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Can’t come too soon for me. How are your “wee lads” getting on?
Wow! 6’3″ a fine strapping lad. And yeah, Gaming Club sounds fair. At least he hasn’t joined the World Conquest Club. Or…?
Brood’s not bad, grandbrood is thriving. PB continues to astonish and delight. Us anyway. Sandy said she was a snake the other morning for hours. She got tired and had to lie in the sun every so often to warm up, had lovely zigzag scales and promised not to bite her mother, but anyway she was a python so no biggie. Sound familiar?
I just spoke to Catty in the Horse Piddle & we were going ‘OMG, he’s 12, remember when he was a wee little fellow & he shot GB between the eyes outside the Pfoffertjes stand at the Abbey Fayre’.
She’s still miffed that she missed that.
She’s talking of moving the family to Queensland, so perhaps we could arrange a rerun?
She didn’t say. She just said that her mother is much occupied caring for her father so she doesn’t have a lot of free time to go visit her other relatives.
She’s very attached to the children’s school though & having had one child run off the rails in her teen years, I don’t think she’ll want to take any chances with the rest of her brood.
If they do move, I think they’ll be researching schools very carefully & making the choice of location accordingly.
I’ve already sent her details on Palm Beach Currumbin High (which is apparently incredibly good) so if you want to entice her up your end, you’ll have to compete with that.
🙂
What, no awards for Horticulture?
My BIL the Drug Lord got one from the state government about 15 years ago.
I’d love to say I’m joking, but it’s true.
Well it was Woombye.
You should see the hole they’ve cut in the top of the hill here for the road.
It’s pure red. I can’t go by without wanting to plant bananas & pineapples.
We’ve got mostly fill in our yard – rocks, clay & nutgrass, from where they bulldozed the hill to build the blocks.
I keep thinking I should take a leaf out of NTO’s book & trawl up the hill with a barrow & a shovel.
Gosh it’s nice not to have any lunatics next door.
I ran out of Burning Urges when I waved Tatty Bye to the boarding house.
Someone else can grow my carrots. Until I win lotto & get slaves, it’s trial enough that I have to stand up on my fascist afflicted feet & cook them.
Our local woollies charges almost double for some items as what they charge in Coals down at Burleigh Waters. One of our neighbours gave me the tip to shop down there. It means rubbing shoulders with the ageing & drug-addled tattoo beasts & it’s stall-to-stall zimmer frames, but better that than the Mattel Mamas with their engorged lips & lashes down at the local.
Late comment on the Coals-Woolies thing but all of us down here have drifted away from the Dastardly Duo. There’s a couple of IGAs with reasonable prices, good parking and decent coffee shops nearby, plus Aldis. And Aldi has TOOLS.
The Boss is already eagerly anticipating the return of a family dynamic in which I buy the food and he complains I’ve bought the wrong sort. Personally, I’m all for this new system, especially if it means meals like the one he made tonight. It was magnificent! And effective. Within an hour, I was squealing with delight at the contents of the toilet bowl.
I do not believe that I’ve ever read a sentence like that last one before, in all my long years. Nice to have you back Catty – I hope you become a regular. (Yes, it was intentional)
I’m sayin’ nuthin. That lion will attack anything anyway. It was her parent’s 8th anniversary last night so we had champagne and Lyn cooked a section of the meal that suited Jen’s exclusion diet. She’s dropped a clothing size or nearly two, got a fitbit and is feeling better so fingers crossed. Not to do with the epilepsy sadly but she’s much happier. PB is often a dragon now (Smaug) and sets things on fire with her breath. She also ate her brother ALL UP and he was apparently ‘licious. Do you know if there’s a support group for parents and grandparents of such children Madam?
Speaking of fires, the smoke alarm at the House of Wax & Beutay across the road has been bipping every minute since Sunday night. Not a major irritant to us as we’ve been sleeping with the AC on to cope with the nocturnal humidity & Joni Mitchell does tend to block it out, but I gather from my dog-walk chats that she’s giving her nearest neighbours the shits.
The hilarious thing has been that she gets half a dozen or so Vanity Plate Mamas turning up for her yoga/pilates classes once or twice a day & it seems they can all do yoga with a smoke alarm whining that it wants a new battery.
do none of them know how to change one? And is it possible none have complained that it’s messing with their zen?
The cleaner, the pool guy & the yard guy have all turned up to service the House of Wax & yet it seems none among them know how to deal with a smoke alarm.
She’s had her children back from the Father Land this week & all three of them seem to think it’s normal to sleep with a smoke alarm yipping at them.
Ergo, The Bloke wants to go over there on the weekend & ask her if she needs help & if she wants to borrow a ladder.
I’ve forbidden him to do so, as I don’t want to encourage her to think that Bimbo Rescue is so close at hand.
Besides, she & her mates all look like they used to be Cheerleaders for the GC Thugby Club.
Surely they can form a human pyramid for her to scale so she can change the fecking battery?
I was feeling a bit mean for despising Madame of the Raccoon Lashes, but the smoke alarm ineptitude has me thinking she deserves our sneers.
So.
Tell me, Peoples.
How many Eyelash Extenders does it take to change a 9 volt battery & what possible reasons could she have for being unable to do so?
When we moved, the new place had heaps of smoke alarms so the spares I’d brought went into cupboards. Not necessarily logical cupboards. You can probably guess the rest. It took hours to track down that irritating 45 sec PIP.
Not mine. I’ve never won an argument with any of the damn things.
greybeard3 - 11 March, 2016 at 9:21 am
The oldest house on the block is 6 years old, GB. I can’t see why anyone would bring a stray smoke alarm into a new building that’s covered by current building codes. They have to be hard-wired into the electrickery outside all the bedrooms.
The nice folk behind her have said that they can see the one that’s beeping, it’s in an easily accessible room that the household uses all the time.
His theory was that they must all be deaf.
I’m going beyond that & declaring them all to be idiots.
That’s the only thing that explains the earnest conversation I just heard from the Mattel Mamas departing yoga, about the best way to ingest Activated Charcoal.
I might set up a wheat-grass stand to catch them as they leave, and offer discounts on BBQ Briquettes for them to crumble over their paleo muesli, or whatever the hell it is that these bimbos eat for breakfast.
Still, at least they’re not annoying on the level of what we had at Toad Park. The display of idiocy is kind of entertaining & if only it was more original I would take notes & include them in my memoirs.
They arrive, they go in, they stand on their heads for an hour emitting little puffs of charcoal gas from their nether regions, & they leave.
Hey perhaps that’s what the smoke alarm is for…they’re using it to keep time for breaths in & charcoal out?
I think one of her neighbours (not the Scots, the baby family who cop it the worst) went in & diplomatically fixed it for her yesterday afternoon. They’re toddler has been really distressed – ‘flu, I think – so I think they were sick of the sleep deprivation.
I’ve realised it wasn’t stupidity, it was passive aggression. I looked at her website & it looks like she’s started up classes at the local hall, where she can fit 25 of them in rather than squeezing 4-8 of them into her garage. Looks like she’s been trying to cancel her home classes & to funnel them into the hall classes during school hours. Makes sense, you wouldn’t want to be stuck working evenings & weekends when you’ve got 3 kids to look after.
So I think she’s working through a range of strategies to irritate anyone who is insisting on attending her home classes.
Looks like Racoon Lashes is smarter than I’d thought.
Actually that’s probably what she’s thinking.
And no, they are hard-wired in, so with Skynet to back it up it will not stop. Ever.
Not until someone is terminated & by the foul looks she’s getting from the Scots on the corner, that could be on their agenda.
Did I tell you I saw another snake in our garden yesterday?
I think it might have been another green tree snake, as it was the same size & shape, but it was the colour of the road base, so maybe not. Wikipedia says they can be pretty much any colour so perhaps it was one of the blue ones.
No wonder there’s always a kook sitting on our street light staring down at our garden.
There’s rich pickings for him & his clan in there.
Yup. There is a blue variant and quite pretty too. It’s not all blue but there’s a blue pattern on it of varying shades. And green trees are shy and harmless little critters. Unless you’re a frog or a mouse and I’m sure quokkas would be too big for them.
Today we’ve had a pirate, a curlew, a baby and a leopard at various times. The curlew was a pest at Eastland because it “stands very still and then you can’t see it at all”. Also got my first “Honestly grandad!” – you can imagine the tone. I can’t wait till she’s 3. They slow down then, right?
It’s quiet time now and she padded out a few minutes ago, grabbed some books and went back to her room.
Mmm, the green-cross vet website says that pets can be poisoned by green tree snakes.
I’m more concerned about ticks & cane toads, as occasionally a small cane toad gets into the cat pen.
Thankfully the cats aren’t really interested in going out there at night & that’s when the toads are about.
And if they are out there, they are up in their hammocks, 2m above the ground level.
There’s no real way of keeping snakes out of the garage, so we are probably more at risk of startling one than the animals.
Oh well.
One of the hazards of living in such a beautiful part of the world.
And I still think that the most dangerous animal I’ll encounter down here is the dreaded Red P-plater.
Up here? Not sure, I’d say it depends what time the bar opens.
Look at this.
I was trying to explain to The Bloke about the Activated Charcoal fad that was rejuvenated by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Poop blog & lo & behold, it’s got worse.
Now they’re actually making cocktails with it, so you can throw down your glass of poison & trust in the charcoal to suck it out.
I vote we put Mr. Catty’s improved water to good use & we patent a range of Activated Charcoal brownies, before the Tim Tam company gets wise enough to cash in on it. http://www.villagevoice.com/restaurants/this-is-why-you-should-put-activated-charcoal-in-your-cocktail-8351444
The only good scorched almond is a chocolate coated scorched almond. (Y/N?)
greybeard3 - 13 March, 2016 at 2:25 pm
I meant Cocktail-charcoal brownies, of course.
Hell, we could throw the entire contents of the Mexican Pharmacy into them & I will set up a stall outside the gym down at Miami.
We will be rich, I tell you, Rich!
We may have some trouble locating the cook. Apparently she moved house while I was in the horsepiddle. Actually, I haven’t laid eyes on her since the Boss told her I had cancer. But I’m sure a batch of special brownies will lure her back. I’ll have to cook them here, though. Quokka doesn’t have a kitchen, and Madam’s place is too risky – TGP might scare away potential customers by splashing them with holy water and shouting scripture.
When we moved in here, there were no smoke detectors at all. We installed one directly above the toaster. To my bewilderment, it took us five years to get around to moving it. As a result, the sound of a smoke alarm now makes us all crave toast. Mmmmm….
Oh and Catty that’s standard fare.
As I told you on the phone the other day, my family were just annoyed & inconvenienced by my surgery & that set the pattern, really, for the following two decades.
My family always were the type to find other peoples’ illness/suffering/misfortune a matter of deliberate inconvenience to themselves, though, so, Situation Normal.
Welcome to the Club.
Nuts and shoots are activated with steam. I understand charcoal is also activated with steam. Something to do with enlarging the carbon pores or some crap.
Speaking of treadmills (kind of) may i heartily (snerk) recommend a fitbit or similar? Lyn and I got them after my little problem and now Jen & Sandy both have them. Amazingly for a keep fit thing, the initial enthusiasm hasn’t worn off. My resting heart rate was down to 57 the other day and we’ll do almost anything to get the steps up to the 10000 mark. I think I mentioned the morose guys at the Brand Smart place, slumped in chairs with bags of shopping while I did circuits? That was me – once!
You want to borrow my steam mop?
And yes, well done you, getting activated, GB.
I don’t think the Fitbit is for me.
I’m not a fan of being strapped up to things, and in any case much of my exercise takes place in the water. I don’t think it would last long in the lap lane or when I topple off the SUP into the salty waters of Currumbin Creek.
I had a pedometer for a long while, but it broke.
I’m not worried, our fitness & health is going back to pre-house hunting levels.
I’m finding it much easier to walk with the hound now that we’ve got the flat concrete surfaces of the esplanades, and the pristine 5yro footpaths up here on the hill at Pleasantville. And no neighbours to crane their heads & shout ‘Oh yoohoo’ every time I stick my head out the door.
One of my GFs said her husband got a Fitbit for Xmas. They have a sail boat moored at Manly so they head out on Moreton Bay most weekends. She said that after one long, rough day at sea, when her husband hadn’t gotten off his arse once, the fitbit said he’d jogged 20 kilometres.
Apparently they measure arm movement, so it was measuring his movements with the Tiller.
I’m thinking I could probably get a reading like that just from using the requisite amount of sign language for peak hour in the gold coast traffic.
Nope, it’s definitely not waterproof so not suitable for semi-aquatic folks. Even for me that’s a mild nuisance. And we’ve all found various oddities in the measurements. Jen was peeved that it ignored the stationary bike exercise and I found pushing a shopping trolley doesn’t count since in both cases your hand is stable. But it’s still a motivator and fun to get that literal buzz when you get to 10,000. Also tells me I average nearly 30 flights of stairs a day!
Huh. Gas. That’s what the Boss said, but Trev the Fart Baby was well and truly a spawnling. My lovely new microfibre sheets were rent in twain. Fortunately Trev left home within hours and has not returned.
Actually I was thinking of ‘rents as in guests over the school holidays.
When are they this year? We’ve got the week after Easter off from uni but sometimes our holidays differ from school. They have to squeeze in summer & winter schools these days, so the terms can be a bit different.
Noooooo! Two weeks of Young People (urgh) roaming free in the streets and shopping centres. Can’t they be put in storage or something?
To be honest though, the ones around here are fine. Walking past the high school down the road from Sandy was eerie when we first moved. They *smiled* and said hello. Even the ones having a sly puff down the back streets just grin. And the politeness on the buses, to drivers and passengers, is great. It was like the Stepford Teenagers except for a bit of comforting scruffiness and banter.
We’ve been out on Currumbin Creek all morning, with the SUP ladies’ fitness group. The owners are away at some race on the NSW coast so thankfully – since the shop was closed – the fitness group took pity on us, let us in, & took us out with them. It helps that The Bloke knows one of their number from the Horsepiddle job, & she lives one block away from us at Pleasantville.
Otherwise we’d have missed out on a delightful morning on the creek, so here’s to Knowing The Right People.
The fitness ladies took advantage of the absence of their instructor & paddled up to the mouth of the creek, where they beached their boards & lolled in the shallows, giggling & gossiping, and plotting out where to have a long & leisurely breakfast after their morning of slacking off.
So that was rather lovely, as I got to paddle out & back with them & I’ve met a few more nice women around about my age. I was thinking about joining them when it cools down a bit, so that was a nice intro.
Other than that, we have plans to nap, garden, BBQ, clean up, and I’m praying for the Promised Snout in Trough (election) Thunderstorm.
We had one last night, & it was wonderful to wake up to the sound of thunder.
It never rained in Brisbane, so all these little showers & cloudbursts are just glorious.
Other than that, we are chilling.
I had my first ever online exam yesterday.
Spanish.
It was a bit freaky but then I forgot I was doing an exam & just remembered that I’m trying to learn the language & I’m fascinated by the culture so I relaxed a bit.
I’m glad I’ve been watching DVDs with the Spanish subtitles turned on, though, as the entire exam was comprehension, either written or spoken (videos) & given how I struggled with it, despite my swotting, I dread to think how the gossip girls who sit up the back & giggle would have coped with that.
I’d say that they throw something difficult at them early in the piece, so that the slackers can drop out before the census date.
I predict there’ll be 4 less people in the class after Easter.
So, what about the rest of you?
Winter is come here. It was 14 at 1 pm with a nice cold breeze blowing. I wore long sleeves and everything(!), though Lyn went for the long wooly jacket. Went to the local primary school fete and came out with herbs, home made biccies and more toys, all ridiculously cheap. Then to an antique shop and she found a couple of garden chairs to match the table we picked up off the footpath, a small set of shark jaws and a 1915 Almanac. The Cabinet of Curiosities is looking more curious all the time. Great for visiting kiddies, like a mini Museum. Last night I helped PB’s dad top up one of the big Tas whisky barrels with another 60 l of stout. It has to fester* for a few weeks before we can drink it but there’s still a bit of the last lot around. (*may not be the correct term)
Sandy’s been a bit off and H has just become fast & mobile while PB is potty training. All in all it’s been a pretty full week for us – or what passes for one around here. Loads of fun though.
Except for the bit where the Highway Patrol pulled us over (lights and siren) because the windscreen had a crack. Could have cost us thousands and much inconvenience but we got off with getting it fixed within a week. I didn’t even know it was an offence. We’d have needed a new windscreen every month if we’d replaced every crack out west. Oh well, I guess it beats hunting down the Calabrian mafia & their hitmen. Enjoy your sans-culottes weekend Madam M.
When we were shopping for a cheap bomb for the Teenie to learn to drive in, we discovered that to get a roadworthy certificate on any car in Victoria, you have to get the windscreen replaced whether there are any cracks in it or not. I was startled by that. Perhaps the police commissioner’s son-in-law is a glazier?
Wow! Another thing I didn’t know. That seems a bit odd as a safety measure – but then there *is* the son-in-law to consider. I don’t know what the average cost is but ours was $320. Certainly hikes the price of a used car.
We had 24 hours to access the online exam so naturally Hellstra began the day by denying my internet access. They’d had the mobile outages the night before so I think it was just everyone in my entire suburb – which Telstra has a monopoly on – getting online to bitch at them about it.
So I did it in the afternoon, by which time I figured they’d be wrangling kids & bottles of wine.
I did hear the rationale behind the windscreen fine at some point but don’t ask me to remember it. Something something something about being in an accident & you don’t have your protection against projectiles once it’s cracked. So I’m vague on the details, you’d have to google it.
The P platers around here drive so badly that I’m all for banning them from driving till they’re 23. It’s unnerving to see one beside you on the highway, doing 100k/h, tailgating and texting.
I don’t remember being like that when I was their age.
Then again, I thoroughly disliked teenagers when I was one, so I suppose my attitude was never going to improve much with age.
Ugh. P-platers should be smacked. But it’s not just them texting while they’re on the road. The local yummy mummies are prone to whipping out their phones at the merest hint of a red light or a break in traffic. They also use some startlingly salty language if anyone dares to honk at them when the lights turn green.
We just had a few light sprinkles, Tweed & Springbrook hogged the storm clouds – well, the ones that didn’t descend upon the north coast.
The Bloke spent a few hours in the yard clearing out all the weeds that had sprung up since he did it a week ago, & I mucked about with my pot-plants & my kindle.
He had to go see his parents, but he’s happy with the arrangement of calling in once a month for a cup of tea & taking the dog. The dog has gone quite ADHD from his dawn beach romps so he’s a wonderful distraction from the monologue of their miseries.
So far, so good.
Poor Catty.
You’ll just have to scuff about in track pants & a fluffy house coat like I’ve been doing, for about an hour in the mornings, anyway.
It’s so lovely not to be hot all the time, and this morning down at Currumbin I thought the Polar Bears were very brave to jump in for their dawn splash, considering that the ocean was warmer than the air.
I hope some of the light sprinkles were on cupcake icing Q? And indeed, poor Catty. I hope you get to spend some time in the aforesaid trackies and maybe some uggs before they expect you to work again.
My late and somewhat fascist bro-in-law always fancied himself an expert on business and management. So he did his own will and had it witnessed by one (1) person. Said will is thus invalid and has left his kids with nothing but a house they can’t sell and a mess. Sigh.
My inlaws have a much simpler arrangement. They’ve allocated the oldest and most Dutch of their sons to be Executor, giving him full control of who gets what. In other words, the Boss and his middle brother won’t see a cent, ever. Fortunately, the Boss and I both couldn’t give a rat’s anus about our parents’ money. Life is too short to sit around waiting for other people to die.
Amen to that. To do them justice, none of them could give a rats about anything but mementoes and they aren’t arguing or anything. It’s just a pain in the whatever.
There’s worse in store than mere climate change. Donald Trump being elected President is one of the Apocalypse markers mentioned in Revelations. We are in for a Reckoning, people.
Whenever I see footage of Trump, he’s always standing before a massive crowd of cheering people. There is actually a possibility that he will win the nomination. I wish we could hear his whole speech, rather than the cherry-picked idiocy. Maybe then we would get some insight into why he’s so popular.
I don’t see any mystery in that, but that’s because I think the vast majority of human beings are fools & they don’t think things through.
See exhibit A, the amount of Yes votes for 4 year terms in Qld. Which, as a political professor pointed out, amounts to 4 year elected dictatorships because unlike the other states, Qld lacks the checks & balances that other states have to counter bad or self-serving policy.
While I was in the car listening to talkback on 612, the only justification for voting yes from the punters was that this would save them from having to vote so often.
Thus, if morons end up being governed by morons, this seems entirely logical to me.
Hear bleeding hear! What a lazy, useless excuse that is.
You can hear his speeches online Catty if you Google his websites. The basic principle is simple though.
1. You are the greatest people of the greatest country on Earth
2. If you aren’t enjoying it, it’s someone else’s fault
3. And the people to blame are those people over there!
4. Make me your leader and I’ll be really nasty to those bad people and you’ll all be rich.
Works every time.
Hmmm…. that Trump doctrine sounds similar to Malcolm Turnbull’s & Clive Palmer’s. Australians have learned the hard way that there’s no trickle-down wealth to be had by voting for rich businessmen – instead of encouraging fiscal stability for the public, they increase the cost of living for those least able to afford it, all the while increasing their own personal wealth. I guess America is about to learn the same lesson.
Oh, he gave us anything. Decreased limits on deeming rates, cancelling the free child dental scheme, removing almost half of the procedures and medicines off the PBS, cancelling the schoolkids bonus, tighter restrictions on eligibility for disability pensions…. shall I go on?
Oh that’s perfectly normal. If you don’t have a crushing feeling of impending doom these days, you just haven’t been paying attention. Still, if TGP rises to become a terrifying tyrant, ruling the earth, he’ll be sure to look after his mum.
How can anyone have a crushing feeling of impending doom this close to Bunny Day?
I know I am notoriously churlish when it comes to most hallmark holidays, but the 4 day long-weekend Festival of the Chocolate Rabbit & the gluttony that unfolds is a matter of sheer genius.
Nobody has to cook anything, nobody is expected to clean their house & nobody expects you to be nice to your relatives.
All you have to do is buy & eat chocolate & pass out on the couch.
Why can’t all of our holidays operate on the same principle, FFS?
Hee hee hee.
After saying that to you, the neighbour beside us had a rip-roaring blue with her parents. It happened about 15 minutes after she’d picked them up from the airport.
One of them dragged their luggage cart all the way up the hill to the bus stop, and then, seeing as there are no buses after 5pm in Pleasantville, forlornly carted it back.
It was ever so civilised, as family fights go. They shut down their argument at 8.14pm promptly, because everyone respects the Kiddy Go The Hell to Sleep rule around here. No doors were slammed & no bottles or pots hurled.
That blue would’ve gone on all night if we were back at Toad Park. And would still be going today.
They all seem chipper enough this arvo so perhaps they get it out of the way early so that they can enjoy the holiday?
Here’s hoping.
It must have been a full-scale argument for luggage to be dragged to the bus stop. Don;t you wish you knew what it was about? Anyway, huzzah for restored harmony.
Nup. Don’t know, don’t care, and we were disappointed when the luggage was dragged back.
Mercifully there have been no arguments since then & none of our neighbours seem to be around much, at all.
We had our fill of domestic arguments in our two decades at Freak Street, so I figure that after that we’ve probably heard it all anyway & nobody can top some of the rows we heard there.
My favourite is still two of the boozehounds that lived in Bog Hollow while the original old Coot that owned it was alive. They’d stagger home from the local pub at closing time, bottles clanking, arguing all the way. On foot of course, because it was a genuine boarding house back then.
Boarding House Barbie, pausing in our driveway: Oy Ken. You’ve stepped in Dawg Shit.
Boarding House Ken, indignant: No I haven’t.
20 minutes of yes you did no I haven’t, in our driveway, as no drunk can walk AND talk AND carry a bag of booze at the same time. By which time she sobered up enough to shout WHY DON’T YOU BLOODY WELL LOOK THEN!
So he lifts his thong up, falls over, shouts ‘FARKEN’ + ‘Fuck, I’ve stood in Dawg Shit.’
There followed a long discussion about how best to get the dawg shit off the thong. There was a loud scraping noise, more swearing, and off they went.
When we backed out of the driveway the next day, we discovered a long smear of Dawg Shit stretched out over the 5m length of our retaining wall.
Ergo, unless a neighbour is outside painting my fence with faecal matter, they can argue about whatever the hell they want.
I literally do not give a shit.
Yep. May your chocs be rich and smooth. Unlike us blokes.
PB went to a hideously over-catered kids party on Friday. The mother who held it also did one when her daughter was one which featured a clown, donkey rides and bouncy castle (at one?!) This time she carpeted the yard with eggs for 3 year-olds to “hunt” and PB collected 13. Less than average apparently. Parents don’t want her bingeing on chocolate so they’ve disappeared most of them and we’re not doing chocs at all. Sigh. It’s not even as though she’s rich. Reasonable job but a single mum with lots of expenses.
Meh. We don’t try, including Sandy. Poor PB had a heavy cold and an ear infection this week – play group, birthday party, swimming pool, germy kids everywhere – and was slightly less energetically evil. Apparently I’m a bit bad and a bit good. The photo shows how good. Sigh.
There has been remarkable restraint around our new neighbourhood when it comes to sugar insanity. Not like the old days when shrieks and fights & ADHD were the order of the day.
It’s quiet as the tomb around here.
Bliss!
It was a wonderful barbecue. The Boss is a master of the art. We had perfect weather, cool and overcast without rain. The Gimmee brought chocolate for her siblings AND washed up after dinner. If Aunt Irma hadn’t shown up, it would have been perfect. I’m quite looking forward to doing it all again in July.
The small evil stayed up till nearly 12, then wandered in in the dark and started playing with my face at silly o’clock. I’d complain but having someone small and snuggly wriggling and giggling between us is fun. I’m expected to growl and complain though.
I confess to finding these age-adjusted nickname changes confusing.
I’m like the Scribe – once you’ve picked out a name, that’s it, it’s the one that I’ll remember & nothing else will stick.
I had a dream with the Scribe in it the other night. All the Burgers were at the beach. I don’t remember what we were all doing there, I just remember that the sand was getting into everything.
Probably watching people drown, Catty, since the Scribe usually goes to his in-laws’ family holiday house at Fingal, and mostly that’s what people on the (unpatrolled) beach seem to do there.
Elf Boy conjures up such a delightful image of Legolas as a pre-teen.
You can change his name as many times as you want, but none of us who were there at the Abbey Fayre will ever see him as anything but that.
That reminds me, they have tribal drums & fire twirling as a regular thing down at Burleigh Heads on Sunday nights.
Thus far we’ve managed to avoid it, but during winter when there’s no tourarists around & the Pizza shop beckons (we’ve yet to try any of the restaurants in that area other than the gelato & the Hare Krishnas) we might stumble over it, by accident of course.
LOL. I’d forgotten Jimmy Buffet & friends. Good one, MM.
Catty, there is line dancing for the over 80s down at the Mudgeeraba show society hall. BYO statins & zimmer frame.
Oh Catty, and all of you. How can you not love a bit of boot-scootin’ accompanied by the Toothless and Tonedeaf Four on their Hawaiian ukeleles?
And what will I do with the CDs you were all getting for Xmas?
Speaking of gobbling, we watched Groundhog Day again yesterday, and I’m still chortling at the Pennsylvania Polka performed at Gobbler’s Knob.
How could we have let February 2nd slip by this year without notice?
Fun in a box 
Can’t come too soon for me. How are your “wee lads” getting on?
Gigantor is 6′ 3″ and signed up for another season of AFL. He’s very taken with his current girlfriend but still finds time for fishing.
TGP is in High School! And turns 12 on Friday. So far the only thing he likes is Gaming Club on Wednesday afternoons. At least it’s something.
How are your brood and grandbrood, GB?
Wow! 6’3″ a fine strapping lad. And yeah, Gaming Club sounds fair. At least he hasn’t joined the World Conquest Club. Or…?
Brood’s not bad, grandbrood is thriving. PB continues to astonish and delight. Us anyway. Sandy said she was a snake the other morning for hours. She got tired and had to lie in the sun every so often to warm up, had lovely zigzag scales and promised not to bite her mother, but anyway she was a python so no biggie. Sound familiar?
They grow up so quickly. Soon she’ll be Amish, then Morgan Freeman.
I just spoke to Catty in the Horse Piddle & we were going ‘OMG, he’s 12, remember when he was a wee little fellow & he shot GB between the eyes outside the Pfoffertjes stand at the Abbey Fayre’.
She’s still miffed that she missed that.
She’s talking of moving the family to Queensland, so perhaps we could arrange a rerun?
Wow, that would be terrific! The only question is – which Coast?
She didn’t say. She just said that her mother is much occupied caring for her father so she doesn’t have a lot of free time to go visit her other relatives.
She’s very attached to the children’s school though & having had one child run off the rails in her teen years, I don’t think she’ll want to take any chances with the rest of her brood.
If they do move, I think they’ll be researching schools very carefully & making the choice of location accordingly.
I’ve already sent her details on Palm Beach Currumbin High (which is apparently incredibly good) so if you want to entice her up your end, you’ll have to compete with that.
🙂
Hmm, I wonder if we have a prospectus. I think there’s a montage of surfing trophies. somewhere…
What, no awards for Horticulture?
My BIL the Drug Lord got one from the state government about 15 years ago.
I’d love to say I’m joking, but it’s true.
Horticulture’s more Nambour. Our soil is too sandy.
Well it was Woombye.
You should see the hole they’ve cut in the top of the hill here for the road.
It’s pure red. I can’t go by without wanting to plant bananas & pineapples.
We’ve got mostly fill in our yard – rocks, clay & nutgrass, from where they bulldozed the hill to build the blocks.
I keep thinking I should take a leaf out of NTO’s book & trawl up the hill with a barrow & a shovel.
Gosh it’s nice not to have any lunatics next door.
You get get some of those raised galvanized iron beds from Bunnings. Do you have a burning urge to grow veges?
I ran out of Burning Urges when I waved Tatty Bye to the boarding house.
Someone else can grow my carrots. Until I win lotto & get slaves, it’s trial enough that I have to stand up on my fascist afflicted feet & cook them.
I don’t mind cooking so much, but Woolies gives me hives.
Our local woollies charges almost double for some items as what they charge in Coals down at Burleigh Waters. One of our neighbours gave me the tip to shop down there. It means rubbing shoulders with the ageing & drug-addled tattoo beasts & it’s stall-to-stall zimmer frames, but better that than the Mattel Mamas with their engorged lips & lashes down at the local.
Late comment on the Coals-Woolies thing but all of us down here have drifted away from the Dastardly Duo. There’s a couple of IGAs with reasonable prices, good parking and decent coffee shops nearby, plus Aldis. And Aldi has TOOLS.
We used to have THE BEST IGA. Coles forced them out when they renovated the shops.
You also have a Costco just down the road, GB. It’s pretty awesome, if you like bulk buying.
Yah IGA and Aldi are the shiz. If you’ve got both near you, you’ve got it made.
The Boss is already eagerly anticipating the return of a family dynamic in which I buy the food and he complains I’ve bought the wrong sort. Personally, I’m all for this new system, especially if it means meals like the one he made tonight. It was magnificent! And effective. Within an hour, I was squealing with delight at the contents of the toilet bowl.
I do not believe that I’ve ever read a sentence like that last one before, in all my long years. Nice to have you back Catty – I hope you become a regular. (Yes, it was intentional)
Welcome back, Catty. Hope you are recovering well, rapid transit of food aside.
Groan.
Huzzah!
Let the homecoming revelry commence.
No, on second thoughts – let the lounging and doing nothing proceed.
Yep, I think it’ll be at least a fortnight before Catty’s able to don her dancing shoes & feather boa to join the conga line.
And no wild rumpus, either.
No wild rumpus? (hastily conceals animal onesie)
You can have a rumpus if Fifi says yes.
(OH!)
I’m trying to work out what kind of animal onesie would provoke repeated attacks from the downstairs lion.
Water buffalo or hippo? Fess up, Khan GB.
Wildebeest!
I’m sayin’ nuthin. That lion will attack anything anyway. It was her parent’s 8th anniversary last night so we had champagne and Lyn cooked a section of the meal that suited Jen’s exclusion diet. She’s dropped a clothing size or nearly two, got a fitbit and is feeling better so fingers crossed. Not to do with the epilepsy sadly but she’s much happier. PB is often a dragon now (Smaug) and sets things on fire with her breath. She also ate her brother ALL UP and he was apparently ‘licious. Do you know if there’s a support group for parents and grandparents of such children Madam?
No, we just muddle through as we can. And Facebook the funniest sayings.
Speaking of fires, the smoke alarm at the House of Wax & Beutay across the road has been bipping every minute since Sunday night. Not a major irritant to us as we’ve been sleeping with the AC on to cope with the nocturnal humidity & Joni Mitchell does tend to block it out, but I gather from my dog-walk chats that she’s giving her nearest neighbours the shits.
The hilarious thing has been that she gets half a dozen or so Vanity Plate Mamas turning up for her yoga/pilates classes once or twice a day & it seems they can all do yoga with a smoke alarm whining that it wants a new battery.
do none of them know how to change one? And is it possible none have complained that it’s messing with their zen?
The cleaner, the pool guy & the yard guy have all turned up to service the House of Wax & yet it seems none among them know how to deal with a smoke alarm.
She’s had her children back from the Father Land this week & all three of them seem to think it’s normal to sleep with a smoke alarm yipping at them.
Ergo, The Bloke wants to go over there on the weekend & ask her if she needs help & if she wants to borrow a ladder.
I’ve forbidden him to do so, as I don’t want to encourage her to think that Bimbo Rescue is so close at hand.
Besides, she & her mates all look like they used to be Cheerleaders for the GC Thugby Club.
Surely they can form a human pyramid for her to scale so she can change the fecking battery?
I was feeling a bit mean for despising Madame of the Raccoon Lashes, but the smoke alarm ineptitude has me thinking she deserves our sneers.
So.
Tell me, Peoples.
How many Eyelash Extenders does it take to change a 9 volt battery & what possible reasons could she have for being unable to do so?
You have the most interesting neighbours, Q.
I suppose that could be a blessing or a curse.
Since I can’t stand mine blaring or more than a minute, I don’t feel qualified to judge.
They’ve all deaf, is my only thought.
When we moved, the new place had heaps of smoke alarms so the spares I’d brought went into cupboards. Not necessarily logical cupboards. You can probably guess the rest. It took hours to track down that irritating 45 sec PIP.
I’m intrigued by the concept of a logical cupboard. I think all of mine are highly illogical.
Not mine. I’ve never won an argument with any of the damn things.
The oldest house on the block is 6 years old, GB. I can’t see why anyone would bring a stray smoke alarm into a new building that’s covered by current building codes. They have to be hard-wired into the electrickery outside all the bedrooms.
The nice folk behind her have said that they can see the one that’s beeping, it’s in an easily accessible room that the household uses all the time.
His theory was that they must all be deaf.
I’m going beyond that & declaring them all to be idiots.
That’s the only thing that explains the earnest conversation I just heard from the Mattel Mamas departing yoga, about the best way to ingest Activated Charcoal.
I might set up a wheat-grass stand to catch them as they leave, and offer discounts on BBQ Briquettes for them to crumble over their paleo muesli, or whatever the hell it is that these bimbos eat for breakfast.
Still, at least they’re not annoying on the level of what we had at Toad Park. The display of idiocy is kind of entertaining & if only it was more original I would take notes & include them in my memoirs.
They arrive, they go in, they stand on their heads for an hour emitting little puffs of charcoal gas from their nether regions, & they leave.
Hey perhaps that’s what the smoke alarm is for…they’re using it to keep time for breaths in & charcoal out?
Surely eventually the dying battery will die, and silence will return?
I think one of her neighbours (not the Scots, the baby family who cop it the worst) went in & diplomatically fixed it for her yesterday afternoon. They’re toddler has been really distressed – ‘flu, I think – so I think they were sick of the sleep deprivation.
I’ve realised it wasn’t stupidity, it was passive aggression. I looked at her website & it looks like she’s started up classes at the local hall, where she can fit 25 of them in rather than squeezing 4-8 of them into her garage. Looks like she’s been trying to cancel her home classes & to funnel them into the hall classes during school hours. Makes sense, you wouldn’t want to be stuck working evenings & weekends when you’ve got 3 kids to look after.
So I think she’s working through a range of strategies to irritate anyone who is insisting on attending her home classes.
Looks like Racoon Lashes is smarter than I’d thought.
Actually that’s probably what she’s thinking.
And no, they are hard-wired in, so with Skynet to back it up it will not stop. Ever.
Not until someone is terminated & by the foul looks she’s getting from the Scots on the corner, that could be on their agenda.
Did I tell you I saw another snake in our garden yesterday?
I think it might have been another green tree snake, as it was the same size & shape, but it was the colour of the road base, so maybe not. Wikipedia says they can be pretty much any colour so perhaps it was one of the blue ones.
No wonder there’s always a kook sitting on our street light staring down at our garden.
There’s rich pickings for him & his clan in there.
I’m a big fan of snakes. They eat rodents.
I’ve never seen a blue tree snake before, though. That sounds pretty. Where’s our resident herpetologist. GB – blue snakes?
Yup. There is a blue variant and quite pretty too. It’s not all blue but there’s a blue pattern on it of varying shades. And green trees are shy and harmless little critters. Unless you’re a frog or a mouse and I’m sure quokkas would be too big for them.
Today we’ve had a pirate, a curlew, a baby and a leopard at various times. The curlew was a pest at Eastland because it “stands very still and then you can’t see it at all”. Also got my first “Honestly grandad!” – you can imagine the tone. I can’t wait till she’s 3. They slow down then, right?
It’s quiet time now and she padded out a few minutes ago, grabbed some books and went back to her room.
Mmm, the green-cross vet website says that pets can be poisoned by green tree snakes.
I’m more concerned about ticks & cane toads, as occasionally a small cane toad gets into the cat pen.
Thankfully the cats aren’t really interested in going out there at night & that’s when the toads are about.
And if they are out there, they are up in their hammocks, 2m above the ground level.
There’s no real way of keeping snakes out of the garage, so we are probably more at risk of startling one than the animals.
Oh well.
One of the hazards of living in such a beautiful part of the world.
And I still think that the most dangerous animal I’ll encounter down here is the dreaded Red P-plater.
Oh yeah. They slow right down. In about 20 years or so.
I love that she’s reading The Hobbit. Does she demand second breakfast, yet?
I’m a big fan of second breakfast, and elevenses.
What do you think the order is – second breakfast, brunch, then elevenses?
Up here? Not sure, I’d say it depends what time the bar opens.
Look at this.
I was trying to explain to The Bloke about the Activated Charcoal fad that was rejuvenated by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Poop blog & lo & behold, it’s got worse.
Now they’re actually making cocktails with it, so you can throw down your glass of poison & trust in the charcoal to suck it out.
I vote we put Mr. Catty’s improved water to good use & we patent a range of Activated Charcoal brownies, before the Tim Tam company gets wise enough to cash in on it.
http://www.villagevoice.com/restaurants/this-is-why-you-should-put-activated-charcoal-in-your-cocktail-8351444
Is activated charcoal anything to do with activated almonds?
maybe if you leave your activated almonds in an activated oven too long, they turn into activated charcoal?
I wonder if you have to scorch them or activate them first? Almond alchemy.
The only good scorched almond is a chocolate coated scorched almond. (Y/N?)
I meant Cocktail-charcoal brownies, of course.
Hell, we could throw the entire contents of the Mexican Pharmacy into them & I will set up a stall outside the gym down at Miami.
We will be rich, I tell you, Rich!
Activated charcoal used to be in gas masks. Does this mean their toots are fragrant and perhaps even musical?
I hadn’t thought of that.
I’ll have to follow them to the gym & see if they can fart out The PushBike song.
We may have some trouble locating the cook. Apparently she moved house while I was in the horsepiddle. Actually, I haven’t laid eyes on her since the Boss told her I had cancer. But I’m sure a batch of special brownies will lure her back. I’ll have to cook them here, though. Quokka doesn’t have a kitchen, and Madam’s place is too risky – TGP might scare away potential customers by splashing them with holy water and shouting scripture.
When we moved in here, there were no smoke detectors at all. We installed one directly above the toaster. To my bewilderment, it took us five years to get around to moving it. As a result, the sound of a smoke alarm now makes us all crave toast. Mmmmm….
ROFL
Double that ROFL.
And to quote the Talkie Toaster from Red Dwarf?
Would anyone like some toast?
Oh and Catty that’s standard fare.
As I told you on the phone the other day, my family were just annoyed & inconvenienced by my surgery & that set the pattern, really, for the following two decades.
My family always were the type to find other peoples’ illness/suffering/misfortune a matter of deliberate inconvenience to themselves, though, so, Situation Normal.
Welcome to the Club.
If you cook your toast for long enough, does that shroud it in activated charcoal and make it a health food?
And if so, does that also go for hot cross buns?
I’m unsure on how they Activate it.
When you’re done scorching it, strap it to the treadmill for a few ks & tell me how that goes.
Nuts and shoots are activated with steam. I understand charcoal is also activated with steam. Something to do with enlarging the carbon pores or some crap.
Speaking of treadmills (kind of) may i heartily (snerk) recommend a fitbit or similar? Lyn and I got them after my little problem and now Jen & Sandy both have them. Amazingly for a keep fit thing, the initial enthusiasm hasn’t worn off. My resting heart rate was down to 57 the other day and we’ll do almost anything to get the steps up to the 10000 mark. I think I mentioned the morose guys at the Brand Smart place, slumped in chairs with bags of shopping while I did circuits? That was me – once!
Good work, GB! We’re all very proud of you – as long as your health kick doesn’t involve anything activated.
Yes – as long as it’s only yourself you’re activating, we’re right behind you.
So, so you think if I applied a little steam I could activate myself? Monday find me somewhat sluggish.
You want to borrow my steam mop?
And yes, well done you, getting activated, GB.
I don’t think the Fitbit is for me.
I’m not a fan of being strapped up to things, and in any case much of my exercise takes place in the water. I don’t think it would last long in the lap lane or when I topple off the SUP into the salty waters of Currumbin Creek.
I had a pedometer for a long while, but it broke.
I’m not worried, our fitness & health is going back to pre-house hunting levels.
I’m finding it much easier to walk with the hound now that we’ve got the flat concrete surfaces of the esplanades, and the pristine 5yro footpaths up here on the hill at Pleasantville. And no neighbours to crane their heads & shout ‘Oh yoohoo’ every time I stick my head out the door.
One of my GFs said her husband got a Fitbit for Xmas. They have a sail boat moored at Manly so they head out on Moreton Bay most weekends. She said that after one long, rough day at sea, when her husband hadn’t gotten off his arse once, the fitbit said he’d jogged 20 kilometres.
Apparently they measure arm movement, so it was measuring his movements with the Tiller.
I’m thinking I could probably get a reading like that just from using the requisite amount of sign language for peak hour in the gold coast traffic.
Sounds like knitting would register, too. Sign me up!
Nope, it’s definitely not waterproof so not suitable for semi-aquatic folks. Even for me that’s a mild nuisance. And we’ve all found various oddities in the measurements. Jen was peeved that it ignored the stationary bike exercise and I found pushing a shopping trolley doesn’t count since in both cases your hand is stable. But it’s still a motivator and fun to get that literal buzz when you get to 10,000. Also tells me I average nearly 30 flights of stairs a day!
I read that the Fitbit readouts go crazy when you get pregnant, so you might want to watch out for that, too.
I told Fifi. She laughed an evil snickery sort of laugh.
If Greybeard got pregnant, it wouldn’t only be his Fitbit that would be going crazy.
But think of the magazine articles. And I’d be on Oprah! (Now contemplating a life of chastity.)
LOL to Fifi’s snickery.
And I don’t think that would be classified as pregnancy.
Spawning, more likely.
Parasitic infection?
(just gas)
Huh. Gas. That’s what the Boss said, but Trev the Fart Baby was well and truly a spawnling. My lovely new microfibre sheets were rent in twain. Fortunately Trev left home within hours and has not returned.
Microfibre sheets?
What were they like, before Trevor’s advent?
See this is why I prefer 100% cotton. Tougher, more absorbent and less rent-prone.
You can get ‘rent repellant sheets?
Well, now I know what I’m getting Morgana for her BD.
That would be Gigantor sorted. But do they sell TGP-proof sheets?
I still like the microfibre ones best. They’re light, soft and silky smooth without being as slippery as satin. Noice.
Actually I was thinking of ‘rents as in guests over the school holidays.
When are they this year? We’ve got the week after Easter off from uni but sometimes our holidays differ from school. They have to squeeze in summer & winter schools these days, so the terms can be a bit different.
Next week is our last week, then it’s two weeks of holidays.
Noooooo! Two weeks of Young People (urgh) roaming free in the streets and shopping centres. Can’t they be put in storage or something?
To be honest though, the ones around here are fine. Walking past the high school down the road from Sandy was eerie when we first moved. They *smiled* and said hello. Even the ones having a sly puff down the back streets just grin. And the politeness on the buses, to drivers and passengers, is great. It was like the Stepford Teenagers except for a bit of comforting scruffiness and banter.
Also, those of us still on Farcebook should try to post a photo of Ildi as a punk rocker in her yoof. She looks amazing!
She was in Post No Bills. Who knew?
Ok, for some reason I couldn’t insert Ildi in the comments, so she’s up the top.
Bizarre. I like the orange; it’s the colour of the anti-bullying campaign, and today is national anti-bullying day.
Hmm – that’s a bit close to St Paddy’s Day for comfort.
I can’t get that pic to go any bigger, MM.
Is Ildi the one with the spiky blonde hair?
And I like orange too.
Or anaranjado, as they say in Español.
Yes, the one in the middle.
Well, what plans for the weekend, people? I’m hoping not to put pants on today, although that will make the inevitable trip to Woolies interesting.
No lleva sus pantalones?
Encantado!
Bravo!
We’ve been out on Currumbin Creek all morning, with the SUP ladies’ fitness group. The owners are away at some race on the NSW coast so thankfully – since the shop was closed – the fitness group took pity on us, let us in, & took us out with them. It helps that The Bloke knows one of their number from the Horsepiddle job, & she lives one block away from us at Pleasantville.
Otherwise we’d have missed out on a delightful morning on the creek, so here’s to Knowing The Right People.
The fitness ladies took advantage of the absence of their instructor & paddled up to the mouth of the creek, where they beached their boards & lolled in the shallows, giggling & gossiping, and plotting out where to have a long & leisurely breakfast after their morning of slacking off.
So that was rather lovely, as I got to paddle out & back with them & I’ve met a few more nice women around about my age. I was thinking about joining them when it cools down a bit, so that was a nice intro.
Other than that, we have plans to nap, garden, BBQ, clean up, and I’m praying for the Promised Snout in Trough (election) Thunderstorm.
We had one last night, & it was wonderful to wake up to the sound of thunder.
It never rained in Brisbane, so all these little showers & cloudbursts are just glorious.
Other than that, we are chilling.
I had my first ever online exam yesterday.
Spanish.
It was a bit freaky but then I forgot I was doing an exam & just remembered that I’m trying to learn the language & I’m fascinated by the culture so I relaxed a bit.
I’m glad I’ve been watching DVDs with the Spanish subtitles turned on, though, as the entire exam was comprehension, either written or spoken (videos) & given how I struggled with it, despite my swotting, I dread to think how the gossip girls who sit up the back & giggle would have coped with that.
I’d say that they throw something difficult at them early in the piece, so that the slackers can drop out before the census date.
I predict there’ll be 4 less people in the class after Easter.
So, what about the rest of you?
Winter is come here. It was 14 at 1 pm with a nice cold breeze blowing. I wore long sleeves and everything(!), though Lyn went for the long wooly jacket. Went to the local primary school fete and came out with herbs, home made biccies and more toys, all ridiculously cheap. Then to an antique shop and she found a couple of garden chairs to match the table we picked up off the footpath, a small set of shark jaws and a 1915 Almanac. The Cabinet of Curiosities is looking more curious all the time. Great for visiting kiddies, like a mini Museum. Last night I helped PB’s dad top up one of the big Tas whisky barrels with another 60 l of stout. It has to fester* for a few weeks before we can drink it but there’s still a bit of the last lot around. (*may not be the correct term)
Sandy’s been a bit off and H has just become fast & mobile while PB is potty training. All in all it’s been a pretty full week for us – or what passes for one around here. Loads of fun though.
Except for the bit where the Highway Patrol pulled us over (lights and siren) because the windscreen had a crack. Could have cost us thousands and much inconvenience but we got off with getting it fixed within a week. I didn’t even know it was an offence. We’d have needed a new windscreen every month if we’d replaced every crack out west. Oh well, I guess it beats hunting down the Calabrian mafia & their hitmen. Enjoy your sans-culottes weekend Madam M.
Huzzah to no-pants!
When we were shopping for a cheap bomb for the Teenie to learn to drive in, we discovered that to get a roadworthy certificate on any car in Victoria, you have to get the windscreen replaced whether there are any cracks in it or not. I was startled by that. Perhaps the police commissioner’s son-in-law is a glazier?
Wow! Another thing I didn’t know. That seems a bit odd as a safety measure – but then there *is* the son-in-law to consider. I don’t know what the average cost is but ours was $320. Certainly hikes the price of a used car.
That is batshit crazy. What the hell is the point of replacing an intact windscreen? Kudos on eluding the long arm of the law again, GB.
Glad you’ve found some playmates, Q. And survived the online exam. Did you all have to take it at the same time, or was it just sometime in the day?
We had 24 hours to access the online exam so naturally Hellstra began the day by denying my internet access. They’d had the mobile outages the night before so I think it was just everyone in my entire suburb – which Telstra has a monopoly on – getting online to bitch at them about it.
So I did it in the afternoon, by which time I figured they’d be wrangling kids & bottles of wine.
I did hear the rationale behind the windscreen fine at some point but don’t ask me to remember it. Something something something about being in an accident & you don’t have your protection against projectiles once it’s cracked. So I’m vague on the details, you’d have to google it.
The P platers around here drive so badly that I’m all for banning them from driving till they’re 23. It’s unnerving to see one beside you on the highway, doing 100k/h, tailgating and texting.
I don’t remember being like that when I was their age.
Then again, I thoroughly disliked teenagers when I was one, so I suppose my attitude was never going to improve much with age.
Ugh. P-platers should be smacked. But it’s not just them texting while they’re on the road. The local yummy mummies are prone to whipping out their phones at the merest hint of a red light or a break in traffic. They also use some startlingly salty language if anyone dares to honk at them when the lights turn green.
Mmm … salt.
Well, what a lot of glorious rain we’ve had this weekend. How has everyone else fared?
Warm and sunny. Which is good, as I am still having trouble wearing anything with a waistband – i.e, my entire winter wardrobe.
Don’t worry too much. At this rate it will be 2017 before we see winter again.
Nooo! I want winter naow. It was good marching weather yesterday, 21 and sunny which is about my ideal temp.
We just had a few light sprinkles, Tweed & Springbrook hogged the storm clouds – well, the ones that didn’t descend upon the north coast.
The Bloke spent a few hours in the yard clearing out all the weeds that had sprung up since he did it a week ago, & I mucked about with my pot-plants & my kindle.
He had to go see his parents, but he’s happy with the arrangement of calling in once a month for a cup of tea & taking the dog. The dog has gone quite ADHD from his dawn beach romps so he’s a wonderful distraction from the monologue of their miseries.
So far, so good.
Poor Catty.
You’ll just have to scuff about in track pants & a fluffy house coat like I’ve been doing, for about an hour in the mornings, anyway.
It’s so lovely not to be hot all the time, and this morning down at Currumbin I thought the Polar Bears were very brave to jump in for their dawn splash, considering that the ocean was warmer than the air.
I hope some of the light sprinkles were on cupcake icing Q? And indeed, poor Catty. I hope you get to spend some time in the aforesaid trackies and maybe some uggs before they expect you to work again.
My late and somewhat fascist bro-in-law always fancied himself an expert on business and management. So he did his own will and had it witnessed by one (1) person. Said will is thus invalid and has left his kids with nothing but a house they can’t sell and a mess. Sigh.
How annoying. Aren’t they just assumed to be his heirs? No, silly me. Of course it would be insanely complicated – and expensive – to sort out.
My inlaws have a much simpler arrangement. They’ve allocated the oldest and most Dutch of their sons to be Executor, giving him full control of who gets what. In other words, the Boss and his middle brother won’t see a cent, ever. Fortunately, the Boss and I both couldn’t give a rat’s anus about our parents’ money. Life is too short to sit around waiting for other people to die.
Amen to that. To do them justice, none of them could give a rats about anything but mementoes and they aren’t arguing or anything. It’s just a pain in the whatever.
The way the climate’s going we’ll all have much more important things to worry about shortly.
There’s worse in store than mere climate change. Donald Trump being elected President is one of the Apocalypse markers mentioned in Revelations. We are in for a Reckoning, people.
The Coming of The Orange Idiot?
Whenever I see footage of Trump, he’s always standing before a massive crowd of cheering people. There is actually a possibility that he will win the nomination. I wish we could hear his whole speech, rather than the cherry-picked idiocy. Maybe then we would get some insight into why he’s so popular.
I don’t see any mystery in that, but that’s because I think the vast majority of human beings are fools & they don’t think things through.
See exhibit A, the amount of Yes votes for 4 year terms in Qld. Which, as a political professor pointed out, amounts to 4 year elected dictatorships because unlike the other states, Qld lacks the checks & balances that other states have to counter bad or self-serving policy.
While I was in the car listening to talkback on 612, the only justification for voting yes from the punters was that this would save them from having to vote so often.
Thus, if morons end up being governed by morons, this seems entirely logical to me.
Hear bleeding hear! What a lazy, useless excuse that is.
You can hear his speeches online Catty if you Google his websites. The basic principle is simple though.
1. You are the greatest people of the greatest country on Earth
2. If you aren’t enjoying it, it’s someone else’s fault
3. And the people to blame are those people over there!
4. Make me your leader and I’ll be really nasty to those bad people and you’ll all be rich.
Works every time.
He’s a sad and sorry contrast to Obama, that’s for sure.
Hmmm…. that Trump doctrine sounds similar to Malcolm Turnbull’s & Clive Palmer’s. Australians have learned the hard way that there’s no trickle-down wealth to be had by voting for rich businessmen – instead of encouraging fiscal stability for the public, they increase the cost of living for those least able to afford it, all the while increasing their own personal wealth. I guess America is about to learn the same lesson.
Turnball is a complete disappointment, I was expecting great things. Or anything, really.
Oh, he gave us anything. Decreased limits on deeming rates, cancelling the free child dental scheme, removing almost half of the procedures and medicines off the PBS, cancelling the schoolkids bonus, tighter restrictions on eligibility for disability pensions…. shall I go on?
No, thanks. I already have a crushing feeling of impending doom.
Oh that’s perfectly normal. If you don’t have a crushing feeling of impending doom these days, you just haven’t been paying attention. Still, if TGP rises to become a terrifying tyrant, ruling the earth, he’ll be sure to look after his mum.
How can anyone have a crushing feeling of impending doom this close to Bunny Day?
I know I am notoriously churlish when it comes to most hallmark holidays, but the 4 day long-weekend Festival of the Chocolate Rabbit & the gluttony that unfolds is a matter of sheer genius.
Nobody has to cook anything, nobody is expected to clean their house & nobody expects you to be nice to your relatives.
All you have to do is buy & eat chocolate & pass out on the couch.
Why can’t all of our holidays operate on the same principle, FFS?
It used to be that you could run for Senate on a Moar Chocolate, Fewer Relatives ticket, but they’ve closed that loop-hole.
Hee hee hee.
After saying that to you, the neighbour beside us had a rip-roaring blue with her parents. It happened about 15 minutes after she’d picked them up from the airport.
One of them dragged their luggage cart all the way up the hill to the bus stop, and then, seeing as there are no buses after 5pm in Pleasantville, forlornly carted it back.
It was ever so civilised, as family fights go. They shut down their argument at 8.14pm promptly, because everyone respects the Kiddy Go The Hell to Sleep rule around here. No doors were slammed & no bottles or pots hurled.
That blue would’ve gone on all night if we were back at Toad Park. And would still be going today.
They all seem chipper enough this arvo so perhaps they get it out of the way early so that they can enjoy the holiday?
Here’s hoping.
It must have been a full-scale argument for luggage to be dragged to the bus stop. Don;t you wish you knew what it was about? Anyway, huzzah for restored harmony.
It’s hard to stay angry when your face is full of bunny.
Nup. Don’t know, don’t care, and we were disappointed when the luggage was dragged back.
Mercifully there have been no arguments since then & none of our neighbours seem to be around much, at all.
We had our fill of domestic arguments in our two decades at Freak Street, so I figure that after that we’ve probably heard it all anyway & nobody can top some of the rows we heard there.
My favourite is still two of the boozehounds that lived in Bog Hollow while the original old Coot that owned it was alive. They’d stagger home from the local pub at closing time, bottles clanking, arguing all the way. On foot of course, because it was a genuine boarding house back then.
Boarding House Barbie, pausing in our driveway: Oy Ken. You’ve stepped in Dawg Shit.
Boarding House Ken, indignant: No I haven’t.
20 minutes of yes you did no I haven’t, in our driveway, as no drunk can walk AND talk AND carry a bag of booze at the same time. By which time she sobered up enough to shout WHY DON’T YOU BLOODY WELL LOOK THEN!
So he lifts his thong up, falls over, shouts ‘FARKEN’ + ‘Fuck, I’ve stood in Dawg Shit.’
There followed a long discussion about how best to get the dawg shit off the thong. There was a loud scraping noise, more swearing, and off they went.
When we backed out of the driveway the next day, we discovered a long smear of Dawg Shit stretched out over the 5m length of our retaining wall.
Ergo, unless a neighbour is outside painting my fence with faecal matter, they can argue about whatever the hell they want.
I literally do not give a shit.
You don’t? But, but, how will you paint your fence?
“What colour is that?”
“Emission Brown”
“Noice.”
Hehehe. A gold star for GB.
Happy hoppy Easter, all!
Yep. May your chocs be rich and smooth. Unlike us blokes.
PB went to a hideously over-catered kids party on Friday. The mother who held it also did one when her daughter was one which featured a clown, donkey rides and bouncy castle (at one?!) This time she carpeted the yard with eggs for 3 year-olds to “hunt” and PB collected 13. Less than average apparently. Parents don’t want her bingeing on chocolate so they’ve disappeared most of them and we’re not doing chocs at all. Sigh. It’s not even as though she’s rich. Reasonable job but a single mum with lots of expenses.
Makes you wonder what the woman is overcompensating for. I miss the days where kids were happy with a single Humpty Dumpty egg.
Happy Easter everybody. Eggs for breakfast!
Me too. Also highly competitive. Poor kid.
I have helicopter parents in my midst. I empathise.
The bar is set so fucking high, you will pull a muscle, trying to limbo under it.
Meh. We don’t try, including Sandy. Poor PB had a heavy cold and an ear infection this week – play group, birthday party, swimming pool, germy kids everywhere – and was slightly less energetically evil. Apparently I’m a bit bad and a bit good. The photo shows how good. Sigh.
Chocolate, I hope?
Mais naturelle!
There has been remarkable restraint around our new neighbourhood when it comes to sugar insanity. Not like the old days when shrieks and fights & ADHD were the order of the day.
It’s quiet as the tomb around here.
Bliss!
And cool and gloomy, too!
It’s been a glorious Easter.
I know! I’ve got my lightweight tracky dacks on, as I type.
Glorious.
More gloom and rain. Perfect Kindling weather. What’s it like in Melbourne, catty – and how was the BBQ?
It was a wonderful barbecue. The Boss is a master of the art. We had perfect weather, cool and overcast without rain. The Gimmee brought chocolate for her siblings AND washed up after dinner. If Aunt Irma hadn’t shown up, it would have been perfect. I’m quite looking forward to doing it all again in July.
Gosh. Is she well?
I wondered that myself.
Well, huzzah to much improved Gimmee/World relations. You never know, maybe she’s growing up.
Tsk. The sark is thick around here.
The small evil stayed up till nearly 12, then wandered in in the dark and started playing with my face at silly o’clock. I’d complain but having someone small and snuggly wriggling and giggling between us is fun. I’m expected to growl and complain though.
It’s okay. We know what the real story is, GB.
There’s nothing better than snuggle time. Only a monster would complain about snuggles.
Well I am a monster (or a bear) and if I don’t growl and sigh, it’s not so much fun.
If you were a monster, I’d get you to sign my bestiary.
He’s the Bestiary now? I only just got used to calling him TGP.
I confess to finding these age-adjusted nickname changes confusing.
I’m like the Scribe – once you’ve picked out a name, that’s it, it’s the one that I’ll remember & nothing else will stick.
Hehehe. No, he’s still TGP. Although that would have been a good one.
I had a dream with the Scribe in it the other night. All the Burgers were at the beach. I don’t remember what we were all doing there, I just remember that the sand was getting into everything.
Probably watching people drown, Catty, since the Scribe usually goes to his in-laws’ family holiday house at Fingal, and mostly that’s what people on the (unpatrolled) beach seem to do there.
The Scribe and I have crossed paths so many times throughout life. It really is uncanny.
Somehow he remained unknown to me until I read his first book.
Elf Boy conjures up such a delightful image of Legolas as a pre-teen.
You can change his name as many times as you want, but none of us who were there at the Abbey Fayre will ever see him as anything but that.
He’s getting the hair to match, too. It’s long enough to put in a ponytail now, but I’m aiming for man-bun.
Nooo! Not the man-bun. You’ll destroy his cute-factor. Or is that your cunning plan?
I’m nothing if not cunning, but I doubt anything could destroy his cute factor.
True enough.
It’s the cute ones you have to watch out for.
Hey! I used to be cute. A long, long, long time ago.
Have you thought about a ponytail?
Oh man, that is so cruel. Balding men with ponytails are too awful for words.
As long as you don’t wear socks with sandals, you’re still ahead.
Never! (pushes feet as far under desk as possible)
Just as long as you’re not playing tribal drums while PB plaits your ponytail, you’re good GB.
I could go along with tribal drums, but I can’t condone fire twirling.
That reminds me, they have tribal drums & fire twirling as a regular thing down at Burleigh Heads on Sunday nights.
Thus far we’ve managed to avoid it, but during winter when there’s no tourarists around & the Pizza shop beckons (we’ve yet to try any of the restaurants in that area other than the gelato & the Hare Krishnas) we might stumble over it, by accident of course.
And “accidentally” set someone’s dreadlocks on fire? Have at it!
It could be worse. It could be ukuleles and line dancing.
I just called someone who’s phone played ‘It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere” as it rang. I guess I know where this week’s loan payment went.
LOL. I’d forgotten Jimmy Buffet & friends. Good one, MM.
Catty, there is line dancing for the over 80s down at the Mudgeeraba show society hall. BYO statins & zimmer frame.
Not “yee-ha!”, so much as “yee-argh!”.
Oh Catty, and all of you. How can you not love a bit of boot-scootin’ accompanied by the Toothless and Tonedeaf Four on their Hawaiian ukeleles?
And what will I do with the CDs you were all getting for Xmas?
I believe they’re quite useful to keep birds and bats out of your vege patch. Hang ’em high!
*blushes – and hides her Clint Black CD’s*
There should be a ‘like’ button on these blogs. Or at least a ROFL.
Please excuse my boots. They were scootin’ entirely of their own volition.
hee hee hee.
I’m not sure you should be scootin’ in your delicate condition, Catty. Restrict yourself to the hand jive.
You are all too jolly in spite of it all. I really do not belong here.
I’m contractually obliged to be jolly. Frankly the free red suit wasn’t worth it.
Mostly it’s sugar induced snark. Surely you’ve got a little buried deep within you, somewhere?
Melbo, you can’t fight it. You are one of us.
In the blog, part of the blog…
In the blog, part of the blog…
In the blog, part of the blog…
Gooble,gobble, gooble, gobble
gooble,gobble, gooble, gobble
Speaking of gobbling, we watched Groundhog Day again yesterday, and I’m still chortling at the Pennsylvania Polka performed at Gobbler’s Knob.
How could we have let February 2nd slip by this year without notice?
Don’t drive angry!
Or on the railway tracks!