones. Yeh I still wonder about taking a pair of 'good' shoes in case of a possible meet and greet with someone famous, and I'll take a couple of scarves to dress up something a bit dowdy, but mostly I plan for shit, sometimes literally.

Now I need to pack up a pharmacy and consider the climate controls listed on the boxes.

The side effects of the Leukaemia Meds are so varied and unpredictable, that a boy scout would have no chance of dib dib dib, being prepared.

So I packed up Class A pain meds after a trip to the doctor for a prescription cos if that fucking hip / bone pain came back while we were in the middle of the desert, then I wanted to be able to manage. Yippee to the unopened box!

And then I had to MacGyver something in case my guts erupted 300 kilometres from a loo.  This is a common enough event at home and I just sigh and sleep and imagine that it's a good thing cos I might lose a few pounds as I run to and fro to the throne, but I was far less sanguine about 'an episode' on the road. So I packed up a couple of solid looking plastic bags, one of 'em was a dry clean bag I collected along the way and stole a flannel and bought an industrial pack of loo roll and spent time wondering if I sent Stevie into the desert he'd be snake safe while I opened the front and back doors of the car and perched in between for privacy and the wondered if my knees were up to the task of holding me up for long enough to finish up. How I honestly thought I was gonna manage the bag situation is still a mystery. We tried to buy a sturdy bucket in Alice Springs but failed. Oh Well.

Funny how times change. Most people go hunting for artwork or artifacts in Alice, and we went in search of a bucket. Oh Well.

Luckily enough for me and Stevie and any poor soul driving that stretch of road, I didn't have to stop and squat and squirt. Yippee again.

Oh sure there were days when I was less well and had to admit defeat mid afternoon for a snoring nanna nap, and I did occasionally fail in my duty of entertainment provider as I slipped into a ZZZZ off on the road- thankfully not while I was driving, and there was the odd headache and bit of nausea and the tired irrits came and went.

Stevie did remarkably well, so I reckon the most important bit of packing is to stuff in someone with the patience of a saint. He would have gone much harder without me, although perhaps he wouldn't have gone at all without me. In any case, I was pleased that he went on auto pilot and slowed and sped up depending on how I was.

A list of possibilities is also useful, although I reckon it's better to end with a list of things you HAVE seen or done rather than a list of what you missed.

I am very pleased that we have driven through the desert and seen stuff, but I am not sure that a driving holiday is really for me. However, there is so much packing and unpacking, in, out, shake it all about - every few days, that if you require some practice then this might just be the holiday for you.

What I will say is that I am pleased that Leukaemia was so well behaved, better in fact than many a screeching small child, or a demanding slobbering old person, so I reckon another adventure is not out of the question.

Yippee!