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OMG you have fixed it.
Quick, get the holy water & fling it over Khan GB before he can break your blog again.
Mwah!
Thanks, MM.
If you are on the twitters & you scroll back thru my tweets this morning you will see a screen shot of what that dreadful man did to it. He shrunk you!
I read ‘hips’ as ‘whips’.
That I’m sure he could manage.
I can’t help you with your wish list today, MM. Irma is still circling & I’ve had three days of eating ice-cream & chocolate & chips. Perhaps if I put them all in the same bowl it would quell the cravings?
I remember being the little sister to the train wreck. It does tend to open your eyes to the idea that perhaps walking a different path than the one that takes you straight off the rails is the saner choice in life.
When you spend two decades married to a drug lord & can no longer make sense from your many years of substance abuse, I will grant you the title of Grand Winner, Train Wreck Sister Competition. Until then, back in the queue with you. You are far too functional for this line up.
Call me when Elf Boy makes national headlines & I’ll reconsider your case.
I always think the Dalai Lama should be able to deflect arrows and etc. with a few fingers and maybe a chant. Then I realise I’m confused with all those episodes of “Monkey Magic” I watched as a child.
Third time’s the charm. Even from the first attempt I realized the pattern wasn’t big enough, but it’s taken this third go to get it to adult human size. I can’t knit THAT tight, I’ve nearly doubled the number of stitches.
Now I’ve just got to knit 12 feet if I cord for the gryrations!
I have no idea what that means & I would love to find out.
Any pix, MM?
You ladies really are very clever to manage these things.
My knitting is on hold until I do a class & work out how to manage dropped stitches. Youtube is good, but I think a RL instructor is bound to be better.
Only a few more weeks of woolly weather to relish. I’ll be very sad to see this winter go, it’s been so lovely & wet this year.
I made enquiries about our local branch of the CWA. Mostly what they do is go on bus tours to eat wine & cheese & in their down time they are into scrapbooking.
I’ve booked into a knitting class held in a local cafe this Sunday.
I have figured out how to pull it out & start again, but it was getting tedious.
I’m sure that a lesson or two from a proper human won’t go astray.
I’d like to learn that, too.
My great grandmother, the one in Perth, made the most amazing linen/lace tablecloths & doilies as a wedding gift for Dad. She was long gone by the time that I came along but my goodness, the talent.
This I cord is annoying (at night, when I’m tired). I’m thinking of cracking out the Knitting Nancy.
For really fine lace you want tatting, Q. Although I think there’s a set of lace weaving spindles lolling around Mum’s place somewhere. Tell me if you want me to go on a spindle hunt.
Thanks but nah. I have enough half finished projects laying around Casa Q at the moment. It’s one of those things I have earmarked for down the track, when we’ve moved & I’m feeling settled & organised. I’ll need to clean all the windows & the kitchen cabinets again soon, once the cold weather passes & dufus next door stops blowing soot in here from his chimney.
The grime on everything, erk!
Thankfully the skin doc said no stretching or exertion for another week in case the lip of that scar busts open, so it’s back to the sofa for me & Miss Fisher.
Ooh, really? I wonder if there’s a TV series in that, too.
I’m still reading Cocaine Blues. I find the TV characters more likeable than those in the books, so hats off to the screen writers for the tweaks that they’ve done to achieve that.
Nice timing, Catty, I dragged ours out the other day & we just watched the Aunt Irma episode again. I can’t believe how much I forget, in those episodes. The Bloke must forget them too, as he was laughing even harder than I was.
I have heard of those scarlet stiletto things but I’ll have to google it to refresh my memory. I recognised Deb Cox’s name from Seachange.
Quite a lot of writers listed on the credits there in IMDB, I wonder how they keep up the continuity of voice? Looks like Kerry Greenwood is involved in overseeing every episode so it must be her guiding hand on that.
Well, as characters they’re all fairly set in their ways. I mean, Phyrne’s never going to refuse an invitation to a nightclub in favour of knitting and an early night. Dot’s not going to resign and leave Hugh so she can fan-dance on the gold-fields. Etc.
Oooh. Guidance from the wise. Where do they meet?
Since it’s in the western suburbs I might need to do some discreet checking with the Elder Hobbit that none of my mother’s cousins are part of her knitting circle. They’ve been breeding like rabbits in those parts since 1852 & that was my leading motivation in crossing the river the moment I turned 18.
Dianne Harwood. Dunno her maiden name but I’m pretty sure they came to Brisbane from parts south. I strongly doubt she’s a relation.
It’s at Mum and Dad’s place in darkest Toowong. They only have a few neighbours and there’s bush reserve across the road. I think you’d find it a refreshing change.
What, no up-ended wheelie bins with white ibis picking through the detritus? I wouldn’t know myself. I will keep that in mind, MM, thanks.
I’m still sifting thru the university timetables, trying to work out which classes I want to sit in on (as opposed to ‘enrol into’) for the first few weeks of semester.
I’ve taken to photographing the car parking space when I’m in an unfamiliar shopping mall, so that I can find my way out of there again. Several (younger) women have stopped, looked at me as I lock in the focus on ‘Green/F/8’ & have said ‘OMG, Genius! Why didn’t I think of that!’
You really don’t want to get lost in the Robina shopping centre car park.
The Elf must be appeased with frequent high GI tributes.
Although we got some spinning tops out of a Kinder Surprise that were the source of much amusement one evening, waiting for Gigantor to finish AFL training.
One of our recent cleanouts unearthed a large tub full to the brim with Kinder Surprise toys. Hundreds of the things! And I wonder why we’re always broke.
I may need them a little longer. I’m feeling particularly shouty and irritable. Even the kidlets are concerned – especially those with unfinished homework.
My shoutiness has evaporated with no Irma to show for it. Weird, as I still want to eat chocolate every day. Perhaps you’ve got a double dose since mine is lacking, Catty?
Still, last weekend’s shouting has paid off, as back then I couldn’t so much as get the Bloke to shift the damned sprinkler and this time he went out (in my absence while I was at knitting class, no shouting required) and spent an entire day digging in the garden.
MM, I was recounting your disgruntlement with Dominos & he said not to worry, Maccas now deliver. He jolted awake at some ungodly hour last night to find the truck parked outside doing home delivery. Not sure who would order Maccas at 11pm, I suppose you’d have to be either
1. drunk
2. Under age & lacking a licence or a car
3. Under age & unable to steal a car
4. have access to a credit card.
5. All of the above.
So going on the above listed criteria, we really weren’t able to narrow it down.
LOLZ. The truly horrifying thing about that is that I’m sure that they could manage it. The McFlurry in a Hurry rush hour special?
I will have to ask the Bloke if the van that woke him looked anything like a Mr. Whippy truck.
Oh, I did love Mr Whippy. There’s something transgressive about getting a delicious cone out of the side of a panel van. I wish they’d bring back Mr Whippy.
Every summer, Mr Whippy does the rounds on a Saturday morning. We hear the music, but he drives so fast that by the time the kidlets get to the door, he’s disappearing around the corner. I used to wonder how he ever made any money, seeing as nobody could get to the kerb fast enough to flag him down, but then one year he set up at a school event and I saw how much he charges for ice cream. Suffice to say, with his profit margin he wouldn’t need to sell many to make a profit.
I think the phrase you mean is ‘lagging behind the rest of the pack.’
Splash some Jim Beam behind your ears & down your vest in the car five minutes before the session & you will fit right in.
Dad was never sober for those things & I think the teachers were simply envious that he got to turn up to all of them smashed.
I bumped into the Deputy Headmaster on the day they were about to hold interviews. She was out buying dinner for the teachers to have during their meal break. One quiche, two bottles of orange juice, one bottle of vodka, two cases of wine. Not bad for a primary school with 30 teachers.
Indeed, bastards all.
Wel it is nice to be in front of the Mac again after so much driving.
Much of yesterday was taken up by house hunting (nice warehouse near lake but not enough sun) and today I went down there again (to ascertain that there is in fact no morning winter sun) & then I gatecrashed the creative writing class at the gold coast uni. That looks like much more fun than the psyche course at QUT so I will happily pull the plug on my place there in order to transfer to Griffith when we relocate south. NTO & Toad Park have given me my fill of mental health failure for a lifetime & I would much rather study language & writing, and knit. If my competitive urges surface I will channel them into the CWA cake competitions.
Today’s class was lots of fun & the lecturer was a darling – he’s a poet. He assured us that the only way to fail his class was to play with your phones during tutorials and lectures.
If only they’d had that policy at Hogwarts, I wouldn’t have needed to repeat Anatomy & Physiology 3. If you want to send me into total nervous collapse, just ask me to do a flow chart of the Krebs cycle.
I’ve yet to ask him if I’m welcome to sit in on his class, there was such a long queue of children freaking out & wanting to ask him questions after the lecture that I figured I’d email him. As today was all 1st year housekeeping type stuff, I knitted all the way through it. Let’s hope his loathing of iphones doesn’t extend to wool.
In other knitting news, I’ve been very disappointed with this second skein for the brain cap. It’s like fairy floss, it’s coming unravelled and even snapping. Needless to say VERY hard to knit!
Has anyone ever noticed this? It is acrylic, it’s like they used a dodgy batch of chemicals or something.
Yes, some of it is very poorly made. I can’t abide wool next to my skin so I’ve been knitting with acrylics or blends.
I hope it wasn’t the batch I gave you, MM. Surely I had the sense to choose wool? Or have the Turks gotten so rattled from the civil war raging in the Arab countries that they’re factory standards are down?
MM, it’s funny you should mention that as the cleckheaton skein I’m using for the baby doll was most unhappy with me undoing stitches last night. I’d smurfed up the K2 YO row to make arty lacy holes. It didn’t break but I’ve decided that intentional holes are a bad move as they are likely to lead to unintentional ones from the yarn snapping.
I think it’s because my tension is quite snug althought probably, from the sounds of it, not quite as tight as yours.
No, it wasn’t your lovely wool … which is not only real but has some angora or mohair or something swish I believe. Just the oyster grey I’m doing this brain beanie in.
Yes, I immediately blamed tension, but even when I adjusted mine to loose as a goose it was still doing it. Probably made in China.
Well that’s a bugger of a bugger, Is is just a dud ball or has it been consistently crap?
I will have to watch out for this – not all wools is wool, I guess. And I would have no idea how to spot a quality product. This is why it’s good to be taught by an elder.
I’ve never noticed it previously, but it’s very true that some wool knits better than others. Pull a little bit out and run it through your fingers, is my best advice.
I did that with the cleckheaton rainbow weave & it seemed fine – but there are some fragile bits within the ball, so I’ve just had to watch that. It was fine till I got to the K2 YO bit & then I think my yarn tension was a bit much for it.
I’ll practice that with a stronger yarn.
I’m so glad my knitting classmate talked me into going to the crochet class. Stacks of the patterns on Ravelry combine knit & crochet, and it’s very cute so no doubt a good skill to have.
yay, it’s nearly the weekend.
What are you all up to?
We’ve lost Catty, I do hope it’s not to cybergremlins or GB’s homespun viral spores.
Did you see the temps in Vagus are due to rise to 27C on Monday?
Winter.
Tis a fleeting dream, here in the great south-east.
I’m still here. I’ve been in one of my moods. Mainly because the computer smurfed up again. The Boss had to dismantle the Mac and do fixy things to the innards. But it’s working again now. I wish he’d do the same thing with my brain; the bloody thing just won’t behave itself.
Thank you for saying that MM, as I have days when I feel sorry for anyone who has to come near me. The chicken stealing incident hasn’t been good for my attitude to being stuck here still in Toad Park. I am very jealous of Chaz’s move as I know how sick he was of all the bogans he encountered over in Perth. Those two sound happy as squirrels settling into their apartment near the Sydney Harbour & good on them, they’ve waited a long time for Marcella to get that transfer.
Let the ranting and raving commence. I will load the cannons, since I am rendered quite lost for words by the level of meanness of spirit from those bogans across the road.
Oh, yes! A good old rant with my favourite people. Margaritas, or daiquiris? I know, let’s have both. Lots of Kettle chips. Much CAEK. Some soothing pink noise in the background. And a table to thump.
I feel better already.
Just think how much better we will all feel once we’ve loaded Q’s trebuchet with burning tar to fling across the street at the bogan chook thieves.
No?
Sigh… You’re no fun. Now, who brought the shirtless firemen calendar? I… um… kinda wore mine out.
I’ve got Tucson Fire-fighters courtesy of a Facebook friend … and I have to say they’re an uninspiring and sometimes grubby looking lot. Our local volunteer fireies are easier on the eye.
Hmm, maybe they’d like to do a find-raising calendar? It would be community-spirited to take some photos of them with no shirts on, no? And perhaps a little baby oil…
I know, let’s set fire to Mama Mia’s house, and Bog Hollow, then take photos of the fireys while they’re standing on the footpath cheering. No, wait, that would be us standing on the footpath cheering, wouldn’t it?
I think the technical term is that it’s in the Demolition control precinct, which used to mean pre 1945 and has recently been brought back to before 1912 or some such. So you can only demolish it if you can prove that the cost & effort involved in restoring it is beyond ridiculous.
I don’t think you’d have a problem knocking this one down, but there are lengthy delays on demolition orders so the problem is you’d have a property that you can’t tenant, and you’d not be able to count on building there for at least 6 months, more like 12 by the time it takes to get a DA for new plans through the council. So that’s an expensive 2 year minimum wait for a new house to move into.
Meanwhile, on the topic of things that are that far gone – you know those horrible little 2 bedroom closets in at Bog Hollow? NTO has installed a very noisy Indian couple in one room of the NE flat upstairs and is seeking a third person or, to quote the add ‘would suit a couple’ to tenant the other bedroom/horse stall.
I can see her logic – since Bike Rage Family now have 3 people in a one bedroom flat, why not put 4 in a two bedder?
This is why I have no need to travel in order to see the world. Thanks to NTO’s expansion of her Slum Hotel practices, I have a grand view of the squats of India from my toilet window. I had to actually bang on the walls whilst shouting at them the other night to get them to dial it down. To their credit they’ve made far less noise since, but OMG. That woman!
NTO is the one who likes to flavour her meals with keens, MSG & chicken salt, Catty, so until all that crap gives her an aneurism or we escape, I’m stuck with it.
We’ve always called that dump ‘the ghost house’ as it’s been in a state of perpetual decay for as long as we’ve lived here.
The add says that the owner died 8 years ago & as it’s been uninhabited since then, I’d say that there’s been some sort of ugly dispute over a will.
NTO’s *builder* (another jackass who has NFI WTF he is doing) has been digging up her front yard in preparation to set posts for her new front deck. I asked the bloke if he’d seen the holes (which are neither deep enough nor wide enough to satisfy a structural engineer) & he burst out laughing. Neither of us have any intention of telling her or the council that her deck is going to be structurally unsound. The poorer the quality of the build, the faster it is to falling down.
Winter is over so I’m back on sleep deprivation, Catty.
The helicopters, bongos & ferals are all once again active over and around Casa Q. That and the works on the trainline seem to be pretty much permanent. Even if I could sleep during the day, the storm repairs all around us would render than impossible & the sounds of Builder Radio have my teeth permanently on edge.
I’m at the point where the next thing that comes on the market that seems reasonable will be ‘Yep, whatever you want. Just get the hell out so I can move in next week.’
There’s a bit of that going around. No Irma here this month either. I’d be worried I was pregnant, only as I recall pregnancy made me teary and docile and these days I’m more on a hair-trigger and filled with homicidal rage.
Actually I was thinking of the chicken thief and the family across the road where the burglar alarm goes off every freaking day. A few holes in their roof for the rats & the possums to climb in & dance on the ceiling would be a beautiful thing.
Poor chicken lady. She was seething, yesterday. I suppose there’s a chance that it really is Mama Mia’s chook, but I do think it highly unlikely. I spoke to the gay boys that live behind her, just then. They haven’t heard any conversations about chicken theft & they’ve done their level best to block her out with leafy greens, so they haven’t seen anything untoward, either.
I wish she’d send the cops in. I don’t think those idiots would dare to do engage in retribution. Still. People are finding her flyer with the ‘Reward offered!’ incentive today, so here’s hoping someone decides it’s worth a carton of beer to restore it.
Yep. I think if it really is their chook they’d be happy to swap it for a bottle of Jim Beam and a handful of pizza vouchers, and I said as much to Lisa. I hope the bribe works.
No luck with the showers, so colour me jealous.
At least there’s a swathe of new properties starting to pop up on the GC real estate market, so that’s heartening after the dearth of winter. And I feel less deranged for hearing the gay boys down the valley tell me that they find the neighbourhood every bit as depressing as I do. I think I cheered them up, actually, as they’d attributed the unpleasantness around them to homophobia so they were pleased that Jen & I & chicken lady feel enclosed by bogans, too.
I posted some pics of Dolly & her hoop skirt at my Knitting thread, the direction to them probably got lost in my waffle.
Only one mistake, & I darned it up so it won’t disintegrate & thought ‘that’ll do.’
I do like knitting in the round.
Although it’s nice to be back to my scarf with it’s sturdy 12 ply.
And Tuesdays are better than Mondays because I know that I get to escape to writing class on Wed & Thursday. Yay!
Did you guys see the twitter hashtag to farewell Bronny of #PutYourWalletsOut ?
Hilarious!
My fave was the T-Rex clutching the wallet on someone’s porch.
Things like this restore my faith in humanity.
I’d be worried about how she was going to afford all of that hairspray for her beehive, until I remembered that she must have a lot of our hard-earned tax dollars squirreled away by now.
As far as I can tell, she’s merely stepped down as Speaker. She’s still a politician, with a $300K+ annual salary, so she’ll just have to buy Black & Gold hairspray like the rest of us.
I read 370 but perhaps that was for the speaker role. She might be out on her arse, Catty – Tony’s grip on the leadership is still tenuous after all his cruddy Captain’s calls & I think the LNP know that they’ll be bleeding out from this wound long after she’s gone. There was a hilarious photo of Bronny made up of a collage of all the 394 members she’s ejected from the floor during her time as speaker.
Some days you guys really need to tweet, when the hive mind gets on a roll with one of these things the creativity of the masses is outstripped only marginally by their venom.
The only thing keeping Tones in the top job is the fact that Shorten is equally as hopeless. If Labor ever gets their act together, LNP will be out on their arses faster than a, a, a, really fast thing.
Nooooo! It’s turned out to be so much fun having Toned Abs as the king of the hill that I don’t want it to end. Just because you two don’t witness the daily hilarity on twitter is no reason to wish an end to it for the rest of us!
Valid point, but there will come a time when we will require more of our PM than just comedic value. Trust me, Q, this is Australia; guaranteed we will vote in a replacement who can fill Tone’s giant red clown shoes admirably.
I can’t see how having a horse installed as a senator will get the dishwasher stacked but it might kick a few pollies hard in the arse when they screw up, which is more than the leader of the opposition, Mr. Beige Curtain can do, so yeah, why not?
I’ll have to see if Mum can put us up and mind the kids, so I’ll let you know. I’ve been promising to come down and see a friend for months so that would actually be a good reason.
Well I’ve bought the tickets, so if you decided to join me, Mr. Stinky can drop us off down there, since his reply to ‘would you like to go see First Dog?’ was a surly ‘He’s just a grumpy old man who drinks too much.’
I told him to go look in the mirror. Besides, there would be nobody on stage at the BWF if you made it a Dry Event.
Nobody.
Just you & me staring at the crickets.
Speaking of writers, I’m having a rollicking good time of it sitting in on that writing class at the GC. The youngsters do seem to test the patience of the lecturer – they dribble into the room up to 45 minutes late & last week one turned up 10 minutes before the tutorial was due to finish, looking like she’d spent the previous 90 minutes choosing shoes & styling her hair. She didn’t bother showing up at all this week so it looks like she took his advice to heart.
i.e. Don’t bother turning up at all if you’re going to walk in as the rest of us walk out.
Now that we’ve broken the ice with the writing on command thing it’s getting to be rather fun. The first exercise yesterday revealed that everyone had murder in their hearts & prepping for the Zombie Apocalypse is at the forefront of our minds.
We’ve got a very grumpy German in the class who is quite surly about it all & doesn’t want to engage. She complains about things & then says ‘I suppose so,’ in aggrieved tones, whenever he tries to soothe her down.
She’s hilarious. Well, I think so.
I’ve befriended a youngster who has been living away from home since she was 16. She was raised by her Dad but can’t cope with him & there’s no mention of her mum, so that’ll be a story, I’d imagine. She was having a bit of a freak out about next week’s assessment, so I hope I helped to stop her worrying quite so much about that.
This is fun. I don’t know what possessed me to want to study counselling, when writing & Spanish have proven to be so much fun.
Quite so. I can sit and read research about mental & physical health till my eyeballs bleed, but put a real human in front of me & my enthusiasm wanes.
Good luck with that, Q. If you want tips on how to be as unpleasant as possible, go down to Centrelink at midday when the chronically unemployable are dropping off their forms.
It’s like turtles. A turtle will lay up to 200 eggs in a single nest, but scientists reckon only one turtle in 1000 will live to be an adult. Thus it is with dole bludgers. Although their offspring aren’t devoured by seabirds, crabs and raccoons, there are plenty of other predators to knock the rugrats off – Jim Beam, DoCs and plain old neglect are among the main ones. So the Aussie dole bludger will spew forth as many offspring as possible before maturity or overdose set in.
Everyone (starting with Morgana) has been warning me that this is what I can expect to hear living next to the Koala reserve.
Unless Mr. Bear does this every night after sinking a bottle of scotch & then rocks out ‘Born to Be Alive’ on karaoke, with accompaniement by Mrs. Bear on the bongos, it will still be a damned site more peaceful than living here on Freak Street.
Well, here we are. Monday already. Does anyone else feel like time is flashing by faster and faster, like that old school starfield screensaver? I suppose it just goes faster and faster until you run out of it altogether.
Knitting is still frittering. But it comforts me to know I have something to show for my frittered time. Also, something to shove in a cupboard so that when I die, my offspring are stuck with dozens of dubious homemade items that they don’t dare throw away. What? I can be a bitch from beyond the grave if I want to.
Yep. I’m thinking of making a hope chest of doll’s clothes for my sister’s kids that aren’t allowed to speak to Horrible Evil Aunty Q. I can’t imagine that they’ll tolerate their mother’s drug habit & her screeching abusive rants when they have children of her own.
Remember Meryl Street in August Osage County? That’s my sister.
If that doesn’t work out there’s plenty of other younglings around me who’ll enjoy them when The Breeding comes upon them.
True. Although I can’t abide pastels, and I’m not sure that my use of primary colours would appeal to the bereaved or those desperately hoping not-to-be bereaved.
The local CWA will have fundraisers and you’re right, I should join the Mudgeeraba branch when I get settled.
Absolutely.
Next winter I’m hoping to hang out at the pony club & see if I can befriend Horsie Girls my age who might let me go riding with them. I met a lovely one at the Mudgeeraba show & it sounds like there’s a few over 50s into trail riding out there.
It’s still sinking in.
I went to Coals to get away from the infernal racket around here. The annoying noisy tenant from the upstairs flat (who we’ve asked to STFU & wished into a pit of scorpions many times in his tenure) queued behind my loaded trolley, and another, all the while singing along loudly to his bollywood tunes on his ipod.
His purchase? a single mars bar.
So he was either too lazy, too stupid or too inept to use the 12 items or less aisle (empty) or the self serve.
I don’t know how I’ll get out of here without punching one of them, truly.
When you have gone, you’ll look back in amazement at how you managed to live in Brisvegas for so long. It’s nice to visit, but I always travel home with a song in my heart and a deep gratitude that I no longer live there.
It could be worse, Q. I’m not exactly sure how, but I’m sure it could be worse. Actually, knowing your neighbours, they’ll probably make sure it gets much worse before you escape. I hope you throw them a farewell barbecue before you leave. In a bottle. Full of burning petrol. Through their windows.
NTO will have to find someone else to annoy once we leave. Casa Q is heavily fortified now & as the bloke says, tenants will probably be out working all day & won’t be here during the Scritching Hours. So long as we have the kind of tenants that make plenty of noise of their own, they should be fine.
Now I just need to find a lovely set of gay boys who want to live here happily ever after, hosting raucous cocktail parties every Saturday night.
Is a karaoke machine a tax deduction if you purchase it for a rental property?
I’m so happy I can’t think of anything witty to say. I just trawled all over West End & had people asking me why I look so happy.
Because I’m leaving, on a jet plane…well, on a removal truck.
Tra la la la la la lalalalalalalala.
You know, Q, Madam has a good point. Private rentals are a colossal pain in the arse. You should get yourself an agent – it makes things so much easier when you are applying for Landlord’s Insurance, and when you get your tax returns done. I’d recommend contacting LJ Hooker first…. and Ray White last.
Yeah, I’m in favour of the one-remove, too. My parents had all sorts of issues renting their place in Enogerra. And that was ages ago before society crumbled.
LOLZ.
Dear Aisling, I should fish out that story for writing class. Our teacher would love it.
I still think my friend the Cat Breeder had the best idea – Con students. Endless, endless scales. Preferably on the tuba. And they are all well-behaved little nerds so they would settle in, get cosy, and the din wouldn’t bother them as they’d make so much of their own. I will look into that in the coming weeks, I’m sure there’s an accommodation service down there.
Having Aisling locked in your bog will mean NTO can spy on her without leaving home… the Indian couple’s home, at any rate. By keeping NTO in their apartment and off the street, you will have done the community a great service. No, actually, bugger them. They don’t deserve it. Forget Aisling. Look up that tribe of fire twirlers from a couple of years ago. Offer them half price rent for a month if they can ‘accidentally’ set fire to NTO’s new decking, and another month of half rent if they can burn down Mama Mia’s chook shed.
LOL. I’d forgotten the Fire Twirlers. I think they hang out down in West End by the river, but there’s a tribal drumming group with fire twirlers that assembles at Burleigh every Sunday night. That was one of the things that made me wary of buying down there…so beautiful, but, Hippies!
Oh my goodness I’m so happy!
As much as I will be sad to leave my lovely, quirky, unique little house, I’ll be so pleased to be out of here & up on that lovely treed hill, listening to the debauches of the bears – instead of the Canadians in Flat 4.
Well it’s not like the terminators would view them as a threat.
I can just see the assessment coming up on that pixelated screen.
Subject: Hippy
Threat level, Nits.
We just saw a crow with a packet of Doritos. It took him a couple of minutes (because his mates were swooping him and trying to steal the packet) but he got it open, sang a little victory song, and then chowed down on corn chips. Adorable! I love crows.
Hahaha. clever birds.
Perhaps when I’m gone the Ibis will rise up & turn on NTO when she is disinfecting her bins in 36C temperatures in the middle of the street.
That’s entirely within the realms of possibility, Catty.
The new deck that she’s building goes out over the sewer line, so if that ever erupts & needs replacing, it’s going to be expensive to fix that with a deck sitting 800ml above ground level over it.
That drain has been leaking for years & I long ago gave up complaining about it. Fortunately for NTO I don’t think she has a sense of smell, so she won’t notice when the reconstituted sausages & Keens curry powder rise up through the floor boards to steam her in her rocking chair.
Our council would never have allowed her to build a deck over the sewer pipes. BCC must have rocks in their heads…. or, they know her well and are hoping that the pipe explodes while she’s sitting on the deck. I hope someone gets video footage of it happening. It won’t be you, though, as by then you will be comfortably ensconced in a little slice of Caramello heaven.
I’m shocked that they let her build within 6m of the setback limit from the front boundary, but we elected not to say anything about it because we knew she’d hit the sewer when they dug out the foundations. I warned her where it was when she first moved in & that it wasn’t legal depth below ground level.
Aside from that, you are actually meant to check for underground services before you dig.
If she chooses to disregard my warnings & her dodgy brothers builders stuffs up, good.
Well we did have those earthquakes a week or so ago.
I wonder what the odds are of a sinkhole yawning open beneath Bog Hollow & sucking all within it into the dankest septic tank in hell?
Nor mine, come to think of it. Still, that is my happy thought for the day. Thankfully her builders have gone AWOL. I think they’re trying to teach her a lesson along the lines of ‘Follow me around, lady, and you’ll have to do go to Kenmore.’
Actually she has been quiet between bucket watering bouts & Gweedo’s trusty assistant had to shout and knock on every single door in Bog Hollow before they found her yesterday. Perhaps she low-jacked the builder’s van?
I just heard Jenny Woodward on 612 promising a thorough drenching, but you might have to wait till early next week. She issued the caveat that she doesn’t trust computer models as they lie and lie and lie, but according to the modelling, SEQ is in for a lovely soggy few days. So get your washing done & remind the dog & the children what happens if they fail to wipe their paws at the doors.
Random info dump: I was listening to some researcher talking about insomnia a while ago, (who knows what when or where, those details are lost in the mire of my brain fog) & they said they’d found that for hard cases of insomnia, the subjects all slept better if you reduced the room temperature to 18C.
Which would explain why you & I sleep better in winter.
My spring insomnia kicked in a couple of weeks ago so I decided to test the SCIENTS and what do you know, 18C – much better.
So. I recommend that you get yourself a split system AC for at least one room of the house, even if it’s the lounge room & then you just go camp there for the summer.
This summer Imma set my bedroom air temps to ‘crypt’ & hopefully I will be far less cranky & sleep-deprived.
Casa Caramello has ducted AC so if you do come to visit we’ll set it to Frosty for you & see if it helps.
Yeah, I read the same thing. No way to do the lounge room, though, it’s confluent with most of the house. Guess I’ll just have to do my room. The sacrifices I make!
Haha.
I can’t, Little One from creative writing class has it, along with the tape gun & about a dozen of my packing boxes – I lent them to her on Friday so she can move house. She’s leaving a neurotic boarding house owner behind the Coals at Labrador for a 9 bedroom share house a few doors from the beach down at Surfers. She’s moving in with one of her besties & the rest of the house is full of German girls.
Stories like that make me feel like I missed out when I was young.
Whoops you just popped up. MM, you can get a big kickarse system like we’ve got in the dining room. That cools/warms most of our house, so long as the bedroom doors are shut.
I’ve got no ceiling cavity for the ducts, though. It might have to wait until I’ve achieved my goal of plonking a Queenslander down where the shack used to be.
Or craft something out of shipping containers. Still haven’t quite decided.
Gigantor might move out, but I think you’re going to have Alfonse and TGP with you for a very long time. Not sure about the Wildebeest – how long do those things live?
I thought the Wildebeest was one of Greybeards GM experiments gone horribly wrong & it stowed away with one of his midnight run drops of rats and scrub turkeys. As such it will live as long as his viral spores – forever, I would think.
I’m collecting my chin hairs for the chicken soup. There’s a big pot of it simmering on the stove, ready to feed my poor little ‘flu victims. Even the Boss has succumbed. They are all suffering horribly. The Gimmee rang me yesterday and I told her that all the kidlets and the Boss were sick as, and she said, “oh, no, that sounds like the bad ‘flu I had last weekend”. Um, last weekend? When you were here for dinner? Bloody hell, sometimes I wonder what that girl uses her brain for.
In that case tip the bottle over Greybeard. A little bird said that the Grandevil has infected him again. We might have to give her a new title if she keeps this up – Plague, perhaps.
It’s slowing him down, one of Spanner’s barbs will catch him if he’s not careful. Speaking of untimely deaths, I read the Murray book on Allison Baden-Clay’s murder. He’d skipped a few details that I read on the journalist’s twitter feed when they were reporting the case, so I wonder if that was because it was conjecture or he did it because it was a useful device to ramp up her victim status for sales.
Not a bad read, but unfortunately there’s never a balanced perspective in any of the disaster bios. G was a creep, so I don’t want to look like I’m defending him, but truly, she was pretty off-balance herself. Three chapters in & I was saying to the Bloke ‘Farken, I’m so glad I got out of the western suburbs.’
A great deal was made over his dalliances & affairs, and yet it was completely glossed over that in the early days of their relationship she was involved with another man & from the sounds of things she was playing them off against each other. She couldn’t decide between them & she told her friends that in the end she devised a ‘test’ to decide which would make the better husband.
She took each of the two men to a hotel for a romantic night out & she dropped her clothes & adornments all over the floor & went off for a long shower & grooming session in the bathroom. When she came back, boyfriend one had left her crap where she’d dropped it, but in Gerard’s case he picked it all up & put it away. The other fellow sounded like a much nicer guy but he wasn’t as flash as G so I’d say that was part of her choice, too.
I found that utterly bizarre. It did set the tone for what she seemed to expect of a husband as provider, though. It’s disappointing that Murray didn’t have the courage to include the psychologist’s note, that ABC seemed to have an unrealistic idea of what a married relationship entails.
There were lots of little snippets like that in the book where I rolled my eyes and thought ‘If a man pulled this nonsense the DV workers would be shouting ‘Controlling partner, run!’
FWIW it sounds like there was a long-standing & unhealthy pattern of both of them making efforts to control each other.
Anyway, at least he included enough damning anecdotes in the book for the discerning to see just how off-balance they both were, but you’d have to have a brain to be able to reason it out, as he trod very carefullly with that.
I’d love to know how much he left out, and why.
It was odd that they couldn’t find a neighbour or a friend or a relative to cite any previous instances of family violence. It sounds like they were both just deeply dissatisfied with their lives, and each intent on making the other accountable for their disappointments whilst pressing forward with the lovely happy family facade.
The average western suburbs family, really.
Sozza, on rereading I should have been clearer. Two different psychologists gave evidence that in couples counselling GBC opened with the goal that he wanted to end the marriage. She was adamant that wasn’t going to happen. One of them (Bardon counselling centre, brilliantly trained folk) told her bluntly that once a marriage came to that pass invariably it failed. ABC didn’t like that, so she kept therapist shopping until she found one that met her requirements. (Relationships Australia – not the best trained folk, in my experience – we had one of them as a lecturer) – this was the one that told her she was allowed to grill GBC about the affair & vent about her feelings & he was to STFU and listen & if he said anything at all he was to express remorse.
I’m really not surprised the lengths that woman went to in order to suppress the fact she’d given that advice.
My point being that if you put the shoe on the other foot & a male was behaving like that….um, well.
It does seem like the sensible path of action & I’d say it comes down to simple narcissism – as long as the facade remained he could come home to a hot meal, three well-behaved children, and he could maintain his platform of Community Leader. And do whatever he wanted on the side.
Still, having seen my sister’s antics when confronted with the prospect of a husband leaving, you never know what’s going on behind the scenes. I doubt there’s anyone but me & her first husband that saw behind the facade in the breakdown of her first marriage, she kept a wonderful shop front for her friends so they never once saw her in one of her daily meltdowns & in Threat & Ultimatum mode.
I can understand why her second husband chose to ram his car into a line of gum trees rather than face what she’d have to deliver if he tried to leave. There was of course the added incentive that she’d take him down if he left, having all the behind the scenes info on the Drug Baronetcy that he vacated. She said as much to me, once.
I look at GBC’s behaviour & how he made hundreds of thousands of dollars disappear & I wonder if he had a thing for cocaine & gambling, too. I’d say there’s lots we’ll never know. But yes. Plainly he just should have dumped her, and if he really believed she was that emotionally fragile that she wouldn’t cope, he should have called a meeting with her family & told them his concerns & buggered off.
Sigh – I’m on my soapbox again, aren’t I? I really need to set fire to that thing. Ignore me – it’s just always so boggling to me why some women will persist in trying to make a relationship with an asshat work, particularly when the asshat states clearly that he’d like to go off & make someone else miserable. Bizarre.
So, changing topic, how’s those Niners? Did your eldest mince another football team, MM?
I should get the Boss to start playing football. He needs a distraction, because he’s getting bored sitting around the house. Yesterday he started researching how to make a nuclear reactor. I hope he doesn’t try to make one – his home brew is lethal enough.
Perhaps he could combine the two?
Rumour has it that Bangarr took his cherry bourbon to the Melbourne Writers Festival & knocked the socks off the Scribe’s Groupies.
I’m not sure what Bangarr puts in that stuff but by all reports, it’s deadly.
Wood chips. The Boss grilled Bangarr for brewing tips at Mayhem’s wedding, and has implemented all he learned. Now his home brew is 90%, but his bitch of a wife makes him water it down to 40%. Aren’t I an evil cow?
After another weekend of the greasy gruelling terror that is The Bacon, I have returned.
I have NFI why someone would want to keep a relationship that’s over in all but name, but then again a lot of people put much more store in social standing, what everyone else is saying and thinking and etc. than I have time for. Is it like hoarding, but emotional, perhaps?
Or are some people so scared of change – and even possibly personal growth, or personal demon wrangling – that they’d rather stay in something no matter how grimy and tedious than face The Unknown?
People are confusing.
Catty, he should make a tiny portable one for Grey Nomads.
Well, he was wondering how to get hold of plutonium. Fortunately for him, I’ve just taken him to the doctor, and the horse pills they prescribed look just like plutonium rods. I’m guessing we will have atom splitting by Thursday.
Don’t diss the drugzz.
My opinion of SSRIs has gone up immensely, ever since I discovered that a very low dose of them makes someone like Gerard Spade & Clay seem like a worthwhile human being & a desirable husband.
With psychotropic powers like that, imagine what they could do for my opinion of the door-slamming sweary bogans & their yipping cattle dogs round here.
73 days to go!
I think I’m going to die. I would, if I had time. The only thing keeping me from lying down and letting the virus kill me, is my beautiful beautiful friends. I love youse guys.
* Dons biohazard suit*
MWAH! and right back atcha Catty love.
Hope you feel better soon. I’m very impressed you made that poncho & just disappointed you didn’t get pix. I wish you could come to crochet class with me – the women at the craft table were learning how to follow a pattern from photocopied pages with all these weird symbols all over them. They said it was much easier than trying to follow a written pattern.
Like this only theirs were far more intricate.
I’d love to learn how to read that map.
The Sunday crochet class at knitch started there over a year ago doing a ‘squares’ class & they have been at it ever since. They said that those patterns are by far the easiest to follow as it’s impossible to get lost. I am very impressed with that shop.
What size hooks do you use, Catty?
(May be asking for a green & red elven friend).
Yeah, I was crocheting some extra length on half a pair of pants… allegro… but it wasn’t working so I tore it in half… clef… and again and again… treble clef… damn it alto hell! I coda been scoreing instead, if I’d forte it.
The Boss has recommenced hassling me about cleaning our windows. For goodness sakes, if I didn’t clean them after his last marathon nagging session, what on earth makes him think I’m going to clean them this time?
I can’t even open our windows because of NTO’s builder cutting up wood out the front. Cleaning them will be done by someone else, in November, when we’re gone.
I’d go on strike, only it would only cause a huge back-log and I doubt anyone would notice anyway. Maybe I’ll run away to Melbourne again. But I’ll wait until the Boss is back to work. He’s too hard a task-master.
What with all the hydrotherapy, physiotherapy et al, I thought he’d have seen much more improvement. But it appears that despite some small improvement, my early fears that he is permanently munted will be realised. My prediction is that he will be on the unemployment queue by Christmas. Poor love. He hates not being able to do stuff.
Catty, if he’s become permanently disabled due to a workplace accident, and he’s on work-cover, surely he’s entitled to some sort of financial compensation?
Ditto. Still, it means more stress & strain & uncertainty for all of you while you go through the hoops.
What Madame said, too.
I’ve seen a lot of these things improve over time. And FWIW, the hard cases that came to me & the osteo all reported that the standard medical procedures did SFA good.
There’s always witchcraft, Catty.
Witchcraft and Chi. I’ve got a new-found respect for acupuncture, ever since my practice of Tai Chi has caused me to be able to (sometimes) feel the flow,
But I think you said he tried it and it was no good, Catty? If anyone sees my memory, tell it I miss it.
Fun in a box 
I’m baaaack!
OMG you have fixed it.
Quick, get the holy water & fling it over Khan GB before he can break your blog again.
Mwah!
Thanks, MM.
If you are on the twitters & you scroll back thru my tweets this morning you will see a screen shot of what that dreadful man did to it. He shrunk you!
Oh I wish he could do my hips. Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt. Etc.
I read ‘hips’ as ‘whips’.
That I’m sure he could manage.
I can’t help you with your wish list today, MM. Irma is still circling & I’ve had three days of eating ice-cream & chocolate & chips. Perhaps if I put them all in the same bowl it would quell the cravings?
Mmmmm…. chocolate chip ice cream….
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/teen-stabbed-in-chest-on-busy-gold-coast-street-20150720-gigfma.html
Good thing you’ve got boys, MM.
You’d never see a boy doing this outside the local ice-cream shop.
I often think it’s a good thing I’ve got boys. Mind you, Catty’s managed to raise one delightful girl so it’s obviously not impossible.
I haven’t worked her out yet. Changeling? Fluke? Or is she just getting her lifetime’s supply of darling out of her system before she hits 15?
I won’t hear a word said against my future daughter-in-law.
I remember being the little sister to the train wreck. It does tend to open your eyes to the idea that perhaps walking a different path than the one that takes you straight off the rails is the saner choice in life.
That explains MY sister, then.
I am that train wreck.
When you spend two decades married to a drug lord & can no longer make sense from your many years of substance abuse, I will grant you the title of Grand Winner, Train Wreck Sister Competition. Until then, back in the queue with you. You are far too functional for this line up.
Call me when Elf Boy makes national headlines & I’ll reconsider your case.
He just made a Llama out of Lego. It even has eyes on the side of its head and everything!
Like the Dalai?
Like an Alpaca. His Holiness doesn’t have eyes on the side of his head!!
He’d need them if Elf boy was close at hand.
I always think the Dalai Lama should be able to deflect arrows and etc. with a few fingers and maybe a chant. Then I realise I’m confused with all those episodes of “Monkey Magic” I watched as a child.
He also has that third eye in the middle of his forehead, too, doesn’t he? He must have a bastard of a time finding sunglasses.
Not to mention swimming goggles.
I might knit my next beanie with a third eye aperture. I foresee good sales in the Northern Rivers region.
How’s the brain beanie coming along?
Third time’s the charm. Even from the first attempt I realized the pattern wasn’t big enough, but it’s taken this third go to get it to adult human size. I can’t knit THAT tight, I’ve nearly doubled the number of stitches.
Now I’ve just got to knit 12 feet if I cord for the gryrations!
12 feet? Hmmm… that should be enough for 1/8th of a centipede.
I have no idea what that means & I would love to find out.
Any pix, MM?
You ladies really are very clever to manage these things.
My knitting is on hold until I do a class & work out how to manage dropped stitches. Youtube is good, but I think a RL instructor is bound to be better.
Only a few more weeks of woolly weather to relish. I’ll be very sad to see this winter go, it’s been so lovely & wet this year.
Ugh, I hate dropped stitches. You have to sort of unknit back to where you lost them and pick them up.
Is there a local branch of the CWA? They’ll set you straight.
I made enquiries about our local branch of the CWA. Mostly what they do is go on bus tours to eat wine & cheese & in their down time they are into scrapbooking.
I’ve booked into a knitting class held in a local cafe this Sunday.
I have figured out how to pull it out & start again, but it was getting tedious.
I’m sure that a lesson or two from a proper human won’t go astray.
I found the easiest way to deal with dropped knitting stitches is to crochet.
I’d like to learn that, too.
My great grandmother, the one in Perth, made the most amazing linen/lace tablecloths & doilies as a wedding gift for Dad. She was long gone by the time that I came along but my goodness, the talent.
This I cord is annoying (at night, when I’m tired). I’m thinking of cracking out the Knitting Nancy.
For really fine lace you want tatting, Q. Although I think there’s a set of lace weaving spindles lolling around Mum’s place somewhere. Tell me if you want me to go on a spindle hunt.
Thanks but nah. I have enough half finished projects laying around Casa Q at the moment. It’s one of those things I have earmarked for down the track, when we’ve moved & I’m feeling settled & organised. I’ll need to clean all the windows & the kitchen cabinets again soon, once the cold weather passes & dufus next door stops blowing soot in here from his chimney.
The grime on everything, erk!
Thankfully the skin doc said no stretching or exertion for another week in case the lip of that scar busts open, so it’s back to the sofa for me & Miss Fisher.
Which one are you on now?
Don’t forget to also read her series about a baker, Corinna. Set in contemporary Melbourne, but just as much fun.
Ooh, really? I wonder if there’s a TV series in that, too.
I’m still reading Cocaine Blues. I find the TV characters more likeable than those in the books, so hats off to the screen writers for the tweaks that they’ve done to achieve that.
From the credits it’s a mixed assortment of Sisters in Crime. The ones who run the Scarlett Stiletto Awards?
I never get a say in what goes on the TV. But at the moment I’m not complaining because the Boss has ‘discovered’ The IT Crowd.
Nice timing, Catty, I dragged ours out the other day & we just watched the Aunt Irma episode again. I can’t believe how much I forget, in those episodes. The Bloke must forget them too, as he was laughing even harder than I was.
I have heard of those scarlet stiletto things but I’ll have to google it to refresh my memory. I recognised Deb Cox’s name from Seachange.
Quite a lot of writers listed on the credits there in IMDB, I wonder how they keep up the continuity of voice? Looks like Kerry Greenwood is involved in overseeing every episode so it must be her guiding hand on that.
Well, as characters they’re all fairly set in their ways. I mean, Phyrne’s never going to refuse an invitation to a nightclub in favour of knitting and an early night. Dot’s not going to resign and leave Hugh so she can fan-dance on the gold-fields. Etc.
Mmmm… knitting and an early night…
Yes, as I was typing that I thought, “add chocolate and ugg booots and I’m there, baby.”
Speaking of knitting, Q – would you like to go to Mother’s Knitting Circle on a Thursday? They’re a dab hand with dropped stitches. And the corkscrew.
Oooh. Guidance from the wise. Where do they meet?
Since it’s in the western suburbs I might need to do some discreet checking with the Elder Hobbit that none of my mother’s cousins are part of her knitting circle. They’ve been breeding like rabbits in those parts since 1852 & that was my leading motivation in crossing the river the moment I turned 18.
Dianne Harwood. Dunno her maiden name but I’m pretty sure they came to Brisbane from parts south. I strongly doubt she’s a relation.
It’s at Mum and Dad’s place in darkest Toowong. They only have a few neighbours and there’s bush reserve across the road. I think you’d find it a refreshing change.
What, no up-ended wheelie bins with white ibis picking through the detritus? I wouldn’t know myself. I will keep that in mind, MM, thanks.
I’m still sifting thru the university timetables, trying to work out which classes I want to sit in on (as opposed to ‘enrol into’) for the first few weeks of semester.
I can’t even remember today’s shopping list. Better you than me!
I’ve taken to photographing the car parking space when I’m in an unfamiliar shopping mall, so that I can find my way out of there again. Several (younger) women have stopped, looked at me as I lock in the focus on ‘Green/F/8’ & have said ‘OMG, Genius! Why didn’t I think of that!’
You really don’t want to get lost in the Robina shopping centre car park.
That is brilliant. I’ll remember that for when I don;t have a Memory Elf tagging along. Cheaper on donuts and Kinder Surprise, too.
The Elf’s memory is powered by such fuel, or yours? 🙂
The Elf must be appeased with frequent high GI tributes.
Although we got some spinning tops out of a Kinder Surprise that were the source of much amusement one evening, waiting for Gigantor to finish AFL training.
One of our recent cleanouts unearthed a large tub full to the brim with Kinder Surprise toys. Hundreds of the things! And I wonder why we’re always broke.
Quick,, to eBay! Some of them might be collectible. If you have any owls, they’re all mine, though.
I am strongly inclined to set fire to eBay. They have given me untold grief over the last few days. Don’t ask. Just pass the matches.
Uh oh. Would you like some firelighters with that?
Yes please. BP, Caltex or Mobil will be acceptable.
Speaking of people we hate, Dominos did give me a refund. But not so much as one word of apology!
I’ll have the matches when you’re finished, Catty.
I may need them a little longer. I’m feeling particularly shouty and irritable. Even the kidlets are concerned – especially those with unfinished homework.
My shoutiness has evaporated with no Irma to show for it. Weird, as I still want to eat chocolate every day. Perhaps you’ve got a double dose since mine is lacking, Catty?
Still, last weekend’s shouting has paid off, as back then I couldn’t so much as get the Bloke to shift the damned sprinkler and this time he went out (in my absence while I was at knitting class, no shouting required) and spent an entire day digging in the garden.
MM, I was recounting your disgruntlement with Dominos & he said not to worry, Maccas now deliver. He jolted awake at some ungodly hour last night to find the truck parked outside doing home delivery. Not sure who would order Maccas at 11pm, I suppose you’d have to be either
1. drunk
2. Under age & lacking a licence or a car
3. Under age & unable to steal a car
4. have access to a credit card.
5. All of the above.
So going on the above listed criteria, we really weren’t able to narrow it down.
I really can’t be bothered eating Maccas any more. The children still adore it, but I’d rather have a piece of toast.
It would be pretty funny to order 12 soft serves though and see how they manage to deliver that.
LOLZ. The truly horrifying thing about that is that I’m sure that they could manage it. The McFlurry in a Hurry rush hour special?
I will have to ask the Bloke if the van that woke him looked anything like a Mr. Whippy truck.
Oh, I did love Mr Whippy. There’s something transgressive about getting a delicious cone out of the side of a panel van. I wish they’d bring back Mr Whippy.
Every summer, Mr Whippy does the rounds on a Saturday morning. We hear the music, but he drives so fast that by the time the kidlets get to the door, he’s disappearing around the corner. I used to wonder how he ever made any money, seeing as nobody could get to the kerb fast enough to flag him down, but then one year he set up at a school event and I saw how much he charges for ice cream. Suffice to say, with his profit margin he wouldn’t need to sell many to make a profit.
Hmm. Anyone want to go halves in a Mr Whippy van? I can drive fast and rip people off.
My skill is running people down.
Let me know if I’m needed.
I think Reddit might be hiring.
Yes but Uber pays better.
Well, it’s High School Parent-Teacher interviews this arvo.
Do you think it’s too late to stop drinking?
Start. I mean “start”. See, I’m all over the place already.
I think the phrase you mean is ‘lagging behind the rest of the pack.’
Splash some Jim Beam behind your ears & down your vest in the car five minutes before the session & you will fit right in.
Dad was never sober for those things & I think the teachers were simply envious that he got to turn up to all of them smashed.
I bumped into the Deputy Headmaster on the day they were about to hold interviews. She was out buying dinner for the teachers to have during their meal break. One quiche, two bottles of orange juice, one bottle of vodka, two cases of wine. Not bad for a primary school with 30 teachers.
One quiche for 30 teachers?
I suppose they didn’t want to interfere with the absorption of all that lovely ethanol.
Perhaps the rest of them planned to order Dominos?
I’m still fuming.
Bastards.
Indeed, bastards all.
Wel it is nice to be in front of the Mac again after so much driving.
Much of yesterday was taken up by house hunting (nice warehouse near lake but not enough sun) and today I went down there again (to ascertain that there is in fact no morning winter sun) & then I gatecrashed the creative writing class at the gold coast uni. That looks like much more fun than the psyche course at QUT so I will happily pull the plug on my place there in order to transfer to Griffith when we relocate south. NTO & Toad Park have given me my fill of mental health failure for a lifetime & I would much rather study language & writing, and knit. If my competitive urges surface I will channel them into the CWA cake competitions.
Today’s class was lots of fun & the lecturer was a darling – he’s a poet. He assured us that the only way to fail his class was to play with your phones during tutorials and lectures.
If only they’d had that policy at Hogwarts, I wouldn’t have needed to repeat Anatomy & Physiology 3. If you want to send me into total nervous collapse, just ask me to do a flow chart of the Krebs cycle.
I’ve yet to ask him if I’m welcome to sit in on his class, there was such a long queue of children freaking out & wanting to ask him questions after the lecture that I figured I’d email him. As today was all 1st year housekeeping type stuff, I knitted all the way through it. Let’s hope his loathing of iphones doesn’t extend to wool.
Just tell him you’re planning to do a biography of Madame LaFarge.
LOL.
In other knitting news, I’ve been very disappointed with this second skein for the brain cap. It’s like fairy floss, it’s coming unravelled and even snapping. Needless to say VERY hard to knit!
Has anyone ever noticed this? It is acrylic, it’s like they used a dodgy batch of chemicals or something.
Yes, some of it is very poorly made. I can’t abide wool next to my skin so I’ve been knitting with acrylics or blends.
I hope it wasn’t the batch I gave you, MM. Surely I had the sense to choose wool? Or have the Turks gotten so rattled from the civil war raging in the Arab countries that they’re factory standards are down?
MM, it’s funny you should mention that as the cleckheaton skein I’m using for the baby doll was most unhappy with me undoing stitches last night. I’d smurfed up the K2 YO row to make arty lacy holes. It didn’t break but I’ve decided that intentional holes are a bad move as they are likely to lead to unintentional ones from the yarn snapping.
I think it’s because my tension is quite snug althought probably, from the sounds of it, not quite as tight as yours.
No, it wasn’t your lovely wool … which is not only real but has some angora or mohair or something swish I believe. Just the oyster grey I’m doing this brain beanie in.
Yes, I immediately blamed tension, but even when I adjusted mine to loose as a goose it was still doing it. Probably made in China.
Well that’s a bugger of a bugger, Is is just a dud ball or has it been consistently crap?
I will have to watch out for this – not all wools is wool, I guess. And I would have no idea how to spot a quality product. This is why it’s good to be taught by an elder.
I’ve never noticed it previously, but it’s very true that some wool knits better than others. Pull a little bit out and run it through your fingers, is my best advice.
I did that with the cleckheaton rainbow weave & it seemed fine – but there are some fragile bits within the ball, so I’ve just had to watch that. It was fine till I got to the K2 YO bit & then I think my yarn tension was a bit much for it.
I’ll practice that with a stronger yarn.
I’m so glad my knitting classmate talked me into going to the crochet class. Stacks of the patterns on Ravelry combine knit & crochet, and it’s very cute so no doubt a good skill to have.
yay, it’s nearly the weekend.
What are you all up to?
We’ve lost Catty, I do hope it’s not to cybergremlins or GB’s homespun viral spores.
Did you see the temps in Vagus are due to rise to 27C on Monday?
Winter.
Tis a fleeting dream, here in the great south-east.
I’m still here. I’ve been in one of my moods. Mainly because the computer smurfed up again. The Boss had to dismantle the Mac and do fixy things to the innards. But it’s working again now. I wish he’d do the same thing with my brain; the bloody thing just won’t behave itself.
Big hugs, Catty. How’s he faring with the injury now? Or is it best we change the topic to chocolate ganache & pretend I never asked?
I think there’s a couple of things retrograde at the moment, unfortunately I too have been out of sorts and prone to being smurfed off.
Either that or this us how Cranky Old Woman sets in.
BIg hug from me, too. There’s no other women I’d rather rant and grouch with..
Thank you for saying that MM, as I have days when I feel sorry for anyone who has to come near me. The chicken stealing incident hasn’t been good for my attitude to being stuck here still in Toad Park. I am very jealous of Chaz’s move as I know how sick he was of all the bogans he encountered over in Perth. Those two sound happy as squirrels settling into their apartment near the Sydney Harbour & good on them, they’ve waited a long time for Marcella to get that transfer.
Let the ranting and raving commence. I will load the cannons, since I am rendered quite lost for words by the level of meanness of spirit from those bogans across the road.
Oh, yes! A good old rant with my favourite people. Margaritas, or daiquiris? I know, let’s have both. Lots of Kettle chips. Much CAEK. Some soothing pink noise in the background. And a table to thump.
I feel better already.
Just think how much better we will all feel once we’ve loaded Q’s trebuchet with burning tar to fling across the street at the bogan chook thieves.
No?
Sigh… You’re no fun. Now, who brought the shirtless firemen calendar? I… um… kinda wore mine out.
I’ve got Tucson Fire-fighters courtesy of a Facebook friend … and I have to say they’re an uninspiring and sometimes grubby looking lot. Our local volunteer fireies are easier on the eye.
Hmm, maybe they’d like to do a find-raising calendar? It would be community-spirited to take some photos of them with no shirts on, no? And perhaps a little baby oil…
Mmmm…. Baby oiled shirtless firemen….
I know, let’s set fire to Mama Mia’s house, and Bog Hollow, then take photos of the fireys while they’re standing on the footpath cheering. No, wait, that would be us standing on the footpath cheering, wouldn’t it?
http://news.domain.com.au/domain/real-estate-news/dutton-park-dump-attracts-online-surge-20150731-gioqyu.html
I came across this article in the news this morning, and as this was apparently a fireman’s house, I’m not sure they’d make terrible good house pets.
I found it hilarious to note that that Federation Jenga set is heritage listed. Would it even be possible to restore anything so far gone?
I think the technical term is that it’s in the Demolition control precinct, which used to mean pre 1945 and has recently been brought back to before 1912 or some such. So you can only demolish it if you can prove that the cost & effort involved in restoring it is beyond ridiculous.
I don’t think you’d have a problem knocking this one down, but there are lengthy delays on demolition orders so the problem is you’d have a property that you can’t tenant, and you’d not be able to count on building there for at least 6 months, more like 12 by the time it takes to get a DA for new plans through the council. So that’s an expensive 2 year minimum wait for a new house to move into.
Meanwhile, on the topic of things that are that far gone – you know those horrible little 2 bedroom closets in at Bog Hollow? NTO has installed a very noisy Indian couple in one room of the NE flat upstairs and is seeking a third person or, to quote the add ‘would suit a couple’ to tenant the other bedroom/horse stall.
I can see her logic – since Bike Rage Family now have 3 people in a one bedroom flat, why not put 4 in a two bedder?
This is why I have no need to travel in order to see the world. Thanks to NTO’s expansion of her Slum Hotel practices, I have a grand view of the squats of India from my toilet window. I had to actually bang on the walls whilst shouting at them the other night to get them to dial it down. To their credit they’ve made far less noise since, but OMG. That woman!
Indian, huh? Well, at least you won’t have the stench of Keen’s wafting in your bog window.
I’m curious about how that house got so run down so fast. Has NTO been raiding the ruins for building materials?
NTO is the one who likes to flavour her meals with keens, MSG & chicken salt, Catty, so until all that crap gives her an aneurism or we escape, I’m stuck with it.
We’ve always called that dump ‘the ghost house’ as it’s been in a state of perpetual decay for as long as we’ve lived here.
The add says that the owner died 8 years ago & as it’s been uninhabited since then, I’d say that there’s been some sort of ugly dispute over a will.
NTO’s *builder* (another jackass who has NFI WTF he is doing) has been digging up her front yard in preparation to set posts for her new front deck. I asked the bloke if he’d seen the holes (which are neither deep enough nor wide enough to satisfy a structural engineer) & he burst out laughing. Neither of us have any intention of telling her or the council that her deck is going to be structurally unsound. The poorer the quality of the build, the faster it is to falling down.
Mmm … MSG.
All of a sudden I want chicken fried rice and a good screaming match.
Tell me about it. Irma has gone AWOL & I’m starting to think the menopause is death till us part with PMS.
That sounds horrible, Q. Have you been taking your potions?
Winter is over so I’m back on sleep deprivation, Catty.
The helicopters, bongos & ferals are all once again active over and around Casa Q. That and the works on the trainline seem to be pretty much permanent. Even if I could sleep during the day, the storm repairs all around us would render than impossible & the sounds of Builder Radio have my teeth permanently on edge.
I’m at the point where the next thing that comes on the market that seems reasonable will be ‘Yep, whatever you want. Just get the hell out so I can move in next week.’
There’s a bit of that going around. No Irma here this month either. I’d be worried I was pregnant, only as I recall pregnancy made me teary and docile and these days I’m more on a hair-trigger and filled with homicidal rage.
Well it’s a shame to waste that. Come round here with a rocket launcher. I’ll point and you can shoot.
Have you got your car back yet, MM?
Hopefully this week. Getting quite used to this hire car.
Can’t we use some bioweapons instead? Wouldn’t you much rather her suffering was long and drawn out?
Also, I don’t want to risk blistering your lovely new paint work.
Actually I was thinking of the chicken thief and the family across the road where the burglar alarm goes off every freaking day. A few holes in their roof for the rats & the possums to climb in & dance on the ceiling would be a beautiful thing.
Ok, but not until we free the kidnapped chook. Don’t want any friendly fire.
Poor chicken lady. She was seething, yesterday. I suppose there’s a chance that it really is Mama Mia’s chook, but I do think it highly unlikely. I spoke to the gay boys that live behind her, just then. They haven’t heard any conversations about chicken theft & they’ve done their level best to block her out with leafy greens, so they haven’t seen anything untoward, either.
I wish she’d send the cops in. I don’t think those idiots would dare to do engage in retribution. Still. People are finding her flyer with the ‘Reward offered!’ incentive today, so here’s hoping someone decides it’s worth a carton of beer to restore it.
It’s coming up to Footy Finals. I’d say there’s much they’d do for a carton of beer. round your neck of the woods.
Yep. I think if it really is their chook they’d be happy to swap it for a bottle of Jim Beam and a handful of pizza vouchers, and I said as much to Lisa. I hope the bribe works.
In happy news there have been showers overnight here/ I hope they make their way down to you, Q.
How’s the dolly skirt going?
No luck with the showers, so colour me jealous.
At least there’s a swathe of new properties starting to pop up on the GC real estate market, so that’s heartening after the dearth of winter. And I feel less deranged for hearing the gay boys down the valley tell me that they find the neighbourhood every bit as depressing as I do. I think I cheered them up, actually, as they’d attributed the unpleasantness around them to homophobia so they were pleased that Jen & I & chicken lady feel enclosed by bogans, too.
I posted some pics of Dolly & her hoop skirt at my Knitting thread, the direction to them probably got lost in my waffle.
Only one mistake, & I darned it up so it won’t disintegrate & thought ‘that’ll do.’
I do like knitting in the round.
Although it’s nice to be back to my scarf with it’s sturdy 12 ply.
And Tuesdays are better than Mondays because I know that I get to escape to writing class on Wed & Thursday. Yay!
Did you guys see the twitter hashtag to farewell Bronny of #PutYourWalletsOut ?
Hilarious!
My fave was the T-Rex clutching the wallet on someone’s porch.
Things like this restore my faith in humanity.
LOL! Poor Bronny.
I’d be worried about how she was going to afford all of that hairspray for her beehive, until I remembered that she must have a lot of our hard-earned tax dollars squirreled away by now.
Perhaps she stashes her cash in the hive. It would explain the height of it.
And the forced, predatory nature of the grin beneath it.
As far as I can tell, she’s merely stepped down as Speaker. She’s still a politician, with a $300K+ annual salary, so she’ll just have to buy Black & Gold hairspray like the rest of us.
Only $300K? Oh, the humanity. This will have dreadful effects on the economies of Tuscany and Monte Carlo.
I read 370 but perhaps that was for the speaker role. She might be out on her arse, Catty – Tony’s grip on the leadership is still tenuous after all his cruddy Captain’s calls & I think the LNP know that they’ll be bleeding out from this wound long after she’s gone. There was a hilarious photo of Bronny made up of a collage of all the 394 members she’s ejected from the floor during her time as speaker.
Some days you guys really need to tweet, when the hive mind gets on a roll with one of these things the creativity of the masses is outstripped only marginally by their venom.
The only thing keeping Tones in the top job is the fact that Shorten is equally as hopeless. If Labor ever gets their act together, LNP will be out on their arses faster than a, a, a, really fast thing.
I believe the phrase you want is ‘Faster than Bronny’s chopper trip to an LNP fundraiser.’
Here’s my audacious plan for the Labour leadership: Turnball defects.
I know he’s ridiculously over-privileged, but he’s so smart and smooth.
Good plan. And it will be a seamless transaction, now that the way has been paved with most of the LNP’s policies.
I don’t even care how many helicopters he catches. Hell, he can coach his kid’s soccer from one .
Nooooo! It’s turned out to be so much fun having Toned Abs as the king of the hill that I don’t want it to end. Just because you two don’t witness the daily hilarity on twitter is no reason to wish an end to it for the rest of us!
Valid point, but there will come a time when we will require more of our PM than just comedic value. Trust me, Q, this is Australia; guaranteed we will vote in a replacement who can fill Tone’s giant red clown shoes admirably.
Whoever gets in, I will still have to do the washing up. Bring back the Roman Empire!
I can’t see how having a horse installed as a senator will get the dishwasher stacked but it might kick a few pollies hard in the arse when they screw up, which is more than the leader of the opposition, Mr. Beige Curtain can do, so yeah, why not?
(To quote First Dog – who will be at the writers’ festival, coming soon!)
Really?! Wow, maybe I’ll actually go this year.
I think it was $12 on the friday night or some such. The Bloke was surly about coming with me, if I get seats will you be my BWFF?
$20 and he’s on at 8pm on Friday 4 Sept. Interested?
I’ll have to see if Mum can put us up and mind the kids, so I’ll let you know. I’ve been promising to come down and see a friend for months so that would actually be a good reason.
Well I’ve bought the tickets, so if you decided to join me, Mr. Stinky can drop us off down there, since his reply to ‘would you like to go see First Dog?’ was a surly ‘He’s just a grumpy old man who drinks too much.’
So are a lot of our associates.
I told him to go look in the mirror. Besides, there would be nobody on stage at the BWF if you made it a Dry Event.
Nobody.
Just you & me staring at the crickets.
Crickets are quite soothing. But you can get too much of a good thing.
Speaking of writers, I’m having a rollicking good time of it sitting in on that writing class at the GC. The youngsters do seem to test the patience of the lecturer – they dribble into the room up to 45 minutes late & last week one turned up 10 minutes before the tutorial was due to finish, looking like she’d spent the previous 90 minutes choosing shoes & styling her hair. She didn’t bother showing up at all this week so it looks like she took his advice to heart.
i.e. Don’t bother turning up at all if you’re going to walk in as the rest of us walk out.
Now that we’ve broken the ice with the writing on command thing it’s getting to be rather fun. The first exercise yesterday revealed that everyone had murder in their hearts & prepping for the Zombie Apocalypse is at the forefront of our minds.
We’ve got a very grumpy German in the class who is quite surly about it all & doesn’t want to engage. She complains about things & then says ‘I suppose so,’ in aggrieved tones, whenever he tries to soothe her down.
She’s hilarious. Well, I think so.
I’ve befriended a youngster who has been living away from home since she was 16. She was raised by her Dad but can’t cope with him & there’s no mention of her mum, so that’ll be a story, I’d imagine. She was having a bit of a freak out about next week’s assessment, so I hope I helped to stop her worrying quite so much about that.
This is fun. I don’t know what possessed me to want to study counselling, when writing & Spanish have proven to be so much fun.
Yeah, counselling and the healing arts are all well and good – but the patients always spoil things.
Quite so. I can sit and read research about mental & physical health till my eyeballs bleed, but put a real human in front of me & my enthusiasm wanes.
Yeah, by and large they’re annoying and often stinky.
And why not. That’s the impression I hope to make when I visit my GP.
Good luck with that, Q. If you want tips on how to be as unpleasant as possible, go down to Centrelink at midday when the chronically unemployable are dropping off their forms.
I know I should feel sorry for them, but strike me lucky some people are thick. How did their bloodlines survive this long? It’s actually terrifying.
It’s like turtles. A turtle will lay up to 200 eggs in a single nest, but scientists reckon only one turtle in 1000 will live to be an adult. Thus it is with dole bludgers. Although their offspring aren’t devoured by seabirds, crabs and raccoons, there are plenty of other predators to knock the rugrats off – Jim Beam, DoCs and plain old neglect are among the main ones. So the Aussie dole bludger will spew forth as many offspring as possible before maturity or overdose set in.
Everyone (starting with Morgana) has been warning me that this is what I can expect to hear living next to the Koala reserve.
Unless Mr. Bear does this every night after sinking a bottle of scotch & then rocks out ‘Born to Be Alive’ on karaoke, with accompaniement by Mrs. Bear on the bongos, it will still be a damned site more peaceful than living here on Freak Street.
I, for one, would love to hear koalas singing “Born To Be Alive”.
I think they do most of their fighting in mating season. Most of the time they’re stoned, remember.
It will be just like we never left home.
Sounds a bit like my FIL when he falls asleep in front of the telly.
Well, here we are. Monday already. Does anyone else feel like time is flashing by faster and faster, like that old school starfield screensaver? I suppose it just goes faster and faster until you run out of it altogether.
Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.
Yup. I don’t know where the last 10 years went, and I don’t want to fritter away the next 10, that’s for sure.
This is another reason why knitting is good. Saves frittering minutes.
Knitting is still frittering. But it comforts me to know I have something to show for my frittered time. Also, something to shove in a cupboard so that when I die, my offspring are stuck with dozens of dubious homemade items that they don’t dare throw away. What? I can be a bitch from beyond the grave if I want to.
Hmm … you make me want to knit a toilet dolly. And matching seat warmer.
Yep. I’m thinking of making a hope chest of doll’s clothes for my sister’s kids that aren’t allowed to speak to Horrible Evil Aunty Q. I can’t imagine that they’ll tolerate their mother’s drug habit & her screeching abusive rants when they have children of her own.
Remember Meryl Street in August Osage County? That’s my sister.
If that doesn’t work out there’s plenty of other younglings around me who’ll enjoy them when The Breeding comes upon them.
Or you could donate to the hospitals. They put doll-sized clothes on the little stillborns so they’re nicer for the photos. Poor wee things.
True. Although I can’t abide pastels, and I’m not sure that my use of primary colours would appeal to the bereaved or those desperately hoping not-to-be bereaved.
The local CWA will have fundraisers and you’re right, I should join the Mudgeeraba branch when I get settled.
Just think of all the baking tips! You’d love it. Mum was going to join Coolum Branch but they shut down.
Absolutely.
Next winter I’m hoping to hang out at the pony club & see if I can befriend Horsie Girls my age who might let me go riding with them. I met a lovely one at the Mudgeeraba show & it sounds like there’s a few over 50s into trail riding out there.
It’s still sinking in.
I went to Coals to get away from the infernal racket around here. The annoying noisy tenant from the upstairs flat (who we’ve asked to STFU & wished into a pit of scorpions many times in his tenure) queued behind my loaded trolley, and another, all the while singing along loudly to his bollywood tunes on his ipod.
His purchase? a single mars bar.
So he was either too lazy, too stupid or too inept to use the 12 items or less aisle (empty) or the self serve.
I don’t know how I’ll get out of here without punching one of them, truly.
When you have gone, you’ll look back in amazement at how you managed to live in Brisvegas for so long. It’s nice to visit, but I always travel home with a song in my heart and a deep gratitude that I no longer live there.
The traffic, the people, the traffic….
It could be worse, Q. I’m not exactly sure how, but I’m sure it could be worse. Actually, knowing your neighbours, they’ll probably make sure it gets much worse before you escape. I hope you throw them a farewell barbecue before you leave. In a bottle. Full of burning petrol. Through their windows.
A Bankston Bye-Bye?
NTO will have to find someone else to annoy once we leave. Casa Q is heavily fortified now & as the bloke says, tenants will probably be out working all day & won’t be here during the Scritching Hours. So long as we have the kind of tenants that make plenty of noise of their own, they should be fine.
Now I just need to find a lovely set of gay boys who want to live here happily ever after, hosting raucous cocktail parties every Saturday night.
Is a karaoke machine a tax deduction if you purchase it for a rental property?
Yes if you’re a night-club entertainer, no if you’re Speaker of the House.
LOLZ.
I’m picturing the house cranking up the karaoke to Carol Bayer-Sager’s ‘You’re moving out today,’ on Bronny’s box.
Why not? They did it for Peter Slipper:
Get-out-of-my-house-you-dirty-rat….
Banned tracks include “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Khe San” – owing to the frequent helicopter references.
I’m so happy I can’t think of anything witty to say. I just trawled all over West End & had people asking me why I look so happy.
Because I’m leaving, on a jet plane…well, on a removal truck.
Tra la la la la la lalalalalalalala.
I just had a thought, are you going to get Guido to let the Casa or are you going to do it yourself?
You know, Q, Madam has a good point. Private rentals are a colossal pain in the arse. You should get yourself an agent – it makes things so much easier when you are applying for Landlord’s Insurance, and when you get your tax returns done. I’d recommend contacting LJ Hooker first…. and Ray White last.
Yeah, I’m in favour of the one-remove, too. My parents had all sorts of issues renting their place in Enogerra. And that was ages ago before society crumbled.
Sorted. We lined up the guy that sold Jen’s house. Although if a bunch of raucous gay boys rolled up I would consider myself well pleased with life.
You should just put a compulsory bongo clause in the lease.
LOLZ.
Dear Aisling, I should fish out that story for writing class. Our teacher would love it.
I still think my friend the Cat Breeder had the best idea – Con students. Endless, endless scales. Preferably on the tuba. And they are all well-behaved little nerds so they would settle in, get cosy, and the din wouldn’t bother them as they’d make so much of their own. I will look into that in the coming weeks, I’m sure there’s an accommodation service down there.
Put a sign up at the local Irish bar. Maybe Aisling is still hanging around.
A girl who can’t make her way out of a Ghetto toilet would be hard-pressed to navigate out of Brisbane.
That’s what the tar & feathering ceremonies are for.
Having Aisling locked in your bog will mean NTO can spy on her without leaving home… the Indian couple’s home, at any rate. By keeping NTO in their apartment and off the street, you will have done the community a great service. No, actually, bugger them. They don’t deserve it. Forget Aisling. Look up that tribe of fire twirlers from a couple of years ago. Offer them half price rent for a month if they can ‘accidentally’ set fire to NTO’s new decking, and another month of half rent if they can burn down Mama Mia’s chook shed.
LOL. I’d forgotten the Fire Twirlers. I think they hang out down in West End by the river, but there’s a tribal drumming group with fire twirlers that assembles at Burleigh every Sunday night. That was one of the things that made me wary of buying down there…so beautiful, but, Hippies!
Oh my goodness I’m so happy!
As much as I will be sad to leave my lovely, quirky, unique little house, I’ll be so pleased to be out of here & up on that lovely treed hill, listening to the debauches of the bears – instead of the Canadians in Flat 4.
There are hippies everywhere. Some say they and cockroaches will be the only thing to survive the Nuclear Winter.
Well it’s not like the terminators would view them as a threat.
I can just see the assessment coming up on that pixelated screen.
Subject: Hippy
Threat level, Nits.
LOL! I wonder what NTO’s threat level would be? Boil, perhaps?
WEEEED!
Oh if only I had the skills to photoshop maggots & ibis into this pic.
Yes, it does sound like she’s been smoking weed.
We just saw a crow with a packet of Doritos. It took him a couple of minutes (because his mates were swooping him and trying to steal the packet) but he got it open, sang a little victory song, and then chowed down on corn chips. Adorable! I love crows.
Gigantor saw a wading bird use a piece of bread to burley up a school of fish, then devour a juicy victim.
Maybe we should be more scared of birds taking over than Skynet?
Oh, I’m already terrified:
They made a Barbie of this. I totally wish I’d purchased it.
Hahaha. clever birds.
Perhaps when I’m gone the Ibis will rise up & turn on NTO when she is disinfecting her bins in 36C temperatures in the middle of the street.
Or the noxious gases will rise up and asphyxiate her…. if we’re lucky.
That’s entirely within the realms of possibility, Catty.
The new deck that she’s building goes out over the sewer line, so if that ever erupts & needs replacing, it’s going to be expensive to fix that with a deck sitting 800ml above ground level over it.
That drain has been leaking for years & I long ago gave up complaining about it. Fortunately for NTO I don’t think she has a sense of smell, so she won’t notice when the reconstituted sausages & Keens curry powder rise up through the floor boards to steam her in her rocking chair.
Our council would never have allowed her to build a deck over the sewer pipes. BCC must have rocks in their heads…. or, they know her well and are hoping that the pipe explodes while she’s sitting on the deck. I hope someone gets video footage of it happening. It won’t be you, though, as by then you will be comfortably ensconced in a little slice of Caramello heaven.
I’m shocked that they let her build within 6m of the setback limit from the front boundary, but we elected not to say anything about it because we knew she’d hit the sewer when they dug out the foundations. I warned her where it was when she first moved in & that it wasn’t legal depth below ground level.
Aside from that, you are actually meant to check for underground services before you dig.
If she chooses to disregard my warnings & her dodgy brothers builders stuffs up, good.
That will make for an interesting water feature!
Get the spycams set. We’ll get sewerage exploits on Funniest Home Videos yet!
The term Shitstorm comes to mind.
LOLZ. There’s a lot of exposed gopher holes down there, so if we get another apocalyptic hail storm…
This might be what happened to that lost colony at Roanoake.
Well we did have those earthquakes a week or so ago.
I wonder what the odds are of a sinkhole yawning open beneath Bog Hollow & sucking all within it into the dankest septic tank in hell?
Not short enough odds for my liking.
Nor mine, come to think of it. Still, that is my happy thought for the day. Thankfully her builders have gone AWOL. I think they’re trying to teach her a lesson along the lines of ‘Follow me around, lady, and you’ll have to do go to Kenmore.’
Actually she has been quiet between bucket watering bouts & Gweedo’s trusty assistant had to shout and knock on every single door in Bog Hollow before they found her yesterday. Perhaps she low-jacked the builder’s van?
Or the Ganja van.
It has been despicably dry. I’ve been promised showers for days. Where are my dang showers!
I just heard Jenny Woodward on 612 promising a thorough drenching, but you might have to wait till early next week. She issued the caveat that she doesn’t trust computer models as they lie and lie and lie, but according to the modelling, SEQ is in for a lovely soggy few days. So get your washing done & remind the dog & the children what happens if they fail to wipe their paws at the doors.
Random info dump: I was listening to some researcher talking about insomnia a while ago, (who knows what when or where, those details are lost in the mire of my brain fog) & they said they’d found that for hard cases of insomnia, the subjects all slept better if you reduced the room temperature to 18C.
Which would explain why you & I sleep better in winter.
My spring insomnia kicked in a couple of weeks ago so I decided to test the SCIENTS and what do you know, 18C – much better.
So. I recommend that you get yourself a split system AC for at least one room of the house, even if it’s the lounge room & then you just go camp there for the summer.
This summer Imma set my bedroom air temps to ‘crypt’ & hopefully I will be far less cranky & sleep-deprived.
Casa Caramello has ducted AC so if you do come to visit we’ll set it to Frosty for you & see if it helps.
‘If you do come to visit’…. heh heh heh…. it’s almost like she doesn’t realise we’re moving in, isn’t it Madam?
Sssh, it’s probably a psychological defence mechanism. Pass me the packing tape?
Yeah, I read the same thing. No way to do the lounge room, though, it’s confluent with most of the house. Guess I’ll just have to do my room. The sacrifices I make!
Haha.
I can’t, Little One from creative writing class has it, along with the tape gun & about a dozen of my packing boxes – I lent them to her on Friday so she can move house. She’s leaving a neurotic boarding house owner behind the Coals at Labrador for a 9 bedroom share house a few doors from the beach down at Surfers. She’s moving in with one of her besties & the rest of the house is full of German girls.
Stories like that make me feel like I missed out when I was young.
Whoops you just popped up. MM, you can get a big kickarse system like we’ve got in the dining room. That cools/warms most of our house, so long as the bedroom doors are shut.
I’ve got no ceiling cavity for the ducts, though. It might have to wait until I’ve achieved my goal of plonking a Queenslander down where the shack used to be.
Or craft something out of shipping containers. Still haven’t quite decided.
http://www.realestate.com.au/blog/house-made-of-31-shipping-containers/
Well, not nearly so lavish (how good is that bathroom?) but, yes. I’d need only about 3 I reckon, though. Depends how many boys stay with me.
Gigantor might move out, but I think you’re going to have Alfonse and TGP with you for a very long time. Not sure about the Wildebeest – how long do those things live?
I thought the Wildebeest was one of Greybeards GM experiments gone horribly wrong & it stowed away with one of his midnight run drops of rats and scrub turkeys. As such it will live as long as his viral spores – forever, I would think.
Or for one week after it’s warranty runs out.
He won’t live much longer if he keeps shaving his legs in my bathtub. Neither will the Wildebeest.
That’s not leg hair – it’s Alfonse’s nostril hair, Catty.
Little known fact: nostril hair is the mark of a virile man.
Indeed. This lot has marked the bath-tub, it’s the texture of razor wire.
Oh, dear. I must be a very virile man then.
In a woman it’s a sign of discerning taste in friends, Catty.
And so handy for scrunching into balls to scour the roasting trays.
I save my chin hairs for that.
I’m collecting my chin hairs for the chicken soup. There’s a big pot of it simmering on the stove, ready to feed my poor little ‘flu victims. Even the Boss has succumbed. They are all suffering horribly. The Gimmee rang me yesterday and I told her that all the kidlets and the Boss were sick as, and she said, “oh, no, that sounds like the bad ‘flu I had last weekend”. Um, last weekend? When you were here for dinner? Bloody hell, sometimes I wonder what that girl uses her brain for.
Oh noes. There’s some nasty bugs around, Catty. I hope you all feel better soon.
Mwah.
xxxx
We’re all well – despite TGPs atempts to convince me otherwise on the way to school yesterday – but I feel your pain.
I hope you don’t collapse too, when everyone else is better. I believe vodka kills germs?
In that case tip the bottle over Greybeard. A little bird said that the Grandevil has infected him again. We might have to give her a new title if she keeps this up – Plague, perhaps.
After all those years of bio-terrorism, you’d think he’s be more resilient. We’d better get him on some olive leaf extract or somesuch.
It’s slowing him down, one of Spanner’s barbs will catch him if he’s not careful. Speaking of untimely deaths, I read the Murray book on Allison Baden-Clay’s murder. He’d skipped a few details that I read on the journalist’s twitter feed when they were reporting the case, so I wonder if that was because it was conjecture or he did it because it was a useful device to ramp up her victim status for sales.
Not a bad read, but unfortunately there’s never a balanced perspective in any of the disaster bios. G was a creep, so I don’t want to look like I’m defending him, but truly, she was pretty off-balance herself. Three chapters in & I was saying to the Bloke ‘Farken, I’m so glad I got out of the western suburbs.’
A great deal was made over his dalliances & affairs, and yet it was completely glossed over that in the early days of their relationship she was involved with another man & from the sounds of things she was playing them off against each other. She couldn’t decide between them & she told her friends that in the end she devised a ‘test’ to decide which would make the better husband.
She took each of the two men to a hotel for a romantic night out & she dropped her clothes & adornments all over the floor & went off for a long shower & grooming session in the bathroom. When she came back, boyfriend one had left her crap where she’d dropped it, but in Gerard’s case he picked it all up & put it away. The other fellow sounded like a much nicer guy but he wasn’t as flash as G so I’d say that was part of her choice, too.
I found that utterly bizarre. It did set the tone for what she seemed to expect of a husband as provider, though. It’s disappointing that Murray didn’t have the courage to include the psychologist’s note, that ABC seemed to have an unrealistic idea of what a married relationship entails.
There were lots of little snippets like that in the book where I rolled my eyes and thought ‘If a man pulled this nonsense the DV workers would be shouting ‘Controlling partner, run!’
FWIW it sounds like there was a long-standing & unhealthy pattern of both of them making efforts to control each other.
Anyway, at least he included enough damning anecdotes in the book for the discerning to see just how off-balance they both were, but you’d have to have a brain to be able to reason it out, as he trod very carefullly with that.
I’d love to know how much he left out, and why.
It was odd that they couldn’t find a neighbour or a friend or a relative to cite any previous instances of family violence. It sounds like they were both just deeply dissatisfied with their lives, and each intent on making the other accountable for their disappointments whilst pressing forward with the lovely happy family facade.
The average western suburbs family, really.
Sozza, on rereading I should have been clearer. Two different psychologists gave evidence that in couples counselling GBC opened with the goal that he wanted to end the marriage. She was adamant that wasn’t going to happen. One of them (Bardon counselling centre, brilliantly trained folk) told her bluntly that once a marriage came to that pass invariably it failed. ABC didn’t like that, so she kept therapist shopping until she found one that met her requirements. (Relationships Australia – not the best trained folk, in my experience – we had one of them as a lecturer) – this was the one that told her she was allowed to grill GBC about the affair & vent about her feelings & he was to STFU and listen & if he said anything at all he was to express remorse.
I’m really not surprised the lengths that woman went to in order to suppress the fact she’d given that advice.
My point being that if you put the shoe on the other foot & a male was behaving like that….um, well.
I don’t know why he didn’t just leave.
It does seem like the sensible path of action & I’d say it comes down to simple narcissism – as long as the facade remained he could come home to a hot meal, three well-behaved children, and he could maintain his platform of Community Leader. And do whatever he wanted on the side.
Still, having seen my sister’s antics when confronted with the prospect of a husband leaving, you never know what’s going on behind the scenes. I doubt there’s anyone but me & her first husband that saw behind the facade in the breakdown of her first marriage, she kept a wonderful shop front for her friends so they never once saw her in one of her daily meltdowns & in Threat & Ultimatum mode.
I can understand why her second husband chose to ram his car into a line of gum trees rather than face what she’d have to deliver if he tried to leave. There was of course the added incentive that she’d take him down if he left, having all the behind the scenes info on the Drug Baronetcy that he vacated. She said as much to me, once.
I look at GBC’s behaviour & how he made hundreds of thousands of dollars disappear & I wonder if he had a thing for cocaine & gambling, too. I’d say there’s lots we’ll never know. But yes. Plainly he just should have dumped her, and if he really believed she was that emotionally fragile that she wouldn’t cope, he should have called a meeting with her family & told them his concerns & buggered off.
Sigh – I’m on my soapbox again, aren’t I? I really need to set fire to that thing. Ignore me – it’s just always so boggling to me why some women will persist in trying to make a relationship with an asshat work, particularly when the asshat states clearly that he’d like to go off & make someone else miserable. Bizarre.
So, changing topic, how’s those Niners? Did your eldest mince another football team, MM?
I should get the Boss to start playing football. He needs a distraction, because he’s getting bored sitting around the house. Yesterday he started researching how to make a nuclear reactor. I hope he doesn’t try to make one – his home brew is lethal enough.
Perhaps he could combine the two?
Rumour has it that Bangarr took his cherry bourbon to the Melbourne Writers Festival & knocked the socks off the Scribe’s Groupies.
I’m not sure what Bangarr puts in that stuff but by all reports, it’s deadly.
Wood chips. The Boss grilled Bangarr for brewing tips at Mayhem’s wedding, and has implemented all he learned. Now his home brew is 90%, but his bitch of a wife makes him water it down to 40%. Aren’t I an evil cow?
After another weekend of the greasy gruelling terror that is The Bacon, I have returned.
I have NFI why someone would want to keep a relationship that’s over in all but name, but then again a lot of people put much more store in social standing, what everyone else is saying and thinking and etc. than I have time for. Is it like hoarding, but emotional, perhaps?
Or are some people so scared of change – and even possibly personal growth, or personal demon wrangling – that they’d rather stay in something no matter how grimy and tedious than face The Unknown?
People are confusing.
Catty, he should make a tiny portable one for Grey Nomads.
Well, he was wondering how to get hold of plutonium. Fortunately for him, I’ve just taken him to the doctor, and the horse pills they prescribed look just like plutonium rods. I’m guessing we will have atom splitting by Thursday.
How are you feeling, you poor love? I suppose you couldn’t mention your own symptoms to the doctor for fear of being put on Prozac..
Don’t diss the drugzz.
My opinion of SSRIs has gone up immensely, ever since I discovered that a very low dose of them makes someone like Gerard Spade & Clay seem like a worthwhile human being & a desirable husband.
With psychotropic powers like that, imagine what they could do for my opinion of the door-slamming sweary bogans & their yipping cattle dogs round here.
73 days to go!
I think I’m going to die. I would, if I had time. The only thing keeping me from lying down and letting the virus kill me, is my beautiful beautiful friends. I love youse guys.
* Dons biohazard suit*
MWAH! and right back atcha Catty love.
Hope you feel better soon. I’m very impressed you made that poncho & just disappointed you didn’t get pix. I wish you could come to crochet class with me – the women at the craft table were learning how to follow a pattern from photocopied pages with all these weird symbols all over them. They said it was much easier than trying to follow a written pattern.
Like this only theirs were far more intricate.
I’d love to learn how to read that map.
It’s not a crochet pattern. It’s the schemata for Stargate.
I keep looking for the numbers to join the dots. But you’re right, if they added the numbers you’d probably get a silhouette of ET.
It’s a doily! I could probably do that one. It looks so much easier than all those TC 2D R2D FO patterns.
It’s hypnotic. I might stare at it next time I have trouble sleeping.
The Sunday crochet class at knitch started there over a year ago doing a ‘squares’ class & they have been at it ever since. They said that those patterns are by far the easiest to follow as it’s impossible to get lost. I am very impressed with that shop.
What size hooks do you use, Catty?
(May be asking for a green & red elven friend).
If the thicker standard hooks are called crocheting hooks, they really should call the little fine lace ones quavering hooks.
Don’t you think?
that makes sense. Then when some brute like me manages to snap it in half, that would be called a Semi-Quaver, right?
Such is my limited musical knowledge. It would mean you kept them in sheets. too, I think. On a bar.
Yeah, I was crocheting some extra length on half a pair of pants… allegro… but it wasn’t working so I tore it in half… clef… and again and again… treble clef… damn it alto hell! I coda been scoreing instead, if I’d forte it.
Bravo! Allegro Non Troppo!
Oh, I’m Troppo all right.
I’ve got Spring fever. I was thinking seriously about washing the windows and screens in our sun/lounge room.
Never fear, I sat down and knitted until the urge passed.
If you’re Troppo, that means I’m Stroppo.
Congratulations, MM. Otherwise that would”ve made you Moppo.
I’ll be Nope-o. I just don’t want to do a GD thing. Off I go to work!
The Boss has recommenced hassling me about cleaning our windows. For goodness sakes, if I didn’t clean them after his last marathon nagging session, what on earth makes him think I’m going to clean them this time?
I can’t even open our windows because of NTO’s builder cutting up wood out the front. Cleaning them will be done by someone else, in November, when we’re gone.
I’d go on strike, only it would only cause a huge back-log and I doubt anyone would notice anyway. Maybe I’ll run away to Melbourne again. But I’ll wait until the Boss is back to work. He’s too hard a task-master.
Good point. How’s his treatment going, Catty?
What with all the hydrotherapy, physiotherapy et al, I thought he’d have seen much more improvement. But it appears that despite some small improvement, my early fears that he is permanently munted will be realised. My prediction is that he will be on the unemployment queue by Christmas. Poor love. He hates not being able to do stuff.
Oh Catty, that sucks. It must be a terrible worry for you.
Big hugs.
MWAH.
xxxxx
Catty, if he’s become permanently disabled due to a workplace accident, and he’s on work-cover, surely he’s entitled to some sort of financial compensation?
Yeah, his Super should have some sort of TPI facility. That’s terrible news, hope he makes more improvement than seems possible ATM.
Ditto. Still, it means more stress & strain & uncertainty for all of you while you go through the hoops.
What Madame said, too.
I’ve seen a lot of these things improve over time. And FWIW, the hard cases that came to me & the osteo all reported that the standard medical procedures did SFA good.
There’s always witchcraft, Catty.
Witchcraft and Chi. I’ve got a new-found respect for acupuncture, ever since my practice of Tai Chi has caused me to be able to (sometimes) feel the flow,
But I think you said he tried it and it was no good, Catty? If anyone sees my memory, tell it I miss it.
I think it ran off into the sunset chasing some loose marbles, hand in hand with mine.
I barely miss it. I can’t remember what I used it for.
I have enough faculties left to miss my marbles.
Mmmmm…. shiny sunset…. what were we talking about again?