Tomatoes in and fingers firmly crossed.

My lovely Dad was good at lots of things, usually things he wanted to be good at. Consequently, when it came to getting his hands dirty in the garden, well he wasn't exactly a green thumbed fella.

However I do remember that one year he planted some tomatoes and they were bloody wonderful. The smell of home grown tomatoes instantly takes me back to those childhood moments of chomping into the tommies straight from the plants.

I had planted these stupid China Doll things in my raised garden bed and my girl just roared laughing when she saw 'em - yeh I had planted 3! My Girl knows all stuff about plants and gardens and when she recovered from her howling, she told me that I had planted bloody great tress! I persisted with 'em and kept cutting 'em back, until today when I asked Steve to give me a hand to pull the fuckers out, so I could plant - some tomatoes!

The tape roots on the trees were huge, and I am hoping that we have pulled out enough of it so that the Tommies can grow without competition. I will water them and wait and see.

I tied 'em up with a pair of left over tights from London...Sexy toms indeed.

I also decided to see if I could do better with some Basil this time, and have shoved it in between 2 of the tomato plants. Fingers crossed that it does better than the last lot, which I managed to kill off in mere hours, never once sampling a fragrant leaf.

We pulled out all the mint that had grown like topsy and I planted some Parsley. Again fingers are crossed.

But I reckon if Dad could grow some tommies then maybe I can too, and anything else will just be a bonus.

Gardening done for the next little while.

Yeh my fingers are about as green as my lovely Dad's.

The Mockingjay Part 2

We decided to escape the stinking heat yesterday and catch up with the last instalment in 'The Hunger Games'

Steve read the trilogy a good while back and he, unusually, really enjoyed the Sci-fi story.

It's not my cup of tea either - aliens and space ships and weird abilities and all that. I much prefer to loose myself in the possibility of fiction and I reckon all too often Sci-fi stuff is just a leap too far.

But I had seen the first 3 movies and have been looking forward to the release of this the last one.

I know that they - being the syndicate producing the collection, wanted to make as much money as possible and I hope they have done, but the carving up of the last book into 2 chunks was a bit of a money grab too far I reckon. It could have been condensed into one longish movie, although god only knows how the young couple across from us would have coped cos as it was they were checking their phones and both ran out twice presumably to pee or poop out all that pop corn. For god's sake even my old body can control itself for 2 and half hours. Maybe they were unwell. I reckon there should be special screenings for young techies like there is for parents with screaming babies and old pensioners with bad hearing.

However I should get back to the movie.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I bit at my fingers and hid behind my hands and at one particular point I had a little scream - yeh out loud. The youngsters across are probably writing about some crazy old screaming bitch at the pictures.

Jennifer Lawrence was excellent and Donald Southerland continued to make a suave baddie. I reckon the Hemsworth fellas is over-rated, and I can't remember the name of the actor who played Peeta, but he was mostly convincing. Julianne Moore was wonderful and the editor cleverly cobbled in snippets of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and I was pleased to see him included one last time.

I think the big problem with chopping up the final story is that it really doesn't stand on it's own. I could certainly not recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen the first 3 and a refresher of 'em before you go, wouldn't go astray.

With my feminist hat firmly wedged at a jaunty angle I must confess to being pleased that the leads apart from the baddie were all women.

We went to Australia Fair Gold Lounge and even though it's getting a bit tired, it is such good value for money. $20 a ticket plus the booking fee which just gives me the shits. I had a quick look at the new pictures at Pac Fair this morning and they want $20.50 to sit in cattle class. I didn't venture into the Gold area there.

Really I reckon I am gonna be happy to sit in the faded velour with the occasional worn out springs, especially over the summer in this stinking heat.

Do you get around in the nudie-noo?

The blind is up and I hope the neighbours were not.

This morning at some shitful o'clock, with the heat already building, quite a lovely breeze blew in from the south. Such was it's welcome, that the blind went all a quiver and started banging about. I watched lazily as it flew up and let the light in and then dropped back down with a bit of a thud. Of course no sleep was possible with the noise.

So then here was my dilemma, I could get up and close all the louvers and keep the blind silent and suffocate from the heat, or I could wind up the blind and enjoy the breeze, all the while scaring the neighbours with boob and belly flashing - cos clothes are superfluous when sleeping, and really no-one needs to see all that early in the morning.

Well the clock said that it wasn't yet 5.30am so I took a chance and launched myself towards the chain pulley thing and tugged at the blind, figuring that if anyone was up and looking out their windows at that ungodly hour, then they would be either bleary eyed, or pleased to be shocked into action for the day.

The view from my bed is at it's best at the moment with the flowering Poinciana but my neighbours across the road, possibly were treated to a less than attractive view as I jumped around and later when I got up properly, I did try to keep my back to 'em as I dragged on some clothes, cos afterall, we all have a back so who cares about backs, right?

Not too shabby a view huh?

There doesn't seem to be a great deal of nudie-noo action here in the suburbs, but friends who live in a city high rise see more than enough to make up for it. People in the city seem to reckon they are invisible just cos they don't have a yard. So it's not uncommon to see flashes of skin and from time to time actual RUMPITY going on on the balconies, but these folk must surely be doing it for a thrill or a laugh or a dare. I reckon if I lived in a city high rise, I might just sit all day and night and watch the neighbours and make up their back-stories, but I would have to do it from some little hidden corner cos I wouldn't want anyone watching me after all.

So I am left wondering how much nudity is normal?

Is it ok to dash from the shower sans towel?

Is it ok to walk completely starkers all day anywhere on the property, cos after all your home is your castle?

Is flashing your bits in front of the kids OK or in front of the dog?

Schoolies Week

This is my year 12 photos. Might be a bit blurry like my vision today, but it's as clear as a bell in my mind.

If you are the parents of one of the few kids spirited off to the hospital for conditions undisclosed, or parents of one of the few who have been  arrested for being drunk or fighting or whatever, then maybe you will figure that this year's schoolies has been a bit shit. But as a resident living only a couple of Ks from the epicenter or the festivities, I reckon it has been going pretty well.

The local media is usually keen to hype up any of the naughtiness the kids get up to, but this year they have been pretty quiet.

My girl, who partied hard almost 15 years ago - yeah we chattered about that this week and at the ripe old age of 32, she felt like a grandmother, said this year's lot must be behaving themselves.

It made news this year, and possibly not for the first time, that undercover coppers were staking out the bottleos, and charging and fining anyone buying booze for minors. I get it. It's against the law to supply alcohol to minors. But as I heard this I drifted back to perhaps a simpler time 15 years ago.

I drove my Girl and 2 of her mates to their unit. It was right on the beach, just a few hundred yards north of Surfer's. They carried in their clothes and I carried in their cartons. We all got to and filled the fridge and they squealed like the youngsters they were, and I popped into the bedrooms and found waste baskets to place next to the beds in case of vomit misshaps. Not pleasant in the thinking but in an interest in collecting the bond, more than a little pragmatic.

I then surveyed the rest of the unit. No, I didn't care about the view, or the size of the tellie or how comfy the couch was, I was on the hunt for breakables. Yes I left 'em some glasses and some plates, but all decorative china and glassware and side lamps were stashed into cupboards so that if they stumbled after a couple, they only fell over. I left nothing expensive to break their falls.

I had been teaching seniors up to their graduations for 20 years, and knew well the shenanigans of final celebrations. I just wanted these kids to be as safe as I could make 'em.

Yes I knew they were gonna drink and get fall down drunk.

Yes I was worried sick about it.

Yes I made my girl promise to ring me every afternoon even for a second just to keep me sane.

Yes I knew I was breaking the law.

If my child was finishing school now I might be less happy about schoolies week, but only because I am an old gal now and quite removed from the reality of it all,  but I wouldn't stop 'em going. I am not sure why, but it has become a rite of passage.

For the vast majority of the kids this is just a week of letting loose. For many it's the first time away from parents and adults for an extended time and for most I bet it is a memory machine that will feed 'em til they are old enough to be thinking they are too old for all this.

When I finished school, it was all a bit anticlimactic cos some dickhead had taken it into his head to break into the science block on the night previous and do damage. Needless to say the police and the school authorities were about as happy about that as we were that our big day had been buggered up. The police investigated and the culprits were caught I think and the rest of us were marched off the school grounds - no pranks with glad wrap over the toilets, or putting bicycles on the roof, or songs from, 'To Sir With Love.' Just an unceremonious exit. Goodbye and good riddance.

We made hurried arrangements to meet up at the Wynnum foreshores after dark. A bonfire was built and 12 years' of school shit that our parents had not saved as precious mementos were used as fuel. We felt like we were being quite the rebels.

I don't think the police came along to move us on or douse the flames.

I remember it as being a burning ritual and quite cathartic as kids watched their failures burn alongside someone else's distinctions.

All life events need to be marked somehow. Of course we get to decide the HOW and the HOW for the end of 12 years of institutional marching is at the moment, a week in the sun.

I really hope that the last of their time is fun but uneventful - at least from this oldie's perspective.


Would you be happy to let your kids loose at the Goldie for a week?

Craig from RACQ bloody brilliant.

My lovely girl was having trouble with her car and so after some messing around we managed to call and get the angel mechanic Craig from RACQ to help us out. We met him out at the arse end of buggery where the poor old car had been abandoned. It was stinking hot, but Craig was cool as a cucumber and he got stuck straight in. He listened to the car gurgle clickity clickity click click and was like a triage doctor in his speed of diagnosis. It was only the battery. Yippee.

Steve had spent hours on the google finding auto-mechanics within 20km of the arse end of where-ever in case we needed to get an RACQ tow, because the poor old car was badly broken, so when there was an easy fix we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Craig got to and popped in a new battery and then tested to make sure that other electrical stuff, like the alternator, was working well. He checked the oil and filled up the water in the radiator as well as the windscreen wipers, and had a good look at the tyres which might need attention very soon and so he suggested that we might like to get a quote from a particular shop.

It was so refreshing me to meet someone so keen on offering excellent service. 'All in a day's work,' Craig reckoned.

So we drove home and then set to ringing RACQ to pass on our thanks and to give Craig a well deserved compliment.

5 calls and 30 minutes later, Amanda I think her name was, said in her capacity as supervisor of buggered if I know what, that she would call someone on our behalf and pass on a compliment.

Who could believe it would be so bloody difficult to say something nice, pleasant, positive, thankful?

I find it hard to believe that we were the only lucky customers impressed with the service from Craig, but I can easily forgive others for not bothering to jump through all those hoops to try to say thanks. After the first 7 or 8 minutes on hold I nearly gave it up as a bad joke. I am pleased that we persisted, though  I am still not convinced that there is any record of our efforts.

At one point I asked for confirmation that the call was being recorded for 'Training purposes', and was told that they weren't bothering this time. That's a shame, cos they really could do with some training. It must be all bullshit threats when you get that spiel about recording the calls, or at least it's only when it suits 'em - when they have so completely wound you up that you drop the 'F' bomb, so they can justify hanging up.

Perhaps no-one bothers with a 'Thank You' anymore and so companies have no capacity to accept one. What a sad sad situation huh?

Do you bother with a big THANK YOU?
How far you bother to go to give someone a pat on the back?

Toe Jam is a pain in the bum.

About a year ago, my right big toe shit itself and I dutifully sucked it up and painted claggy crap on it twice a day for literally months and months. And finally it looked good to me so out came the loud coloured nail polish and my toes twinkled again. I reckon feet are hideous things so anything you can do to tart 'em up a bit, well it's worth the effort.

But the trouble with heavily painted toes is that you never get to see what insidious shit is going on underneath. If you just paint 'em up and then wipe it all off only to paint 'em again, you don't notice the weirdness developing until all of a sudden there is some pain and it feels like the whole nail is gonna loose it's grip on your toe and you wonder how it is ever gonna be possible to wear a closed in shoe again. 

I have tried the 'head in the sand' approach before on a grander scale at my old house, when I splodged heavy enamel paint onto the termite effected skirting boards. I had no carpentry skills or cash to replace said woodwork, so where it was possible I sort of cobbled together bits of dust and hope with the paint. Behind the paint was air and possibly termites. Yes it did look terrible but it was the best I could do. I was lucky that the termites didn't continue to chomp through the timber. Yes it was more luck than good management.

You will be please to know that I have never rented myself out as a house renovator, I know my limits, and that mostly had to do with covering up shit marks or dents with furniture or artwork. Yeh I can paint up a storm and I have been know to throw a leg onto my roof and slop some tar crap up there to help with a leaky situation, but real reno stuff I leave to the experts.

But I digress.

It seems that treating only ONE nail for all those fucking months was a bit of a wasted effort cos the sneaking fucking fungus crept along onto all the nails and so this time I am taking no prisoners and ALL TEN little buggers are getting a good going over.

This new gloop only needs to be applied once a week so much less trouble than before, but it still takes a ridiculously long time cos you have to wait til the nails have grown out. I am lucky that mine seem to grow like topsy so maybe this will be quicker than expected.

The biggest bugger of it all is that I have to look at the hideous naked things - no nail polish colours until the fungus is gone.

I know that compared to all the truly shitful curve balls your body can throw at you, smudgy toe nails are pretty insignificant - irritating but not significant.

Are your toes pretty?

Have you ever taken a short cut to cover up a bit of a mess?

Scheduling a little weep.

I like a busy calendar. I like looking at the paper page hanging on the wall - yeh old fashioned I know, and seeing it fill up with stuff that needs to be done and things that are fun to do and people's birthdays and all manner of reminders. It makes me feel that life is going on and that I am not just sliding on day closer to dead.

I do like a busy calendar.

But do you ever just have a look at your calendar and work out that it might be possible to have a little weep on Sunday fortnight between let's say 2 and 4pm, or is this just me?

When I was newly single and raising my lovely, I admit that things did sometimes become overwhelming. I mean, whinging to a mate about the crumbs in the butter or the dickhead at work should not be undervalued. And so I would somehow compartmentalize all this irritation and look for a weepy solution at sometime when it would not be necessary to explain to my girl or in deed anyone else why I was washing my face. Yep the interim days could be fraught with tension, but no tears.

I don't know why I am reluctant to cry in public. Perhaps my refusal to give in to tears so my mother would stop whipping me with the buckle end of a belt left me with this remarkable skill. She had this sort of rule that she would stop the beating when the tears started and I would not let her win - stupid bloody minded child. But she would eventually have to stop because she wasn't very fit and she would dissolve into a pool of sweat. Yeh I remember the triumph of staring her down, dry eyed. So tears are a bit of a sign of weakness for me, not for anyone else, just for me.

It's such a loss of control isn't it - all that red swollen eyes and snot. So not attractive, and it makes everyone else uncomfortable.

I reckon if evolution was this girl's friend, crying would be phased out and it would be replaced by some sort of dramatic weight loss, and if it was really friendly, maybe the site of the loss could be preempted - tummy tucking for relationship breakdowns, and arm bat wing things for frustration about bill payment and skinny ankles for dental anxiety. Just a little bit of useful magic.

It seems to me that the tears carry away a lot of the frustration and fear and just bloody sadness, so they are better out than in, but it's difficult to change the habits of a lifetime, so schedules are still planned.

Are you lucky enough to be able to burst out with the waterworks at any time or do you hide 'em away like a dirty little secret?