Don't step on the Mome Raths.

Hexagons.

2010-02-19T13:28:00.000-08:00

Almost 2 years ago I learnt to hand sew hexagons at Bronnie's.

The pattern that you usually use to interlock hexagons is called "Grandma's Flower Garden" which for most people is meant to denote something sweet and old fashioned.
Sadly to me, it was more aligned in my head to the naughty concept of the "dried flower arrangement" often sported by older women. ;O)

So I knew I had to use hexagons for good instead of evil and having already taken 5 years to choose the fabric I thought I'd sew them into diamonds instead, thus avoiding any further smutty references.

Finding Australian Aboriginal fabric that is actually designed by indigenous artists has not been easy. And even when I did find some, my concern about who was actually profiting from it was large enough to prevent purchase.

But find it I did. And it seems genuine, to the point where I can now tell you the names of the individual artists and have access to the meaning of their stories depicted on the fabric design.

Choosing colour ranges with this type of design was really difficult, due to both their and my inclination to get excited and stuff in plenty of colour all over the place. So I simply chose the ones I liked and worried about how they'd look combined later.

Sometimes I like to make it up as I go. Free balling is my thang.
That will possibly not surprise anyone who's seen me sew.

I even thought about turning this one into the shape of Australia and then doing blue marbles around the outside for ocean...just another 3 years work, no problem.

At that point though, my neck and shoulder became so bad from scrunching up as a I sewed that my osteopath asked my what the hell I was doing to aggravate my condition.
I had so much trouble explaining that I gave up and took the quilt in to show him what he was up against.
His response was, "Oh, gee..."

Apart from one side of a hexagon that Bron did for me as she taught me, every stitch was done by me, and very few were sewn with any impatience or frustration.
I really enjoyed the mobility of this kind of sewing. I love being able to watch TV with the boys but still do something with my hands. TWSS
I miss it.

I cannot imagine how many football games were stitched into that quilt. Even more than actual hours of 19th century BBC literature programmes though.

Sometime s when I look back at my sewing, I can recall any strong thought patterns I had while working on particular sections. Running my eye over this quilt brings up thoughts and feelings related to:

Souths
Jane Austen
wanting to quit a job I was very unhappy in
thyroiditis
starting a new business
the History Channel
sewing on the beach/s
sitting on the couch at my in-laws, my Dad's and Yoga Boy's and later, in the car, at Souths games

Anyway, Bron is coming over next week to have a look at it and to show me how to finish it so I can hand it on to be professionally quilted.
The lady who will quilt it may even be able to quilt Aboriginal motifs onto it. I'm thinking a big dreamtime snake (TWSS) or kangaroo prints.

So, it's not even been 2 days and I feel at a loss of what to do next.
I only have 3-4 quilts to finish, but they're not TV watching quilts, so I really think that even before the day is done, that I will start another hexagon quilt.

I'm going to use the fruit and vege fabric that I bought maybe 6 years ago. I'm just busting to sew mushrooms up against raspberries up against rockmelon and then broccoli - if only to see if it can be done.
Maybe I'll make it look like the inside of the fridge or the displays at the green grocers.

And this is how it starts...

Good luck with your vagina , my dear.

2010-01-09T23:34:00.000-08:00

That's probably what I would title my autobiography if I ever wrote one.
And one's all I'd need to write, because with such a title, one's all that would sell.

Do you play that game? Name your autobiography?
My title can vary from day to day depending on what's happening within and without me.

Hell Boy once told me that his might be, "Happy landings, cunt." but never went on to elaborate as to how he arrived at that mantra.

Now, I've never considered that I need luck with any part of my body, oh, okay, my feet, but one day when I was working in retail, a lady took her leave of me by saying, "Good luck with your vagina, my dear."

After saying, "Well thank you very much," I hastened out the back to make a soothing cup of tea just to give myself those precious couple of moments to figure out how a stranger could feel comfortable enough within 10 minutes of meeting me to say that, and how I could think that that was not only reasonable, but polite.
Is that normal?

I've really given this some serious thought. Like maybe 3-5 years of serious thought, and so far, all I can put it down to is being Australian.

I have noticed that Australians, by and large, are chatters.
Travelling showed me absolutely that this is not the case globally.

I suppose that even in the crowded cities, Aussies are more open than most.
Curious too.
And willing to share personal information and intimate details with total strangers with precious little encouragement.

So, when I met this lovely lady, I think the conversation went something like,

Me: "Cool earrings."

Her: "Thanks, I made them myself. I couldn't find anything to match these shoes."

"I hate that, but it should never stop you buying interesting shoes."

"No. I'd rather be dead than boring."

"Check."

Then suddenly she went straight into a detailed and terrifying tale about her reproductive health, which worried me not, as I honestly believe I've heard it all. And what I haven't heard, I've seen.
I empathised with her, gave her all the necessary sensible and effective suggestions for a total recovery and told her I hoped it would be up and running soon. wink wink

Transaction complete.

Then as she left, she turned just outside the very crowded store, which was blessed with excellent acoustics, and bellowed, "Good luck with your vagina, my dear!"

Good luck indeed.

Pot and kettle.

2009-11-02T13:53:00.001-08:00

Yes, I am aware of my tardiness in blogging throughout that trip.
No, I am not going to apologise for it.
Better idea just to pull my finger out now and fix it.

But I'll be obeying the principle of reverse chronology, simply because that's the order in which my photos are going to be downloaded, and also a little bit because I'm a Pisces, I want to, and you can't stop me.

OK, so one thing that sat badly with me was that "convict" reputation the Brits still endow Aussies with.
Lame jokes are not in short supply, but ignorance of Australia's current cultural make-up certainly is. Just haven't kept their finger on the pulse, have they?
Australasia, mate.

For example, the group of 6 we were travelling in boasted only one member who might have held any sort of convict past in his ancestry.

1= German/Slovene
2= Lebanese
1= Northern Italian
1= Lebanese/Northern Italian
1= Patrick....

Therefore, 5/6 or 83.3% of our sample group hold no ties with the convict history, thus making English witticisms lame enough to make even Mrs Slocombe and The Two Ronnies blush.

The UK still has some wicked issues to deal with regarding racism and just cultural intolerance generally.
While we were there, the BBC let some horrific racist on TV prior to their elections and he's polling incredibly well.

In the cab from Manchester to Liverpool, I actually heard the driver ranting about "all the foreigners and illegals" in Liverpool distorting the true population figures.
When he was asked where these foreigners were from, he replied in all seriousness with, "Ireland."

Ummmm...what?
That's a little like Sydney-siders complaining about foreigners from Gosford, isn't it?
Admittedly I have done that many times, so I'll shut up now.

After weathering Aussie convict jokes and the morally superior English looking down their noses at us with our customary good natured Australian humour, we took ourselves off to the British Museum for the morning...

...have you heard of that one? The British Museum.

Hands up who was hoping for tea pots, Beatles and clotted cream?

Nope. It is a collection of priceless, ancient artifacts stolen by the English from all around the globe.
The only thing in there that was British was the food, and that was a damned shame.

And when I say artifacts, I'm talking about things like.... the Rosetta Stone and Amenhotep III's busts, rather than just the loaves of bread stolen by starving people that they're still giving the Aussies shit about.
The British Museum boasts over 110,000 artifacts from Egypt alone.

Dirty thieving bastards!

It was standing thus, under some 4,000 year old Assyrian something-or-other in the very heart of London, that the true meaning of the word Commonwealth finally dawned on me. derrrr

Apparently, the museum's official stance on their ill-gotten gains is,

"restitutionist premise, that whatever was made in a country must return to an original geographical site, would empty both the British Museum and the other great museums of the world",

And translates to finders keepers, or even GGF in my book.

And I'm proud to say that one country that fought the pricks and won so far, has been.... Australia, but that's possibly because it was "only" human remains they'd taken from the indigenous population they wiped out in Tasmania, and not something they considered truly valuable.

Anyway, next time you hear a dig from the Brits about the Australian convict history, be sure to remind them of their own light fingers and heavy pockets.
I find it useful to mention that the convicts were indeed British at the time of their offense - a much forgotten fact.

Pot and kettle.

And now that I think about it, if Patrick's family had stolen something, my guess is that it was a priceless statue of a demon rather than a loaf of bread, and that doesn't count anyway, does it?

Lake Bled

2009-10-08T08:38:00.000-07:00

Surely this place cannot be for real.

Every way you look it seems more beautiful than the last glance. The colours of the alps and the water are indescribable and the overall effect is as close to having a religious experience as I think I'll ever get.

There certainly is some magic there.

I won't bother to continue, other than with a few pictures.

We're in Celje now, the town where my father was born. Tomorrow we'll head up to their castle and we'll meet Mateja, dad's cousin's daughter and then we'll go out to vitenje, the town where he actually grew up on Saturday.

Bled time machine?

2009-10-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

Umm, okay, so just quickly, our hotel in Bled, Slovenia, which, incidentally is the best place I've ever been or stayed, has a hairdryer that looks (and sounds) like a vacuum cleaner hose.

At least I thought it was a hairdryer.

But since having used it, I'm now wondering whether it's not in fact, a time machine.

And I say this in all seriousness, because when I went in there it was 2009, and when I came out just a few minutes later, it was clearly 1993.

Anyway, decide for yourselves, and next time you watch Eurovision, don't be so amazed.

Holy crap!

2009-10-06T00:05:00.000-07:00

Orright, shit, where do I start?

The answer does not lie on a German keyboard. Everything is on different keys, the shift , alt functions are like special moves you sometimes accidentally pull off on Street Fighter.

So, we're well- after Jeff's protracted bout of flu and my 3 days of it. Mercifully we were with Tone during the worst of it rather than on the road.

Vienna we had internet access but not a second to scratch ourselves, so I'll catch that up later, then we separated from the others and we pressed on to Leipzig for tax purposes.
We saw a hundred year old tube of haemorrhoid cream (half used) almost as scary as a few of the tubes in our medicine cabinet.
Loved Leipzig, saw Bach's grave and then ran out to Dresden the next morning.

Almost pissed my pants with confusion trying to decide which incredible building to photograph first. Gretchen, you and I need to go there together. i shudder to think of the poics you would take there-lots of wire/construction up against those beautiful, grand churches and such.

We finally made it onto the Kurt Vonnegut Slaughter House 5 tour and now have a piece of one of it's tile in my pocket (Jeff did it)

I just posted this and lost half, so bear with me, I don't write well when I'm cranky.

We made it to berlin just in time for the anniversary of the wall which was chaotic for time poor tourists.

Am off to slovenia now, and hope to have internet in the room for a week or so, hopefully I can stuff some pics on here and write properly.

My English is now backwards becoming,a nd I hope that will correct itself once the others join us in salzburg.

I will not be reading this back or correcting it, so GGF.

Or FGG auf deutsch.

can someone please feed Adrian? That'd be tops.

Hugs to you all,

simxo

Republic of Kugelmugel | Vienna, Austria | Atlas Obscura

2009-09-09T23:29:00.001-07:00

As we are travelling once again to dear old Vienna, home to countless generations of Tischlers (or so I'm told), for what feels like the fourth time, I have actually taken pains this time to research the city and see what's there that we may have missed.

The Austrians don't disappoint.

Firstly, in the medieval church, St Stefan's Dom, they have 11,000 plague victims in the basement, the bones of whom it was the job of criminals to clean of rotting flesh.
As an added bonus, they have the royal Hapsburg (the ruling royal family including Marie-Antoinette's family) crypts and various jars of their organs - some of which recently leaked and created such a stench that no-one would consider going downstairs to deal with the situation for days.
Cripes, what a bunch of babies. It's only 300 year old bowel juice!
Truly...some people.

And to think that the last 6 times I've entered that magnificent building, I've walked straight over all these gems.

But also, I discovered am amusement park that boasts 4-5 ghost trains and a rotor!Put that on the list.

And then I found out that there is a Viennese guy who built himself a sphere for a house, got in a monster fight with the government about it (buildings are very much either square or rectangular in Vienna), declared his sphere a republic in, no less, in 1984, and then refused to pay tax, printed his own stamps and narrowly avoided going to a rectangular prison by allowing the to move his spherical micro-nation to Prater which is the park that contains the amusement park.

Outside his sphere he has a "scheisse list" (shit list) of people who thwarted his attempts to declare independence and who tried to send him to prison. You can imagine this type of unreasonable fascist I'm sure. If you cannot, simply get up and have a quick peep in the mirror.

I've never seen a barbed wire protected sphere dwelling in the shadow of a roller coaster before, so I'm pencilling in Monday 28th September to round off (get it?) my education.

Stay tuned, I shall be blogging my new and improved arse off throughout Europe and I ain't gonna be polite, nuther.

Oh, and if you're wondering, his republic is called KugelMugel, so, it will probably come as no surprise to you that his address is listed as:

Number 2 Antifaschismusplatz, Prater
Vienna
Austria

Republic of Kugelmugel | Vienna, Austria | Atlas Obscura

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Mail call.

2009-08-03T16:29:00.000-07:00

The other day I received a box full of goodies from Cleveland- the source of all things cool and interesting.

I almost tripped over it as I left the house in a hurry, and opened it using my very girlie lime green flowery Swiss army knife as I sat in the car waiting for Hell Boy.

It's contents were as follows:

Barack Obama quilting fabric LOL - 2 kinds - my mind is now fully taken over with thoughts of WTF can I make out of that!? I do have a few ideas, but they're a bit further out there than usual, so I think I should just go ahead and do it.
cupcake thongs/flip flops - exactly my size too
wine cooler with a Rabbitoh on it!
Oscar Wilde card *sigh*
groovy gift box

This is the kind of mail I like to get. Out of the blue, fun and thoughtful.
So thanks Gretchen. xoxx

Naturally I have returned serve and we shall have to wait until next week to see how that goes. ;O)

The Yoga of Pies.

2009-07-27T17:08:00.000-07:00

Back in the olden days, when I was a kid, our school had no canteen.
Thinking rationally now, perhaps this was why my parents chose it.

And back then, during winter, we would excitedly expect a visit from the pie man.
Mondays I think.
Yoga Boy believes it was every Monday throughout winter, but I thought it was only once a month.

20 cents? 30 cents? Something like that anyway.

First thing in the morning, before class had started, the teacher would grab the list and ask you to raise your hand if you wanted to order a pie for lunch.
The groans and shufflings form the children who, for one reason or another didn't have the money was awful.

But it never fascinated me me as much as the kids who would raise both hands straight up in the air, declaring that they could eat two pies!

Two?!
Bloody hell, to me that was like some sort of contest that was worthy of prime time television.

Matthew Crawley. I can still see him with his arms right up over his head like he was about to dive into a pool. His were the first up and the last down- just in case the teacher missed his order.
He can't have been the only one, but he's the only one I can remember. Funnily enough, that's the only thing I can remember about him save his name.

I do also remember that you were meant to bring along a bowl and a spoon on pie day.
WTF
We had one teacher who would dogmatically enquire whether you'd brought it all along before asking you to raise your hand, thus briefly (and cruelly) implying that if you did not, that you might be facing disqualification.
Ghastly stuff for nine year olds to deal with.

Just last year when Hell Boy and I visited Henry VIII's Hampton Court in London, we checked out the kitchens and learned that pies were invented to save money on buying expensive crockery.
The pastry itself, which was discarded, served only as a case or bowl for the pie's contents, and also made for the very first "fast" food in that it could be easily transported and eaten on the road.

Bring a bowl indeed.

Now, you may not know this, but there is in fact, more than one way to eat a pie. TWSS
And usually, I would quietly imply that the inclination stemmed from genetics or familial example.
But I can't, it stems directly from peer influence alone, and I have photographic evidence to back me up.

Yoga Boy, my senior by two years, seemed to have learnt all about pie eating on those Mondays at Burnside Primary.
I'm glad I missed it back then, but some thirty something years later I must now watch it each time we go to the football.

Still.

Last game I took the camera so that I could capture the technique for you.

1) Peel off lid
2) Eat lid
3) Mix tomato sauce into now luke warm filling with bare, unwashed fingers
4) Scoop out filling with first two fingers, straight into mouth, disregarding all hygiene regulations and any sort of manners
5) Repeat
6) Make a big show of "cleaning" fingers with tongue despite the fact that it is in far worse shape
7) Scrunch up empty base into a cylindrical shape and eat
8) Wipe excess spittle and gristle from fingers onto trousers - right thigh area seems to be the best for this
9) Smell fingers whilst pretending to scratch nose - pfnaar pfnaar

So, if you're feeling up to it next time you're in public, give it a go and let me know how you get on.

Not welcome.

2009-07-13T02:47:00.000-07:00

I am not welcome in the ocean.

I've known it since I was quite young, maybe 4 or 5 years old.

Actually, now that I think of it, I'm not really welcome in most bodies of water, be they salt or otherwise.
There's almost always a drama, and the few normal saturated experiences I've had were due to me being under Hell Boy's protection for a brief period. Like having an maritime bouncer or like in Pac Man when you eat the ghost and are briefly invincible. Heady stuff.

Hell Boy is descended from many many generations of seafarers, and I know this to be true because his mother once gave me instructions as to how to beat an octopus to death on the rocks.

Having grown up on Maroubra beach, and having spent time as a surf lifesaver, he feels very connected to the ocean and very comfortable in it.
He says he can feel it doing him good and washing away the negative residues of life. When he's in the ocean's embrace, he is completely happy and his soul is at peace.

I'm not like that.

When I'm in the ocean, I'm looking around, frantic, trying to determine from which direction the next onslaught will come.
As soon as I make contact with that salty water, it does all it can to eject me.

And if you don't believe me, I once got dumped in ankle deep water.
OK so it was at Maroubra, which is not the indigenous word for calm water, but still, 3 year old kiddies were pointing and laughing at me.

So, for one reason or another, I simply do not equate the beach with relaxation.
Except for the times I've been with immersed with Hell Boy, I have felt harrassed out there.

Harrassed by bubbles, even the fluffiest of which have the ability to knock me over if I lose my concentration.
Harrassed by every piece of seaweed in the vicinity.
Harrassed by small curious fish who scare the shit out of me with their goggly eyes and scaly slimes.
Harrassed by phantom shark sightings.
Unnaturally terrified of electric eels, pirhanas, moray eels and quicksand, all of which are looking out for me even as we speak.
Harrassed by blue bottles, for whom I appear to have a magnetic attraction. My guess is they're seeking the refuge of camouflage on my skin.
Harrassed by the agonising sensations of cold water that only someone with a light frame can ever understand.
Harrassed by the excrutiating pain of old middle ear infection scars due to wicked coastal winds.

And then there's the rips, the freak waves, that pointy scratchy sand, the cement...

Yep, the cement.

I was with Hell Boy at Avalon beach, hoping that the elements might be kind and give me a break so that I could share his joy in the beach experience...

And because he'd noted that the surf was too rough for me (it was barely moving), we went to swim in the tidal pool at the south end just to be sure.

I hate deep pool water, it makes me panic. But I decided to grin and bear it for at least 5 minutes.
I was cold too, so I hopped out and was sitting on a nearby ledge trying to warm up in the sun, thinking that it might take another 20 minutes or so before my poor skin began to change from frost bitten blue to sunburnt red.
Joy.

And then, even though I was nowhere near the water itself at the time, I got dumped.

Dumped.

How the hell is that even possible?

Well, the scar running down my left elbow and both my thighs confirm that you can in fact be dumped whilst not actually being in the ocean.
But only if you're me, so don't worry.
I slid a good 10 metres across a cement landing before coming to an abrupt halt up against some rocks, nails ground down to tatty splinters, dignity non-existent, a bleeding, pulpy mess.

Not welcome.

Poor Hell Boy.
At least I try to enjoy his passion though. TWSS

After this happened and the general amazement died down, it occurred to me that the situation felt somewhat familiar.

My mother lived for the sun (clearly not a genetically dominant trait) and as small children, Yoga Boy and I spent many an afternoon either at Mona Vale beach or at Parramatta Pool doing the whole 1970's bronzed Aussie thang.

Except me.

I was doing the "that dead blue bottle just stung me" or the "almost drown while both your parents are holding your hand" thang.

My parents had taken me for a little splash into the babies pool (ewwwwwwwwwww) which was perhaps 1-2 inches deep in the shallow end. I was maybe 18 months old.
They were having a little chat, each holding one of my hands and eventually looked down to discover that I was way ahead of any schedule and was already floating and on the way to becoming blue.

At the time I'm sure they felt a little negligent and very confused by it all.
My father being an engineer, never quite saw how it was even physically possible.
And lets' face it, it isn't.

Years later, after realising my God given gift for defying the aquatic odds, they just scratched their heads and hoped that I'd have the good sense to steer clear of the water.

And so I did until 20 years ago when *enter Hell Boy stage left*

2012

2009-06-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

Far be it from me to thumb my nose at ancient beliefs...

I am prepared to make an exception for the ancient Mayans because they were savvy enough to use astronomy whilst also believing in the power of goats and such.
Mainly, however, I choose to embrace the prediction of the Mayan calendar, that the earth will encounter it's end, catastrophe, or simply a major change in spiritual dynamics on 21-12-2012.

Indeed, I hope it's so.

Being on board the day the world ends would be almost as exciting as being swept up in the mosh pit at a Ramones gig, and I've already done that, so I'm up for something bigger this time.

As such, I issue ample notice that on 2oth December, 2012, we will be hosting a party, just in case.

Fancy dress no less, and the theme...
...Let's confuse future intergalactic archaeologists!

Imagine for an insane moment that the prediction is correct and the world really does end that day.

Wouldn't it be nice to leave a confusing legacy so that in years to come, alien investigators will discover beautifully preserved pirates, milk maids, zombies and 7 foot chickens all happily spending time together?
Universal recorded history as we know it will change for the better.

Earth's reputation as a planet will change from "narky, stupid and violent bipedal life form who polluted their own planet" to " we don't know what they were exactly, but they looked to be having a good time!"

And that sounds a little better, doesn't it?
Almost like partially writing your own eulogy. Hey that's an idea... hmmm

But not as entertaining as Bukowski's epitaph which reads, "Don't try" or Spike Milligan's which was meant to read, "I told you I was ill..."
Such a pity that his stupid, boring family dropped the ball and denied him that final laugh, a bigger pity too that the bastards refused to allow him to be buried in a washing machine, which would surely have been a fitting acknowledgement of his genius.

Anyhoo, pencil it in.

TWSS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Doomsday_prediction

About 7:30 will be fine.

Our garden.

2009-05-22T00:34:00.000-07:00

Our house is kind of on a battle axe block, meaning that it's really deliciously private.
Like retire and run a nudist colony out there private.

A weird, half-arsed tropical oasis complete with banana tree, mango tree, koi pond and conceptual art, courtesy of the area's friendly, if incontinent fruit bats.
Absolutely nothing gets that stuff off, so we choose to regard it as beautiful.

The cats adore this garden, enjoying a variety of hidey-holes from which to spring at one another with no warning.

We also share land with a family of blue tongued lizards who appear to be evolving specifically to be better equipped at frightening the pants off me at regular intervals.
Bastards.

This block came to us, equipped with an intricate cat alarm system, maintained by those shitty little grey minor birds that some idiot brought over from India.

And you know what I like best about these birds?

They're blatantly rascist.

Seriously. They have major issues with black cats.
Brown's OK though.

These intolerant, noisy "junkie" birds as Hell Boy calls them , squawk mercilessly in groups of up to 20, as soon as they see one of our black 2 cats enter the garden.
I've had to turn the hose on them to be able to hear myself think.

Poor Poppy, she's never known anything different. She just thinks that's what the great outdoors sound like.
In one way it's quite good, in that we always know where the girls are.

Honourable mention to that community of hand sized spiders who string their webby business up from October-April each year.
Why they choose to live at 5m intervals in a direct line between our front door and our garage door is known only to them.
Sometimes it looks like an Indiana Jones movie out there.

What I do appreciate about them though, is that each year, they actually learn the measurements of our tallest regular visitor, and they then make the necessary adjustments to their nightly engineering, so that after about a month of mutual disaster, all webs are precisely 1 inch higher than their heads.

Nifty.

So, the garden renovations are about half done, with no immediate plans to advance that.
We can see that as being slack, or we can see it as leaving nature alone for a change and enjoying some level of domestic wilderness.

Anyhoo, for now, the frogs, ants, bugs, fish, cats, rats, white peacocks, possums and whatever the hell else is out there are all happy, healthy and noisy.
So all is well in our little piece of 'straylia.

Welcome any time.

New life

2009-05-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

What a year of change 2009 has been.

I felt it arriving, ready or not, and so followed my intuition and went with the flow.

And what difference.

My health has improved, I feel happier, more enthusiastic towards all areas of life, and I wake early each day, barely able to make it to 7am before getting up and starting my day.

My life is filled now with only positive people, and I believe all aspects will continue to grow and increase with joy and fulfillment.

I have found the perfect clinic space, and in so doing, I suspect I have discovered a bunch of new friends who will go on to become very important to me in the years to come.

All of my life experience and professional experience will now be able to emerge, uninterrupted and complete.

The support and encouragement I have given so freely to others during the course of my life is now returning to me ten-fold.

I accept that there will be bumps on the path, but from now on, it's my path.

Yay.

Maturing nicely.

2009-05-06T04:28:00.000-07:00

1000 worms (incl vegetable scraps and a clump of pubic hair for them to eat)
compost bin 1
compost bin 2
floor cleaning slippers
hand sewn "Still hate the Roosters" block by Clair
pirate bandaids
giant eraser
home made doll of Lila by Lila
home made earrings from cat bells
home made Beatles reiki pack by Cath D.
Glo-Stix earrings
The Atheist Manifesto
Edelweiss handbag
Pandora turtle
Pandora bunny
Pandora football
comical underpants
slipper socks with pig pompoms
brass flying pig watering can which is not water tight and looks a lot like Phoebe

Please be advised that all of the above mentioned gifts are cherished.

Okay, okay,so that's not all I got, I did in fact receive some lovely, sensible gifts, but I'm not proud of that, and I'm not inclined to mention them.
Of course, amongst everything else, I did get the gift of freedom when I quit my job, but that's not silly, so I'm not counting it.

Hooray for life, luv sim xoxo

Thanks a lot, Michael...

2009-04-24T20:16:00.000-07:00

I'd like to take the time out of my busy schedule to thank someone for reacquainting me with my dark side.

The OCD- I cannot leave it alone once I start it jigsaw puzzle gene I inherited from Dad.

Staying at Clair and Michael's (and Dawn and Daniel's) as I was last month,Michael popped out his Australian map jigsaw puzzle...which I tried to resist, briefly, and later had to drag myself away from as I feared I'd complete it before he returned home from work the next day, thus ruining the experience for him.

Hooray for my self discipline.

A week or 2 later, I made Hell Boy take me jigsaw shopping, both of us knowing full well that this was going to be bad for everyone, except maybe the cats.

K-Mart obliged us with a selection of ghastly $4 jigsaws, which sadly meant that between the 2 of us, we came to the conclusion that we should purchase all of them.

I've done an average of 1 per week (1000 pieces) and the last one was virtually within 2 days...and we went out for Yum Cha into the city, so...

In other news, my neck and shoulders seem to be quite painful.
I was even so brazen as to confess to Ed, my osteopath, that I had indeed injured myself doing a jigsaw, perhaps the nerdiest thing I've ever said.
I didn't help that he was genuinely impressed.

The last puzzle, I even had the help of Igor's 5 year old boy, Lennon. He actually found 2 pieces of the sky which was all the same shade of blue.

Lennon declared to me," not everybody can do this...you have to be smart."
"And patient," I added.

The second puzzle I did - the one with the missing piece - I'll blame the cats, but honestly I believe I vacuumed several pieces up, I got Dad to help me with.

He was over at Easter and I brought the board out. He went through his usual routine of,

"Shit, Simone, what are you doing to me? No, Jesus, that's terrible!"

And then kept Viv waiting for 2 hours while he refused to budge until he'd found that piece with the stripe and the crooked leg.

Glorious.

So, after doing 3 1000 piece puzzles of images I really didn't like at all, I decided that I wanted to do a puzzle of Schloss Neuschwanstein - my favourite building in the world, and a place we're going back to in October.
We trekked into nerd headquarters, HobbyCo in QVB, but they only had a 1500 piece one, so now our house has a permanent source of frustration, triumph, musculoskeletal disorders and profanity right in our dining room.

So, once again, hats off and a very big thank you to young Michael for setting me off and a bender.
Where was Beagle Bay btw?

New places

2009-04-01T01:43:00.000-07:00

Apart from being a year crammed full of huge changes for me, this year I will be visiting a few new places.

I like to visit new places.

Additionally, I will be re-tracing footsteps in places that will look totally different due to seasonal changes. eg Vienna, Budapest and Salzburg sans black ice!!! woot woot

This trip , we will be seeing the following new cities:

Melk - to the Abbey of Melk, where I will hopefully be finding a wicked souvenir or two for Monica

Berlin -cripes, where do I start? Hitler's bunker, Unter den Linden, Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Gate, Nazi walks, Reichstag... better bone up on the WWII history. TWSS

Sans Souci/Potsdam -Charlottenburg Castle

Dresden -to visit the scene of Slaughterhouse 5, and to dash though the medical museum so that I may claim my trip on tax.... oooh, and to see the most heavily bombed city of WWII

Leipzig - to visit Samuel Hahnemann's statue - he founded homoeopathy, thus another tax dodge, God love him

Bled -the most beautiful place on earth

Celje -Dad's birthplace

Vitenje -Tischler town - meeting my Slovenian relatives

Ljubljana -including day trips to the coast line and to wicked castles

Potoroz

Piran -Jeff would like to retire here

Predjama

Harburg

Liverpool - BEATLES pilgrimage

But what I'm really excited about is meeting some of my Slovenian relatives. Just yesterday I received an answer from Matja, who is married to my Oma's brother's grandson...what's that, second cousin?

Anyway, I have discovered that she is a teacher and he is a scuba diver....WTF. They both trundle around the world scuba diving.

Don't you just love having cool relos?

Her manner of speaking is kinda familiar to me in that she was very friendly and offered me plenty of virtual hugs already. LOL Even I kept it reasonably unemotional for the first email, so I think from now on, anything goes. And most of you reading this will know how bad that might prove to be.

So, I have booked and paid for all the flights, and a couple of the tours. I'm fine tuning the Berlin leg and then I can book all that, although most of it will be independent anyway.

Then all I need to do is compile a list of the stuff we're planning to do as a group and cough up the cash.

Luggage is bought, got the North Face jacket this week, still have thermals and could pack the rest tomorrow if I had to.
Only thing I need is a new pair of boots, but as I want exactly the ones I already have, I'm resigned to giving in to the Gods of shoes, who hate me so very much.

Next week, I'll dump thew entire itinerary on here, more for my peace of mind than yours.

I'm writing this on my new laptop, which I bought for my new clinic, but it'll be coming along on the trip do that I don't have to be arsed finding God awful, smokey internet cafes all over Europe.

So, strap in for long winded blogs this time rather than 2 paragraphs of garbled nonsense on Facebook.

woot woot

Mercury pulled it's finger out.

2009-03-26T22:50:00.000-07:00

By astrological terms, Mercury has been retrograde since at least January sometime, bringing all sorts of hitches to communication, transport, basically smooth progress of anything.

Seems that today it pulled it's finger out and played catch up for Simone. (TWSS)

Backing out of the driveway this afternoon, I almost ran into the delivery van.
It was close.

So, Hell Boy got out to see what he had - neither of us could remember visiting Ebay or Amazon, so we had no idea what he was going to present us with.

As Hell Boy waited for the guy to stop rummaging around in the back of his van (TWSS), he went to the letterbox.

Well, today, instead of bills or bad news, we were besieged with gifts.

From all over the place.

In the mail from Clair, I received a block (early WTF) made from killer red and green fabric. It came in an envelope with a Russell Crowe stamp, lovingly defaced by Clair with a talk bubble saying, "Go the Bunnies."
Majestic.

Then Hell Boy threw a parcel through the car window onto my lap from my aunt.
A belated hand made 40th gift, held up because it was entered in a competition somewhere and had been busy winning the GRAND CHAMPION award.
It's exquisite. Tiny, tiny, perfect embroidery stitches. Just amazing.

As I was yet enjoying this feast of crafty loveliness, I heard him say,
"Farken A! It's from Cleveland!"

Another much larger parcel, containing the North Face jackets he's been in love with these 6 months at least, sent on to us by Gretchen all the way from Cleveland clap clap clap Cleveland clap clap clap

Far better travelled than either the sender or the recipient, these magnificent items, even with postage costs, still were significantly less than store price in Australia had we bought them here.
And this tells me that either the good people at North Face don't believe Aussies get cold, or that they simply don't care.

Anyway, many, many thanks to the lovely Gretchen for the time and trouble of getting them here and making Hell Boy's day/year and for filling the box (TWSS) with all manner of goodies for me.

I'm guessing the Amish people cookie cutters were for me and not Hell Boy?
Fabric, cookie cutters, a Statue of Liberty building book (LOL) and my new favourite mug from Charlie's Dog House Diner....cripes, what a jackpot.
Chili Dogs!
WTF are chili dogs, and why haven't I had one yet?
Dammit!

Well anyway, Gretchen, I hope you enjoy the pics of me using my Charlie's Dog House Diner mug for the very first time.
Sadly, I feel as though I'm getting a cold, so I used it to take some of the worst tasting herbs in recorded history, and I've made up some shit, I mean,seriously, but the good news is that I was able to use that yellow cloth you included to stop myself from vomitting afterwards, so nothing went to waste.

Monica and Clair, you'll appreciate this ... Andrographis, Olive leaf, Golden Seal, Elder and Echinacea (all triple dosed)...not even a jot of Licorice to bust up the taste... gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarhhhhhhhhhhhhk, dirty son of a...

Nice to see me getting a dose of my own medicine though, eh?

Fuck the blue team!

2009-03-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

Well if that don't beat all...

Yesterday was Round 1 of the NRL competition, and as always, we play the filthy Roosters at this time.
This was their home game.
I hate giving the pricks my money, but I love being part of a non-fragmented Souths crowd who sits together, sings together and completely invades their ground and dominates the crowd numbers.

I knew it was on when we got to Fox Studios for lunch at the German Bier Hall, 3 hours before the game, and saw 4:1 Souths to Rorters fans stalking around.

It was a hot day and the Burrow sits in Bay 38 which is on the eastern side, this making it in full sun.
We managed to get under cover and happily managed to dodge the sun until the final minutes of the game when I felt it hit my legs.
How much good luck is that?

We arrived at the ground 20 minutes into the first game - Toyota Cup which is for players aged about 17-19 I think.

The noise coming from the half-full Burrow even for this early game felt like a first grade grand final atmosphere might for most other clubs.
I love this about Souths fans. They support the club and not just the first grade team.
OK, so this young side was smashing the junior Roosters (is there such a thing?) and went on to hammer them by around 40 points, but still...big effort from the crowd. Full credit even.

My favourite moment of a football game is, and always will be, that very first cohesive moment the crowd experiences when they all look up in unison and cheer some unexpecting young player, half scaring him to death with their sudden attention.
I love it.

That moment yesterday was glorious. One of the best.

It sparked a burst of singing and chanting from The Burrow so loud and so passionate that I did the only thing a girl can do at such a time, I rang my brother in India so that he might hear it too.

And hear it he did.

He copped a whole round of "Still hate the Roosters" and "South Sydney clap clap clap" before the noise died down a bit so I could ask him what he was doing.

He was naked in an ashram somewhere in the north of India, he tells me.
Did he find it strange that I would place an international call on my mobile and hold my phone up so that strangers might sing into it?
No.
He sang along.
Naked by the Ghanges though he may have been.

Hooray for Yoga Boy.

And as if this call wasn't costing me enough, he went on to ask me about the rest of the round's results and demanded statistics so he could get an idea as to how his fantasy team were doing.
After telling him what I knew, I excused myself by saying, "I gotta go, Dad's here now."

Which he was.

I had invited my 15 yo step-niece, Emily to come along to this game, knowing how good the atmosphere always is.
She had previously told me that she thought she was a Roosters supporter.
I had asked her why this would be, considering she wasn't a cheat herself.
Didn't make sense to me.

After explaining to her that Souths own Xmas (red and green) as well as Easter (bunnies) she decided that she would like to support Souths with me and that the Rorters could go to hell... And they will too - but I think on an earthly plane it's called the Central Coast.
How more people haven't seen the similarities yet is beyond me.

So, Dad brought Emily along despite the fact that he is a low-grade Parramatta supporter.
Actually, he arrived in full Arsenal kit and sporadically stood up and bellowed "Arsenal!!!" loud and proud, making me rather suspect I inherited my tribal behaviours from his side of the family after all.

They arrived just as Kieren's gigantic Souths banner was being unravelled and stretched down to cover the entire bay of supporters.
This banner lists all of our premiership wins and has a message on it directed at the Rorters fans, "Forever in our shadow."

Being under that massive banner reminded me of being in primary school when you'd play under a parachute, except that it was stinking hot, red and green and much more wonderful.

Dad was enchanted with the atmosphere from the start, and I sat him between Greg and Jeff in order that he might enjoy the experience to it's fullest.

He had a ball. Each time I looked over, he was either standing and shouting his own words to songs that were happening or yelling out, "Fuck the blue team!!!"

When we left, Souths having destroyed our arch enemy by 52-12, his eyes were spinning in his head.
Much like mine, only his mascara wasn't running.

My voice is shot - my thyroid and the nodules near my voice box are now doing God knows what in there, my forearms are sore from all the clapping and I have small bluish areas appearing on my hands... and I couldn't be happier.

Well, maybe if we'd held them to nil... ;O)

Any road, FUCK THE BLUE TEAM!!!

For Monica.

2009-03-11T19:15:00.000-07:00

I know what kind of old lady I want to be.
God knows I had opportunity enough to study all the various types when I was geriatric nursing.

I liked the semi-cranky ones, whose memory was still in tact and who made you really work to gain their interest, harder still to gain their affection and quietly demanded that you almost kill yourself in order to gain their respect.

I like old men like that too.

In fact, I used to swap 2 "nice" old ladies for 1 cranky old man before the shift began.

I was told this week, by none other than Yoga Boy himself that I needed to calm down and not take so much to heart.

"But why not?" I asked him, "I'm working at becoming a crotchety old lady."

He believes I'm ahead of schedule.
And why isn't that cause for congratulations? I'm confused.
My list of grievances are simple, reasonable, well thought out, well expressed, humourous and consistent.

Some differences in character surfaced when we had to drop Yoga Boy at the airport yet again.

As is his want, he decided to do something last minute.
Seriously - who phones Optus on their mobile on the way to catch an international flight, just to alter something as trivial as payment details?
Particularly considering he had none of the relevant account information with him...

Exhibit A: the Pisces man.

This call lasted from the M2 and made it to just short of the airport.

Just listening to him trying to get through the voice prompts was hilarious.
Magnificent.
If they were bright, those things would discern the expression, "Fuck off," as belonging to someone well at the end of their tether, and patch you straight through to the suitable person.

But, no.

Yoga Boy's reactions were rather different from my what own might have been.
As a consequence of this, I'm guessing that he might have handled the phone call I endured with Ticketek later that day, quite differently too.
Which seems a shame because I really enjoyed that one and I suspect it may have done them the world of good.

Upon phoning to number craftily and deliberately hidden on their site, I was treated to the torture that is voice prompting.

I spoke the name of the event I wished to book clearly and without the slightest hint of impediment.
Perhaps this is where I went wrong.

I asked for Rooster vs Rabbitohs, which is what it said on the website.

Somehow that was translated into The Sydney Chamber Orchestra.

"Is this correct?"

"NO!"

"Which location would you like to see The Sydney Chamber Orchestra?"

"Fuck off!"

.... At this point, it really should have gone to "I'll put you through, sorry for being so terribly incompetent."

...But no, instead it went to, "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. Did you wish to see this event in Newcastle or Canberra?"

"Over my dead body, you fucking moron!"

So, by the time the operator picked up, I was good and mad.
Having dealt with the public for many years, I am perfecty aware that this is not his fault.

He did however make the error of picking up the call with, "So you want to book tickets for The Sydney Chamber Orchestra."

I explained in fairly straight terms that this was not the case and that the prompts had wasted my time and could not tell the difference between a football game and an orchestra performance, then it was probably just being used as a method of stalling customers rather than benefiting them.

At this point, the hilarity began in earnest.

I asked whether Bay 38 would still be GA for this match.

"There is no Bay 38 at this ground."

Knowing this to be an untruth, I asked him to check his facts.

Yes, eventually he found Bay 38. Miracle!

Are we still entitled to the SSFC member discount for this bay?

"There is no such thing as an SSFC member discount available."

I asked him to check his facts.

He returned and unhappily agreed that there were discounted tickets available, but then went on to tell me that all GA seating to this event had been sold out.

"Sold OUT!? Umm, I don't think so, they've had finals games there that haven't been sold out. Could you check that as well please?"

Now, as it happened, they were not sold out at all.
Surprise, surprise.

At this point, I stopped asking questions and just told him what he needed to do.
And then he charged me $6 for his help and I used my own ink and paper to print our tickets.

Hands up who believes they'll actually get us in on the day?

I'm still stumped by a differential diagnosis of this person: plain moron or a Roosters supporter?

And that a ticketing salesperson may deliberately fuck with your head is not such a strange suggestion either.
A few years ago, I saw two St George supporters seated bang in the middle of The Burrow.
Why?
Because the Ticketek person was a forward thinking Souths supporter and had booked them there to shit them. LOL

Up the Rabbitohs.
Still hate the Roosters.
Go Browns.

Maturing nicely.

2009-03-01T13:40:00.000-08:00

By and large, 40th birthday presents should be elegant, boring or appallingly tokenistic. Perhaps all three.
That is, if the person celebrating the milestone is generally regarded as an adult.

Apparently, I am not generally regarded in such light.

But that's good, right?
Right?

What am I talking about?

I'm referring to the list of gifts I received for my 40th birthday. I think you'll agree that either, this is:

a) pretty damning evidence
or
b) worthy of inclusion in bold on the cover sheet of my CV.

In random order, because that's the way my brain works:

1000 worms (incl vegetable scraps and a clump of pubic hair for them to eat)
compost bin 1
compost bin 2
floor cleaning slippers
pirate bandaids
giant eraser
home made doll of Lila by Lila
home made earrings from cat bells
home made Beatles Reiki pack by Cath D.
Glo-Stix earrings
The Atheist Manifesto
Pandora turtle
Pandora bunny
Pandora football
comical underpants
slipper socks with pig pompoms

Okay, okay,so that's not all I got, I did in fact receive some lovely, sensible gifts, but I'm not proud of that, and I'm not inclined to mention them.
Of course, amongst everything else, I did get the gift of freedom, but that's not silly, so I'm not counting it.

Will post pics tomorrow.

Hooray for life, luv sim xoxo

Reading me to sleep.

2009-02-21T02:28:00.000-08:00

Almost every night, I ask/hassle/manipulate Hell Boy into reading to me as I fall asleep.

And I'm wicked enough to expect him to read to me from books of my choosing rather than his.
Not that I don't like his material, but my final thought at night is better off not being Charles Bukowski practising to be a bum.
That's a day time thought.

I suspect that I fall asleep during the 2nd or 3rd paragraph, but he tells me that he reads 2 pages, no matter what.
I have woken up and roused on him before for not reading to me, just as he's turning his light out after completing the task. TWSS

In just the last few months, poor ole Hell Boy has read to me from the following texts:

20,000Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne ( he liked that)
Mary Poppins - P.L. Travers (he hated it)
Secret Lives of Great Authors - Robert Schnakenberg
Around the World in Eighty days - Jules Verne
Howl's Moving Castle -Dianna Wynne Jones ( he liked that)
The Lucy Family Alphabet - Judith Lucy (he liked that but won't admit it - he read more than 2 pages and I suspect he finished the chapter silently)
In His Own Write - John Lennon (he liked that)
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Wise Woman - Phillippa Gregory
What Katy Did - Susan Coolidge ( he hated it)
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
A Life - Woody Guthrie - Jow Klein
Slaughter-House Five - Kurt Vonnegut ( one of his faves - no problem there)
Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin ( he liked that)
Romulus My Father - Raimond Gaiter
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - Judith Kerr
any number of John Marsden books (hated them)
and most recently, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie - May Gibbs (he's really hating it)

Additionally, we listened to 6 CD's of Jane Austen novels whilst driving down and then up the south coast on our holiday recently.
His idea.
Sense and Sensibilty and then Persuasion.

Poor, poor man.

For someone who hates anything without the gritty immediacy of Bukowski or the quirkiness of Vonnegut, I have really been punishing him.

This is made far worse when you consider that he reads aloud to classes during the day - usually having to project his voice to kids who haven't read anything since Little Golden books and who never have any intention of doing so.
Having spent the last 13 years of my own work constantly speaking, I know that there are some days you just don't want to utter another syllable.

The other night as I plonked my book on his chest, he groaned and told me that he didn't think he could because that Year 10 class had taken it out of him - he'd read aloud to them for 2 sessions.
Naturally I suggested that he go back and tell this Year 10 that they were to have 2 pages less per session so that he would be OK to deal with me in the evenings. TWSS

I will be doing a nice afternoon tea for them at the end of the term if they comply with my wishes....

I'm thinking orange poppy seed cake, maybe lemon and sour cream cake and perhaps fairy cakes, just so I can see how many of these tough guys will eat them. That's what...ahh you know.

On turning 40.

2009-02-20T13:16:00.002-08:00

Bring it on!

My God, what a fuss too.
Why is that? Simply because a number ends with an O, we're supposed to do all sorts of different things to every other year?

Such nonsense.

But worst of all seems to be the inclination to make trite, lame, age related jokes in a 10 year cycle. Is that because these people assume we've forgotten their stupidity from last decade so soon?
Well I certainly haven't, I have an excellent memory - and I use it.
I won't be dispensing any polite laughter at my own party.
Be warned.
If you forget yourself and come at me with any of this, I will leave you swinging- that's what she said.

"Blah blah blah, it's all down hill from here - blah blah over the hill - blah blah - you're not as young as you used to be..."

I wonder how many of these twits I've successfully weeded out of my intimate circle -that's what she said- since my last milestone birthday?
I'll let you know - unless you're one of them.
No, actually, especially if you're one of them - fuck it - I'm 40, I can do and say whatever I want now.

Hey, maybe that's what it's all about - a direct measure of how well you've managed your social life during the last 10 years.
I'm watching you...

How about lashing out with something useful instead like, "You've come through a lot, you've faced all your life lessons head on, and I admire the person you've become."
That's what I tell the people close to me when opportunity arises.

And then there's my personal fave, the obligatory mention of age but once a decade.

Did you take the time to write 39 on my card last year?
Will you be bothered to do the arithmetic next year and the year after when it involves just a little more thought and consideration?

Does everyone forget your age for 9 years in a row and then suddenly feel bad about this and have to display their involvement by demonstrating that they have been paying attention all along?

You see, I don't care about such things.
In fact, I'd be far more appreciative if you celebrate my 41st with gusto for no reason, or my 49th, being that that would mean I have dodged to breast cancer curse and have outlived my mother.
But just don't surprise me.

My original plans for my 40th were just to turn 40 and mind my own business.
But it quickly became apparent that there were those who had no intentions of doing the same.
"I don't want a fuss", was somehow translated into ,"Please ignore my wish and organise a surprise party for me."

Now, I hate surprises. I really, really, really do.
And let's not suppose that that's simply because I'm an uppity sort of a thing with strong opinions about minutia.
There's way more to it than that!

I detest surprises so much, that I will no longer even attend a surprise party even as a guest.

Dreadful things.
Pure hoax too.
Surprise parties have always and will always be about the people/perpetrators organising the thing rather than the recipient/victim.

Anyway, I begged Hell Boy a cool 6 months ago to act as bouncer and to stamp out any such daft pretentions for my birthday.
I knew that a birthday ending with O would make me likely to have to endure this from some ninny.

"Hey, we think this birthday is so important that we went ahead and organised it without even consulting you!"
To which the only possible response from me would have been, "Surprise!" and to walk out.

I had promised Hell Boy faithfully that this would absolutely have been my course of action should such rubbish come to pass.
I believe that he was quite tempted to let it happen just to enjoy the spectacle.
Few people enjoy a spectacle more than him.
It would have made quite a blog too.

But common sense prevailed, and I decided to just do my own thing, my own way. That's what she said.

And I'm glad I did, and not just because it rules out any nasty little surprises.
I'm glad, not because I'll be 40, but because I have gathered around me so many wonderful people, that I think it will be really cool to collect a bunch of them in the same place and see what they all look like together.
Like putting out the good china on the nice tablecloth.

As it happens, I now have a duel reason to be glad of this celebration.

I'm leaving my job after 10.5 years, so it will function as my farewell also.
More on that later, I still don't really know how to compile those 10 years just yet.

So, no, I won't be saying whoop-de-doo because my age has an O in it, but I will be doing a social stocktake at my party on the 27th.
The next morning, I will be standing on the Harbour Bridge, throwing my arms up in the air and celebrating my many triumphs over adversity during first half of my life, congratulating myself on keeping my own counsel and genuinely from my heart of hearts, looking forward to a very powerful, rewarding and peaceful phase of my life.

And to a Souths game in the evening, right after a Yum Cha lunch and perhaps a little visit to the cross stitch shop.

Nothing surprising about that.
No polite laughter.

Bob Log Blog.

2009-02-12T18:12:00.000-08:00

The Man.
Not the Man everyone tried so hard to bring down in the sixties, but the hardest working Man in rock and roll, as Hell Boy accurately observed.

My fave.
A one man band from Tuscon Arizona, no less.
A man who surfs the crowd in a blow up dinghy, wears a jumpsuit, crash helmet and sings into an old school phone that is soldered onto the helmet.

Last year, we finally had the opportunity to witness such a spectacle (sans dinghy) and we took along our boys, being at the tender age then of only 22-23.

I don't really know what they were expecting, but it certainly wasn't that.
I think I'd told them that he was a one man band, I guess I had overlooked that fact that not everyone is as impressed by this as I am.
I had also mentioned that he played blues.

Blues is a huge word though.

The boys are well used to bounding up our stairs to the strains of Woody Guthrie's nursery rhymes or to Dylan or even to Pete Seeger's union songs, so they were a little twitchy on the night.

However, by the time Bog Log III descended the stairs, already playing a mean guitar, pushed his way through the crowd, and hopped onto the stage without looking even slightly phased, I saw Stan turn to me with his hands on his head, his eyes the size of donuts, his gold tooth glinting, and mouth the words,

"No waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!"

Yes way.

The performance was punctuated by each of the lads telling me, "This is fucking unbelievable," or just hollaring and hooting and laughing the arses off.

Afterward, Stan being roughly double this guy's size, just took it upon himself to grab Bob Log III and shake him up a bit like the nerdy, jump suited musical freak that he is.
Hell Boy, not to be outdone, told him, ''Man, you're my Elvis," which shocked the shit out of the poor thing, he covered his delighted face, blushed and and drawled, "Oh, man!!!"
I weighed in and asked him to sign my Souths jersey, something I treasure to this day.
He not only sign it, he took the time and trouble to draw an arse hole onto the Rabbitoh.

Anyway, we're going again, and tonight is the night.

After a bungled Xmas Bob Log III web site merchandise order, we are apparently, on the door for this one.
What an honour!
And odd considering that I'd pay ten times over to see this guy do his thang.

You know, after that show last year, it took us until 10 months to get up the nerve to see another live act.
The very week after Bob Log III last March, we had the opportunity to see QOTSA and turned our backs on it.
At the time, my reasoning was, if you need that many people to make music, something must be really wrong.
And they're one of my fave bands.

We chose Fantomas to finally break the drought as they were low risk of disappointing us.

*sigh*

Damn you, Bob Log III, you've wrecked live music for me.
Yes sir, I hope he wrecks it again tonight though.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

And wreck it he did.

He even busted out the dingy for a spot of crowd surfing. He managed to play almost an entire song from within this dingy whilst being tossed around from one end of the packed venue to the other.
Genius.

He arrived on stage in a dinner suit, which disappointed some folks a little, but promptly ripped it off to reveal a gold spandex jumpsuit all ready to go underneath it.
Never has a stripper received a more heartfelt cheer than he did.
But then no stripper has probably ever had to rip their gear off over great clomping work boots or a crash helmet before.
More's the pity.

When it came time for Boob Scotch, all the women in the room were on the verge of standing poor old Bob up - not one boobie on offer.
I think that the crowd was young enough that they were unfamiliar with the Boob Scotch protocol and they might have thought they had to go topless or such.
Not the case.
Anyway, towards the end of the song, I rescued him and with a generosity of spirit rarely witnessed by shy people, I signalled for Hell Boy to pass the scotch, and I dunked my left boobie and stirred it up but good.
I may have been the first sober woman in history to have done such a thing and I'm almost certain I was the first woman allergic to scotch to attempt it too.
I call the manoevre full throttle nerd and I'm very proud of it.

Bump pow bump bump bump bump pow.

Fair weather friends.

2009-01-31T15:39:00.001-08:00

Quick, I've snuck in here to write this one while Hell Boy is out, because we have a kind of agreement that in the interests of my mental health, I am not to discuss the weather.

Hell Boy himself, being descended from a long line of weather enthusiasts, could happily watch the weather channel all day.
That is, of course, if it weren't for me, and my horrifying tendency to making scathing, cynical and let's face it, far more accurate predictions that is commonly offered by the likes of a FOX meteorologist.

Few things wind me up faster that meteorology.
It is a topic that seemingly has some bizarre power over me.
The truth is that weather concerns me very little, but that I get upset by the "profession" of meteorology, as they quite obviously just make shit up and get away with it.
It's the getting away with that I find inflammatory.

Hands up who can afford to be as inaccurate in their job as the good folks at Fox Weather?
My hands are down, that's for sure.

I get so upset that I get to the point where I can't finish my sentences.
I once became so distraught by the nonsense on FOX Weather that I phoned them.
More on that later.

I have season tickets with South Sydney.
Rugby league is a winter sport and our seats are not undercover.
The rain won't stop me going to a game. It would make me wear a hat though.

What the rain will stop me doing, however, is going to the Opera.

Once each year, I like to go to Opera in the Park.
It's something I genuinely adore.

In fact, we enjoyed the best night ever last Saturday despite the performance being the worst choice of opera of the many years that we've been going.

Anyway, we arrive early for this gig.
This year it was 5:30 for an 8pm start.
The picnic before the performance being the very best part of the outing.
Good food, good company, reading, sewing, lying on a blanket under my favourite tree in the world....sigh
Incidentally, this is the very tree my ashes will be sprinkled under one day.
My tree.
And coincidentally it stands right besides Bonnie's tree. How cool's that?

So, 2-3 hours outdoors, and a bunch of picnic gear means that I want to know whether it is going to rain or not.
With that in mind, you would expect that switching on the Fox Weather channel just hours before the event, would in some way illuminate us.

I really do think that is a reasonable expectation.

Imagine my surprise then, to discover that the best they could tell me was that there was a 50% chance of rain.

50%

This statistic means that it might rain, or it might not.
Strictly speaking, that's true of every day, a five year old could tell you that.

Hedging your bets, they call it.
Covering your arse as well.

Not being content with that answer from our dear friends at FOX, I checked their online forecast as well, hoping that maybe they had a more thorough answer available for me.

And they did.

Trouble was that it bore precious little resemblance to the forecast they were showing on the TV at the very same time.

And so I placed a call.

After more than a minute of questioning, they were so kind as to tell me that, no, realistically they didn't actually have a clue if it would rain in Sydney that night at all.
And that's fine, just don't pretend that you do, that's all I'm saying.

Neither did they seem to know why they were simultaneously predicting conflicting weather patterns across their two mediums.

But what really got me, was that they didn't know the answer my final question, which was,

"Are you able to tell me how many billions of dollars of satellite equipment you currently have at your disposal?"

We drew a blank on that one as well.
I took that to mean that they might know how to interpret the information gathered by a satellite, or they might not.
50% chance.

Honestly, these people get away with blue murder, don't they?
At the beginning of each month, they stick up a chart with each day listed and either a sun, a cloud or a sun and a cloud, to let us dumbies know what's going on out our windows.

It is my wish to somehow print one of these gems and to bust out the red pen and correct it as the month progresses.
What would their accuracy be, do you think?

I know that the one month I really had a good hard look at it and didn't forget all about it, they didn't get 2 days without exposing themselves to be total Charletans.
The prediction of 20 days of rain in Sydney during a summer month cannot be dismissed as anything other than a moderately funny practical joke, or mental retardation.
And yet, they made that call.

Why?

Methinks it's because they know no-one pays attention or has the means to compare their calls against fact later, and so they just make the chart look pretty or they're pushing the envelope amongst themselves to see who dares to make the silliest prediction.

And that I might respect. Or I might not.

Forgive me? Worry about yourself, Sunshine.

2009-01-29T23:13:00.000-08:00

As I was writing some nonsense on Facebook today, I was reminded that I need to get something off my chest.
I have something to confess.

For those among us who are religious and easy to offend, get thee to a nunnery, coz you ain't gonna like this one.

Even as a child I had bad feelings about organised religion.
This was, I suspect, made a good deal worse by the fact I was born into a quasi-Catholic house to Mr. and Mrs. Closet Cynic.
Actually, closet isn't right. Intermittent is closer.
Mr. and Mrs. Intermittent Cynic.

Yep.

Most children do their First Confession and First Holy Communion around 7 or 8 I think. Just before they start to be able to think for themselves.

I delayed mine until 9, when social pressure caught up to me via my parents.

Due to the fact that my father had insisted on a public school education for my brother and myself - he felt that coupling religion and snobbery was ugly, I had to attend "lessons" at nights and on weekends, run especially for the spiritually backwards children of recalcitrant parents.

Oh, and what a joy they were too!

Sour nuns, and intolerant priests who gave even the stupidest child that distinctly strange, slimey feeling that one looks back on now as the aura of the kiddie-fiddler.
A divine halo.

I never had any fears for myself, but I certainly do remember being always at my brother's side when we were unhappy enough to find ourselves on that hallowed ground.

I don't know what it is that some people give off exactly, at the time I thought perhaps it was authority or unfriendliness, but kids can smell when something's not right, they just don't know to do about it.

Regardless, there I was each weekend for what seemed to be an eternity, trying to stuff 9 years of garbage into my head and finding myself, for the very first time (excluding scripture classes at school), mentally disputing what an adult was telling me.

I never got over the whole Mary was a virgin thing, and I never saw the value of having Our Father or Hail Mary prayer races. What has speed to do with holiness?
Well, as much as virginity, apparently.

I never saw the genius in the statement, "God is good," despite the fact there was only one o difference. I wondered whether the man who presented that to us as proof of God's existence was an idiot, or whether he just hoped we were.

And few things had ever struck me as less sincere than that priest asking,
"Are there any questions?"

I know I squirmed about in my seat and thought the nine year old's version of,
"Well, none that you can answer and fewer still that you won't humiliate me for asking."

Nope. Not buying it.
Not even at nine.

But I went through with it because at nine, I had no alternative, my parents had a party planned and I was to have some lame white dress that I really didn't think made up for it at all.

I still don't wear white and I never, ever feel comfortable in it.
As I write this, I wonder if perhaps that's why.
I have never felt like such a fraud as I did on that day.

But before the communion, there was the confession.

I had to go alone into a barren little cubicle with the very person who made my skin crawl, drop down into a degrading position and beg him for forgiveness.

Ummm, no.

I felt as judged and frightened as a small child might in such an unpleasant situation.
And I felt something else which I now know to be resentment.

Who the Hell was this awful, unfriendly man to be judging my sins?

My turn came - I went in the first batch. Just like going to the dentist - I'd rather get it over with quickly. That's what she said.

My knees hit the wooden kneeling bar and due to my size, pained my instantly.
My nerves were in disarray as I had to participate in the role playing exercise of,

"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been *****days since my last confession and during this time I have ********* "

Well, with croaky voice and a mounting terror of messing it all up, I got that far due to the gruelling rehearsals of those dreadful weekends.
Unfortunately, this was all they had taught us.

The rest they left to us....

I guess they supposed we'd know what we'd done wrong and that we'd just insert it in neatly after all the rote learning.

Nuh-uh.

During those few defining seconds, instead of pleading my case, I chose to think about what this all meant.

My conclusion was that it all stank.

I couldn't think of a single thing I'd done wrong.
I hadn't embezzled, committed adultery, killed anyone, raped, pillaged or plundered...I was at a loss.
I was only nine years old FFS.

Nothing.

This moment cemented my stance on religion for all time.

"I haven't done anything wrong, you horrible man, but I'll bet you have, " I thought.

So, knowing that the robed ogre was waiting expectantly, judging not only me, but my parents by my response, I made something up.

I lied.

Even as it left my lips I knew it felt bad and that I was probably in some very serious bother.
The kind of bother you can't tell anyone about, but must sort out all by yourself.

And so, when he pronounced his judgement on my soul and told me my penance was two Our Fathers and three Hail Mary's, I said them.
Good and fast too.

But I said them in compensation for lying to a priest during my First Holy Confession.
I think I even threw in a few extras just to be sure.

Now, I carried this stain on my soul around from age 9 until age 38.
Well not really.
I mean, I never worried about the opinion of any God who would judge a small child, but I never verbalised the event except to Hell Boy, and then only for comic purposes.

But, waiting (once again) at Kingsford Smith airport for Yoga Boy to return home from India, I turned to my Dad and suddenly said,

"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned."

I went on to explain the whole debacle and I really did feel relief from offering up such an earnest confession, albeit in such a public place and to someone I respected.

Probably it was made easier for me by the sound of his laughter and the strange look of admiration in his eyes as I detailed my queer childish logic.
He thought it was great.

It was not long after that that I heard him telling a friend that although I look like my mother, I think like him.

Amen to that.

------------------------------------

LOL

After Hell Boy had read this, I asked him, "Do you think I'll be going to Hell for that?"

His reply, "Well I hope so, otherwise I won't be seeing you."

Check mate.

---------------------------------

Fantomas.

2009-01-23T21:11:00.000-08:00

Tonight we go to see Fantomas, but they're only supporting Serj Tankian and the FCC - the Flying Cunts of Chaos.

It may not make a huge difference though, as the last time we saw them, they only played for 1hr 5 mins, which I thought was a rip.

I'm hoping they'll crack a sweat tonight and do 90 mins.

I heard a rumour that they're only doing their Director's Cut stuff, which is our fave, so maybe I'll jump off the balcony during Rosemary's Baby, make contact with Satan himself and demand for him to do something about this heat, breakfast radio and to work out something special for Pittsburgh this coming Super Bowl.
Can you score an own goal in the NFL?

Anyway, back to Mike.

I am looking forward to watching this strange little man as he accurately and painstakingly recreates his own compositions of tweets, grunts, Latin, screams and la's.
Aside from Bob Log III, no-one works harder on stage than Mike.

Precision timing using a laptop and mouse with 2,000 people watching you cannot be a picnic. Especially when you're standing less than 2 metres from Slayer's drummer while all that's going on.

Fascinating to watch and somewhat baffling to listen to.
Great merchandise, interesting people.
It's like he flosses your brain clean of all that banal mainstream shite we are subjected to in shopping centres, offices, my dad's house etc when you just can't get away from it.
The kind of music that need a captive audience...weddings.

WTF happens to people for that day?
Stop it. Just stop it.
It's excruciating and it's the reason many people never speak to you again once you're married.
You didn't drift apart, they've just totally lost respect for you due to that fucked up Disney garbage you made them listen to for 5 hours at your wedding.

Mentally objectionable plaque.

Anyway, it'll all be banished from the darkest recesses of my mind by 10:30 pm and I shall once again be new and improved.

Thank you in advance to Mike Patton, the most committed musical hygienest of our time.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=HrSqZzkCgAU&feature=related

OK

2009-01-23T21:09:00.000-08:00

Just fuck off with this heat already.

Thanks, Simone.

What's that farken smell?

2009-01-18T21:39:00.000-08:00

There's something rotten in the state of Mollymook.

Or at least there was last week.

Hell Boy and I were off on our evening stroll along the lovely beach, when we suddenly both noticed the most unimaginable stink on the face of the planet.

And I'm including that alley with all the seafood and cabbage scraps behind the Yum Cha restaurant on Dixon St in that sweeping statement.
And Hong Kong.
Oooh la la, and Paris too, coz it's got it's own rather poopy bouquet that no-one warns you about.

As we detected said stench, we both whipped our heads around to ascertain where it was coming from.

Being a little excitable by nature, I thought it was very possibly a secret colony of incontinent lepers, whereas Hell Boy quickly upped the ante by correctly deducing it to be the foul item hanging over the balcony in that very awful photo.

There can be no other explanation.
I deny that it was the festy little lagoony thing that runs off the beach with all the scum on it a few metres behind us.

Pure filth.

There ought to be a law.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

My off season training is going well - I'm now refreshed and ready and able to detest these cheating pricks for another year.

It's only 20 days until the Back to Redfern game, and from there, it is a mere 20 days until the Charity Shield match.
This year our season tickets include our regular seats for that game for the first time, so I get to sit with Jo, Dom and the bruddas.

Then it is only 2 weeks until the season commences properly and we have to front up and look on as our darling boys play the 17 representatives spawned of the union of the Corporate Whore and the Beast itself.

I'm not quite over the last match, or the one before that, or the one before that, but screw it, I'll just go anyway.
Sitting with the Burrow when they're together with TSE is a very wonderful part of my year.

Funny, funny, funny bastards.

20 days.

woot woot

The fabric of time.

2009-01-06T22:31:00.001-08:00

Next on the list is Yoga Boy.
A person who has long displayed little to no interest in my quilts at all.
Damned if I'm gonna let that stop me.
That just makes me want to make it bigger. BIGGER! That's what she said.

I'm making him a quilt of his beloved pond as it appears when you look down on it.

I have decided to enlist Hell Boy's drawing skills to help me capture the look and personality of each and every one of the little scaley dears.

So, yesterday I summoned the courage, ventured forth into the fabric wilderness and purchased 4 m of really cool variegated blue fabric.

Despite my abhorrence of the quilting mafia, I have somehow developed a relationship with the lady at the local discount place.
This began, quite strangely, due to the horror quilt I made for Yasmin a couple of years ago. Of all the stuff I've made, she liked that one. OK...
You never can tell, can you?
I like people like that.

Since then she has always taken the time out to ask after my projects.
She adores my Aboriginal quilt.

I did my best to explain Dad's Schimpf Quilt to her right before I explained what all this blue fabric was for....she grabbed my forearm and laughingly said,

"It's OK, you're family's normal..."

I replied the only way I knew how, with,

"I certainly hope not."

What's so good about normal?
I've never seen the appeal.

Nope. To Hell with that.

While I was there, I grabbed some wadding so that I no longer have an excuse not to complete Poppy's quilt.
Damn me! What was I thinking?!
Due to all the embellishment, I'll have to quilt the bloody thing by hand. Or at least some of it anyway.

Then, I looked around for fabric that was aesthetically close to some of the more difficult fish to cast such as Bandette, Pfuitsch and Dr. Leo Marvin.

Bandette was really worrying me.
She's yellow with black and looks like she's wearing a zoro mask or really bad nerd glasses.
Yoga Boy told me once that she looks like someone dropped a banana peel into the pond.

I cannot argue with that.

Additionally, she is currently loaded with eggs and has a grossly misshapen undercarriage.
I mean, she's completely irregular in shape.
Poor darling looks like a banana peel with a wicked case of cellulite.

By hook or by crook, I will capture her likeness though.
The Universe demands it of me, and I know this because I found a piece of fabric that looks just like her.
I could scarcely believe my eyes!
Stoked.

Next step is for Jeff and I to sit down together and draw up a plan of this virtual pond so that I can figure out roughly what shape/direction the kids will all be heading in.

Then we can draw them precisely and after that all that must be done will be to reverse the images, draw them piece by piece onto Vliesofix, cut them out, iron them onto accurate fish coloured fabric, trim that and iron it onto individual rectangles of blue fabric, sew those all together in the right order, figure out how to make fabric lily pads, pin it, quilt it (or fob it off onto Joanne to do) and bind it.

But can we pull it off by March before he goes to India again? That's what she said.

No worries mate!

And hide it all while it's in progress?

Sure, why not?

And then I need to get on with Mr. Daniels' quilt for his first birthday.

I have decided not to go with a dog theme after all, as I know both his parents dislike dogs a great deal.

I think I'll do a big fuck off religious scene instead.

Perhaps I'll even give Hillsong a call and see if they have any nice Jesus fabric. I'm sure they would.
I'm also sure it'll be all razzle dazzle and blonde.

Just the thing, the very thing.
I can see Daniel now, growing up, playing hide and seek under graven images courtesy of Auntie Simone, the red and green heretic.

For those I am about to deceive, Lord make me cynical?

OK, best get on with it, the fabric of time waits for no one.

Garden variety Hashimoto's

2009-01-06T21:10:00.000-08:00

So, yes, I've caught up on a lot of sleep - I hadn't realised how exhausted I was.
2008 was really very trying.
Health wise I felt as though I was under constant attack and had to take a leap of faith in so far as trusting my own judgement against the medical odds.
Work was a fair abomination and promises to be worse again in 2009.
So much stress.
Stress being my enemy and something I must ruthlessly cut out of my life in order to recover fully.
Sad to say, but I may have to make a few hard decisions this year.

Being told that they suspected cervical cancer in April was not much fun.
But at the time, I honestly felt in my heart of hearts that that was nonsense.

When it didn't feel like nonsense was when they were snipping chunks of my uterus out sans anaesthetic.
Or when the gyaenocologist held up the specimen jar, swooshed it from side to side to show me my own bloody, fleshy pebbles, which later proved to be perfectly healthy, rather than being about to kill me.

I wonder about that person in that laboratory somewhere in Sydney who made that ridiculous call.
I wonder whether they were just watching the clock as they had a sip of coffee and an all too quick peep at my girl cells or whether their job description allows for such glaring error?

On a positive note, the experience dredged up all manner of hidden beliefs and concerns that I clearly picked up when I lost Mum to cancer at such a young age.
It was good to challenge all that, even though it was harrowing.

Of course, the stress from all that led into further thyroid imbalance, aggressive allergies and weird and wonderful skin problems.
wtf

The conventional medical suggestions currently being offered are to cut out my thyroid, accept radioactive material into my body (with my cancer risk) and to take toxic antibiotics for the rest of my life.
Not surprisingly, these were met with the disdain they deserved.

What about the cause people?

hmmmm

That's the mother of all c words to a narrow minded doctor though, isn't it?

So, what to do instead?

Well, I went to see a doctor who works with unjamming biochemical pathways. Simple as that.

Not only was I able to sit face to face with this guy for an hour, I was able to state plainly what I thought the problem was and he was able to confirm this, as well as to explain in great detail, the very enzymatic reasons from which one thing had led to another and how to slowly reverse it all.

Souths supporter too.

There are not many doctors in Sydney who you can eyeball and say,

"I think this started before I was born when my mother was given a series of gamma-globulin shots /vaccinations while she was pregnant with me, due to a German measles scare," without then experiencing the eye roll, the scoff or the glazed expression.

This guy said,

"Yes, yes, in fact, I read a research paper recently, and in the late sixties, the amount of mercury and arsenic in those injections were much higher even than they are today, you would have had heavy metal deposits in your thyroid in utero as well as major dysbiosis and immune malfunction even from birth."

"And if we treat all of this?"

"It will go away."

And so far so good.

He even was so kind as to do the blood test I asked for and formally diagnosed me with Hashimoto's Disease - an autoimmune disease that attacks - guess what - the thyroid.
Something my GP had rolled his eyes and ignored for three years at least, even when the ultra sound I insisted on came back with nodules. derrrrr

Dr. Criticos very casually described it o me as,

" ...garden variety Hashimoto's, nothing we can't take care of."

Immune and thyroid.

Get out, who would have thought it?

Well, me. But then I live in this thing 24/7.

So, this switched on researcher/biochemist GP, who bulk bills because he believes in what he's doing and doesn't wish to exclude people, has quietly saved me not only one organ so far, but my sanity as well.

Quite unlike the very expensive and arrogant dermatologist who was aghast when I refused his prescription for the rosacea, and so, took the time and trouble to dictate a letter to my referring GP while I was in the room, beginning with,

"Dear Dr, Marks, unfortunately Simone is not yet willing to take antibiotics. We will wait until it becomes worse and see her again when she is ready to follow proper medical protocol."

Not true.
He will see me again in Hell.
He can stick his Braith Anasta up his arse.

What sort of person would blindly take a drug just for it's side-effect, knowing full well that it is causing chronic damage to their liver and immunity? The weakness of at least one of these being the likely reason for the problem in the first place.

And what sort of person would prescribe this to them?

The word I'm thinking of begins with a c, and it's not cause.

It is on Dad's quilt though, but in Yugo it begins with a P.

Quilts! That's what I meant to talk about when I sat down here.
And then look what happened.
Never mind.
Next time....Simone's not ready to talk about quilts just now, so we'll have to wait until she gets worse, gives in, comes to her senses...

Not on my watch.

Of fish and strudel.

2008-12-23T12:39:00.000-08:00

Just over a week ago, we had no fish in the house - except Frubert the unusually calm Siamese Fighting Fish.

Now we have my two boys from work as well as two baby koi, named Virgil and (O)baki.

My work boys, currently on their fourth set of names in five years, are known as Wartie and The Big One.
I had to fetch them home from the dispensary at work because we're moving and there is no-one there atm who knows about fish care.
Also, moving fish is a tricky business, and if it was attempted without me and it went wrong, I would be devastated.

So, for something different this year, they've spent the last few days watching me do the Xmas baking and such.
They're used to watching me, we've lived in pretty close quarters these past five years.
What these two don't know about natural health and the problems of the good people of Merrylands is nobody's guess.

It's OK though, they they're not blabbers.

Right next door to their South Sydney tank is the hatchery.

This was certainly an unplanned pregnancy.

I sent Hell Boy down to the corner store for cream, and he returned with koi.

Bill, the crazy Chinese guy who owns the store is a fellow koi enthusiast, and often pops in to visit our fish as well Hell Boy himself.

In fact, when the boys recently upgraded their pond, it meant that they suddenly had two 1500L ponds to spare.

Bill decided he would like to buy one from us, but within a matter of days, his tiny little wife came up and determined that he was not allowed.

Maybe two weeks later, Hell Boy came in laughing and told me he'd just struck the deal of the century with Bill.

"Get this," he said, "Bill's going to buy both ponds for $600. But, he's telling his wife he's only paying $250.Then, every few days, he's going to sneak up here and slip me $200 cash. I love that guy."

Being that each pond was worth that much, it didn't seem like such a hot deal to me, but we decided it was worth a few hundred just for the anecdote.

True to his word, Bill snuck up every few days when wifey wasn't looking, and slipped Jeff the blood money in an incredibly conspicous manner.

As Bill's shop is also a small garden centre, so he's using the ponds to grow and store water plants as well as baby koi.

He actually came to the last koi auction with us and bought around twenty white and blue baby koi.

Since Hell Boy's last trip to pick up cream, Bill now has only eighteen blue and white baby koi.

The other two are parked next to Wartie and The Big One.
Obaki is the Japanese word for ghost. He's the white fish.
But we quickly noticed that he has a habit of facing you and barking at you, so within a couple of days, his name was shortened to Baki.
Yoga Boy prefers to call him Baba-bow-bow-bow.

Virgil was my choice because it's just a super cool name, although I did consider Bela and Nosferatu, due to the fact that he has a rather pronounced widow's peak and his koi moustache looks like fangs.

So, our kitchen is standing room only.
Well, that's not true, there's plenty of space for them and they're welcome for as long as they'd like to stay.
Once the little boys are big enough not to be harrassed by the others, they'll be tossed into the pond anyway, and my fruit bowl can return to it's original position.

OK, to the strudel.

Fucking Apple Strudel, I hate it.

I decided to use Filo pastry this time instead of puff and I chose to include rum soaked raisins in the Viennese tradition.

During the course of the morning, I found I cannot tell you how many jobs required my urgent attention, just in a bid to dodge the inevitable.

I had the filling ready to go, the pastry defrosted and unrolled, the oven on, and I found myself outside, hanging over the balcony, chatting to Hell Boy as he sorted out the pond's filtration system.

He knew immediately what I was up to. Or not up to.
He surprised the absolute crap out of me by saying,

"I'll come up and help you."

This was his first encounter with Filo pastry.

You must peel two layers off, spray it with oil or butter and repeat until your pastry is as thick as you'd like.
He quickly diagnosed Filo pastry as having a "design fault".

Yep.

Anyway, we got the layers sorted, with my agitation nearing 9/10, thus leaving me still functional.

Then came the dreaded stage of rolling the fucking thing up so that the filling doesn't spill out the sides, the pastry doesn't rip and the liquid from the apples doesn't seep out and wreck the pastry.

After three attempts, I was honestly crying tears of rage and I need not tell you that there was swearing.
A nasty mash of English, Yugo and Lebanese. This is what happens when I'm really frustrated - my language centre overloads and I speak in tongues.

At this very moment, Hell Boy says t me,

"Should I be filming this for your blog?"

I returned with, "Don't pick me! Not over strudel!"

Only really a handful of things that shit me as much as strudel.

The Roosters.
Repetitive unpleasant noise/breakfast radio.
Injustice.
The vacuum cleaner becoming unplugged while I'm using it.

Anyhow, four fish got to see the whole thing, and they still love me.

And you know the worst thing of all?

That fucking evil strudel turned out perfectly as if to annoy me further still.

Evil prick of a dessert.

I wondered lonely as a cloud?

2008-12-22T01:27:00.000-08:00

Hooray, it's done!

Dad's Schimpf Quilt for his 7oth birthday is wrapped and under the tree.

Dad and Viv are going on a two week cruise before his birthday (31st December), so I'll be giving it to him on Xmas Eve.

woot woot

The quilter managed to quilt the first verse of William Wordsworth's daffodil poem into the yellow border for me, thus saving me months of agony.
I love that woman.

Sadly, she made a spelling error. She wrote wondered instead of wandered.

I wondered lonely as a cloud... I like it.

I dreamt that this would happen, but that I could fix the problem easily, so I wasn't too upset when it came to pass.
I was able to change the O to an A with a minimum of fuss.

In fact, when Dad used to read this poem to me, I often thought that wondered was as appropriate as wandered anyway.

So, here it is in all it's glory.

Do you think it looks like wandered?

I'm very proud of this one. Not for it's appearance, I would never intentionally design a quilt to look like that, but rather because of it's edge to edge significance.

I hope he likes it.

Oh and by the way, I was wrong, wrong, wrong, about Lynda's Shitmas gift for me.

She simply looked uncomfortable when I had my rant about the Tudor's because she's not used to passionate, cynical, opinionated people.

LOLOLOLOL

Pity for her, I say.

Gift idea for Simone.

2008-12-19T19:49:00.000-08:00

Anyone who may be looking for an ideal Xmas gift for me, please consider that I'm in desperate need of more cookie cutters, as evidenced by this pic.

How a girl is meant to survive with only 70 something is beyond me.

hmmm I believe I have discovered something else that I collect rather than just have plenty of.

Where is the line though?
That line is my holy grail - never seen it, never expect to see it, yet I always keep a lookout for it.

Today being so lovely and unseasonably cool, and being that Alice decided it was good to be alive and celebrated the fact by sitting on my chest and purring loudly at 6:30 this morning, I gave in, got up and started baking.

I couldn't use the hand mixer as Jeff was still sleeping, so I decided to make a double batch of shortbread, which is all done by hand.
Despite that fact that I genuinely hate rubbing butter into flour, they are easy and satisfying to bake.

By the time they were out of the oven, Yoga Boy was upstairs and introducing himself to the new fish I brought home from work yesterday.
Wartie spat a rock at him in acknowledgment.

Being on a roll, and having company (4 fish and Yoga Boy is a party in anyone's books), I pressed straight on and made a double batch of the dreaded flat Anise Bogen.
The cooler temperature meant that they were that much easier to bake that I got excited and began making not just one Stollen, but two as well.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, I just like to make them.
Actually, although they are traditional throughout Europe at Xmas as they are shaped to represent to baby Jesus, I prefer to make them on Good Friday instead, in a bid to loosen the bible belt a little.

Well, I'd bought the ingredients a while ago so I could show Clair and that nutty German bird how to make it, but that play date never eventuated, so I thought it best to use the fruit up.

To help the yeast rise, I had to put the heater on and place it in front of it to stay nice and warm.

To my very great surprise and delight, Hell Boy offered to take over the stirring of the Stollen(s) as they are very dense and must be kneaded for 10 minutes before being left to rise a second time.
I think he enjoyed it.
It is a very lovely dough to knead - not sticky, but moist and elastic.

Unfortunatley, he'd left to interview someone from a band called the Eastern Dark by the time I was ready to knead the dry fruit and nuts into the dough, which is a absolute killer.
My arms will be sore for days after that.
My forearms look like Popeye's.

While the dough was minding it's own business in front of the heater for two hours, I made a double batch of lebkuchen/gingerbread - a different recipe to the one we'd used at Clair's last week.
Far more honey and golden syrup.

That had to be left standing for a couple of hours too, so the timing worked out rather nicely.

So, I've just taken all that out of the oven and washed my collection of cookie cutters, shaking my head all the while.
You know I have a giraffe cutter? LOL
WTF

The boys both being out, and with the cats taking advantage of the cool by stretching out on our bed, there was nothing left to do, but to put on the Elvis Xmas album as company for me and the fish.

We had a good day.

In so far as the rest of the Xmas baking, I've already done a double batch of Vanilla Kipferl and Fruit Mince Pies, so next week I just need to make Yoga Boy a lemon cheesecake, Hell Boy a Pavlova and Dad some fucking Apple Strudel.

erkkkkkkk

Fucking strudel, I hate it.

Hate it.

Hate.

It.

Fuck them, those green appley bastards!

sigh

But I'll do it for Dad with smile in my heart because he just loves it so much.
Crazy person.

BTW, the last pic of gingerbread would have been for you, Gretchen had we lived closer. ;O)

The Local Third World Butcher.

2008-12-18T18:28:00.000-08:00

We've been searching for a good middle eastern butcher who does nice kafta in our area.
Shouldn't be too hard.

We dropped in to Harris Park a few times recently for Lebanese sweets and coffee...mmmmmmm shortbread and Date Mammoul.

sigh

Do you know how much I enjoy it when they look at Jeff to place the order and instead I ask for things in Arabic?

Well, I like it a lot.

My Arabic has been learned chiefly from Jeff's family, although I have always had Lebanese friends,so by the time I met Jeff, I could already say,

Kes Emek sharmoutah ... meaning your mother has the cunt of a prostitute. And wasn't he impressed the first time I let that fly!

Pretty good start.

Well, since then, I can also say:

moon
grape
chicken
saucepan
underpants
bong
wheel
sun
coffee pot
water
yoghurt
broad beans
green beans
hello
fourteen
five
handbag
meat cigar (not explaining)
poofter
lesbian
my dick in your eye, referee (picked this up at a Bulldogs game)
arse
fart
ladies
pine nut
thinga-me-jig
fetch me
flea
pooh
breakfast
I want to vomit
lemonade/fizzy drink
donkey
cock
kiss my arse
fuck your mother
beans
piss/priest - they sound so similar that when I asked Jeff what was the difference, he simply said, "..hhhhhucccccccccchhhhhhhhhh."
follow the breeze
fish
drink
all night (I bust this out at the footy as soon as the opposition attract their first penalty)
eggs/balls
thirteen
you're very strong
cat
bread
old man in the drawer (not explaining that either)

Another day, another blog, I may make it my business to construct a dialogue out of my Arabic vocabulary.
Last year, for Round One vs the Roosters, I deliberately learned how to yell out,

"The Roosters are 13 homosexual chickens in ugly old ladies underpants!"

This statement was highly critically acclaimed.

Notable absences in my vocabulary are :

goodbye
how are you
my name is
thank you
please
yes
no
still hate the Roosters

Of course these are the basics in life and Jeff doesn't often bother with them enough to teach them to me.

While he can understand Arabic if it's informal, he always answers in English.
He does teach me random words that he thinks are important.

Additionally my friend, Maheb teaches me my requests. I find I learn better this way.

I noticed a couple of years ago that when people speak Arabic in front of me, I no longer notice that I don't understand.
At work and even with my in-laws, it takes me a few sentences before I realise that I didn't catch what they've said.

If it's broken Arabic/English and they're the kind of person I can wave my hands around with, I can sort almost anything out.

Every now and again, I can suddenly pick out a single word from a conversation, so I now stop the orator and demand to know what the word is.
Last time it happened, the word I latched onto was snoo-bor - pine nuts. LOL

I heard, blah blah, chicken, blah blah saucepan, blah blah snoo-bor.

Regardless of all this, my 20 year cultural familiarity did precious little to prepare me for the Kurdish butcher.

First up is the smell.
Made my eyes water and my stomach turn.

I accept that lamb and goat have a more pungent quality than chicken and beef, but I'm also quite certain that you can make the least of that issue through cleanliness if you choose to.

This butcher shop totally rejects the approach of western butchers, in so far as presentation and arrangement of their goods.

A typical Aussie/western butcher will be as clean as possible, or will at least go to the trouble of seeming as clean as possible.

They keep the really scary stuff out the back and the fatty offcuts in Go-Lo plastic tubs under the counter.
The Kurds pretty much reversed all of this.

My friends who are Aussie butchers, kindly showed me one day the buckets that were destined to become either sausages or lipstick.
I couldn't really tell the different at a glance.

The Kurds are unconcerned with such nonsense as presentation and display.

As I stood with my hand over my nose (I figured this was less impolite than vomitting), I noticed that their front window trays, usually reserved for the best sellers or specials, were as follows:

Back left:

Tongues.
Big dappled meaty, ripped outta their heads, tongues.
And lots of them
No attention whatsoever paid to restricting them to their alloted space.

Front left:

Testicles.
Yep, testicles.
Delicate blue veiny, oval treasures.
And lots of them.

Back right:

Tripe.
Not terribly well cleaned either.
I'm not so silly as to suppose that the green stuff was seasoning.

Front right:

Par-boiled penises.
Sheep's I think.
That is, I'm not too cluey in this area, but if they were beef, they were surely not from prize stock, and if they were from a chicken, then I suspect the hormonal component of their feed must be in excess of 85%.

Now, all this was enough to dazzle even the most carnivorous among us, and when I tell you that there were tongues lolling around all over the testicles and penises, you will guess that I was glad I was covering my mouth so that my revolted grin was camouflaged.

It was all very XXXX in there.
Is there Z grade XXXX?
It reminded me of Flesh For Frankenstein a bit too.

You may imagine that I was not looking forward to making any sort of purchase there by the time I noticed the testicle blood pooling around the kafta tray.

And nor did I have to.

They selectively and deliberatley served the darkest people first, even those who came in some 10 minutes after us.

Having experienced this before, I didn't really care too much, so I was taken aback when Hell Boy really got his back up about this.
We left.

On our second attempt a week later to buy said kafta, I waited outside due to the smell and my fear of what may be lurking in those trays this week, but Hell Boy persisted.
After almost 10 minutes again, 2 more people had entered the store and been served ahead of him, he sparked into action.
He told them he was there first, that they were rude, ran a bad business and as they were saying, "Come back, come back", he told them rather clearly to get fucked.

I couldn't agree more.

Particularly seeing as they had all their overdue bills and debt collection notices untidily bulldog clipped right up against the window, clearly for the purpose of my entertainment.

Nasty little business that one.

So, looks like I'll have to bust out the mincer and make my own kafta.

God knows I'll have to do better than them.

The things I come home with.

2008-12-15T23:24:00.000-08:00

....are many and varied.

And considering that today I left the house with just my leopard skin handbag (well, it was Wendy's leopard skin handbag until last week), I think that the following list is pretty stunning.

OK:

Woody Guthrie biography - returned from Bonnie
Toilets of the World picture book - returned from Mark with his fave dunny bookmarked with a gingerbread brochure
Free Aussie calendar from the very nice lady in the tobacconist (hang on a tick and I'll explain). I might pop that in Jeff's Shitmas stocking.
1 bar of soap with FACE written on one side and ARSE written on the other for Adrian's boss David for their Kris Kringle draw next week (I bought this in the tobacconist)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - book from Bonnie (I love that free A&R bookstore, it's great)
1 tin for holding Vietnamese Moon Cakes from Wendy
1 sexy pink satin nightie from Wendy
1 bottle of Tamburlaine red wine from Nutrition Care
1 huge box of chocolates that I'm allergic to from Mediherb/Phyto Medicine
1 vanilla lip balm Xmas gift from Bonnie
1 match your key chain to your outfit Xmas gift from Bonnie
2 gorgeous charms for my Pandora bracelet that I don't actually own yet from Kathryn that I'd left in my pocket from last night
1 box of 40 rolls of ribbons from Clair that I'd left in the car last night

Plus my handbag, a cardigan, my pale green blouse that I had taken off because Sue and I just got a massage on the way home from work.
That sounded bad.
I'm still wearing a black singlet, don't panic.

Sue and I went to the new massage place (it's in the mall, Gretchen) after work together, sorta like a family outing.
I'm pretty sure I looked worse than she did afterward, but they have no mirrors up, so I'm just guessing.
If I had to put money on it though...

Anyway, that's a fairly typical haul.
Obviously I don't receive Xmas gifts every day, but it's not common for me to come home with just the bare essentials.
Sometimes it's food from customers, shoes from Wendy, weird books from Bonnie, out of date stock, road rage megaphones....the sky's the limit.

I'll probably bring that home too one day.

Yazzie's dance concert.

2008-12-12T23:40:00.000-08:00

My niece is ten.

Last night was her first ever dance recital.
And ours.

I made well sure not to sit next to Hell Boy.

As the first of perhaps forty dances began, I heard him turn to his brother, Duke, the child's father, and say,

"This is no place for the cynical."

Moments before that, I had been alarmed to see Duke glaring at the programme with furrowed brow, as his wife pointed out to him which of the dances Yasmin would be appearing in.
That's not a good sign.

I enjoyed it.

OK, listening to that music was like rubbing a cat the wrong way and false eyelashes and red lipstick on small girls give me the creeps, but I enjoyed watching Yazzie dance so enthusiastically (and well) and looking so deliriously happy as she did it.

Such a little woman now.
A tween.

But Disney music is always sure to bring on an attack of the bile for me, and the attack lasted for 3 hours, plus intermission.
This attack was possibly not helped any by the fact that we were so pushed for time, that I had to eat service station packaged cheese and crackers, a protein ball, chips and a large Freddo frog for dinner.

Anyway, I digress. The music was worse than your average mainstream wedding.

A whole new worrrrld...

Ahhh fuck, just kill me.

In fact, I would have to say that the music selection was, for the most part, more commonplace, predictable and boring than mainstream radio ever could ever strive to be.

Themed mainstream, of course, being a particularly virulent form of mental torture, still promoted and rewarded worldwide.

And if I was doing it tough, God knows how Hell Boy came through.

Commercial music is above all things, abhorrent to him.
He twitches, grows pale, starts muttering, and then comes out swinging.

I've never troubled myself to discourage this, as I know it stems from something wonderful and righteous.
Let's call it good taste.

I can't help but believe that commercial music enjoys it's success due to the fact that most people are so lazy minded as to confuse familiarity with appreciation.

This theory also explains the success of the concept of celebrity, free to air television, and organised religion.

Thank God for Yazzie, I say. She saved the day.

I must make mention of the Dad's Dance, because Jeff leant across his mother to tell me it should make it into my blog.

Half a dozen men in tutus and footy socks doing ballet.

Aussie men, mate, they simply cannot resist a chance to don women's clothing or to expose their arses to one another at the slightest provocation.

Why, just this afternoon, on our way out to pick up Dad's quilt, there was a guy in a G-string running around outside a pub to impress all his beer sodden mates in a bachelor party mini van.

Jeff believes this behaviour is a throw back to convict/colonial days when they'd all started looking mighty good to one another, and that their DNA somehow warped to accommodate this.

With this in mind, I wonder what Charles Darwin would have made of The Footy Show.
My guess is that it would have thrown a greater spanner into his survival of the fittest theory than the humble peacock ever did.

Of course, I much prefer peacocks to drunken men.

But then, who doesn't?

Shitmas Experiment.

2008-12-09T20:02:00.000-08:00

I'm going to conduct an experiment.

Aim:

To assess the accuracy of my paranoia and suspicion.

Method:

By voicing my concerns and fears on my blog, dated 2 full weeks before Shitmas, I will be able to determine the accuracy of my suspicions based on comparison after the event.

That is, I suspect my brother is up to not only no good, but full blown evil and being someone who prides herself on being switched on, suspicious even, I am prepared to stick my neck out and be judged on my cynical prowess.

Yoga Boy of course, got me in the Shitmas draw - (That's what she said.... LOLOLOL)
He has told me he will be making my gift.

Just the other night, he spent a good deal more time than usual online and I could hear stifled giggles and worse.
When asked, "What's so funny?", there was no response.

hmmmmm

Not too long later, I heard Hell Boy go into the study, the scene of the crime while I was showering, and then I heard this alarming comment from him,

"Nahhh, I wouldn't do that."

Now, there's not much Hell Boy wouldn't do if he thought it was funny, so I'm taking this very seriously indeed.

Then I heard the printer.

And no more since.

So, sitting up in bed, I had a little think about it.

And this is what I came up with.

If I was in Yoga Boy's position, and had to make me something truly God awful for Shitmas, these are the options I would consider:

Photo Shopping a pic of me into a Rorter's jersey
joining me as a Rorter's member

Well, that's about it.
I cannot think of too many other things that would shit me to tears.
Perhaps a Southern Cross decal on the car.

My money's on the first option, and it's a good thing because if I'm right, I'll need these two weeks at least, to mentally adjust sufficiently to be able to accept such an abomination with good grace.

Conclusion:

TBA December 24th, 2008 EST.

Jeff's sacrifice.

2008-12-07T23:32:00.001-08:00

Well I can't include photos as I didn't bother to take any.

A few weeks ago, Hell Boy and Yoga Boy went along to the KSA Xmas Party.

Now, our chapter of the Koi Society of Australia meets once a month.
Wednesdays.

Adrian likes to go so that he can talk koi and pick the brains of people who are nutty enough to have 7 ponds in their suburban yard.
We briefly had 2 ponds, but have settled down OK with 1 huge one - 4,500L.

From what I've overheard, they chat about such things as ammonia, pH, sewer worms, fungus, filters, the rip-off German prick who owns the Koi Farm, his belligerent cow of a wife, salt baths, parasites and from time to time, bottom feeders (!).

When the boys go to these meetings together (I always seem to have other things to do), they look like they're going to these meetings together.

Really, really together.

I dared them to go along in matching kimonos, but no go.
Jeff would, he doesn't care a straw for what people think and he's such a fan of the uncomfortable flat line that he's often willing to suffer for his art.

I noticed at a koi auction a few months ago, that Yoga Boy in particular, seemed more than usually keen to introduce me to the fellow KSA members present as Jeff's partner.

I can't imagine why.

Anyhow, be that as it may, I bailed on the KSA Xmas do, pleading good taste as my only excuse.

So you may imagine my surprise when Jeff arrived home, toting a red and green (joy) shopping bag full of odd but interesting food stuffs.

WTF?

Well, it seems he won the door prize.

He was given a choice of a koi flag (which he really fancied) or a Xmas Hamper.

Being a gentleman and a sticky beak, he chose the hamper, his reasoning being that it would make a fine blog for me, and I think he hoped the contents would be entertaining.

How kind is that?

And yet in a way it was disappointing.

The old koi biddies had chosen very well.

Not the usual low-brow hamper, full of K-Mart lollies, shitty looking pretzels and marmalade.
Sadly, it contained no marmalade at all - the first hamper in recorded history ever to do so.

a scrunched up sandwich bag of shitty K-Mart lollies
pretzels LOL
chocolate shortbreads
Twinings tea - hardly a luxury, but still
Home Brand fruit cake
a huge block of Dairy Milk chocolate
fruit mince pies - mine are way better, but at least they were allergy free
something else I've forgotten about- wasn't marmalade though

Well, I'm rather sorry now that I didn't take a pic, especially of the lolly bag- that was special.

The boys reported that the food at the function was great - a right British nosh up with a bit of help from the Asian members now as well.

And I know I can't avoid participating in the KSA functions forever, and that it won't be long before it's me wearing my slippers, taking my knitting along to the meetings and making the cupcakes and tea for the men folk.

But I think it's a good thing to put it off as long as I can though, don't you?
I think propriety demands as much.

When it happens, I think I'll do with smoked salmon blinis, mini quiches or mushroom palmiers.
Or maybe mini gluten free dark chocolate and walnut fudge cakes.

hmmm

And now I just cannot look at packaged festive food without assessing their suitability for an Xmas hamper.

sigh

Great Harry's tree.

2008-12-06T23:06:00.000-08:00

Last year, whilst hyperventilating in the gift shop at Westminster, I noticed that they sold Xmas decorations of Henry VIII and his six wives, plus one of his daughter's, Elizabeth.

I almost peed my pants.

I almost peed them again very recently when I went looking for said decorations at home and couldn't find them.

Distracted, I think is the term.
Jeff solved the problem by saying,

"Well, it doesn't matter, we'll be there again next year and we'll buy more."

But they came all around the world with us.
They're the only ones I want.
They're special.

And so they are now that I've found them, tucked safely in the Westminster Gift Shop bag in the study cupboard, pretending to be a bag full of printer ink refills.

Bastards.

I took the greatest of care as I trimmed the tree, to place the girls in order of consequence (as I saw it), and in the event of a tie, I placed them in strict chronological order.

I considered hanging Great Harry at the bottom of the tree to teach him a lesson, but being such a ranga, he looks good right next to the South Sydney decorations, so what can you do?

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

2008-12-06T00:49:00.000-08:00

As I was fumbling with my keys, trying to get in the front door the other day, laden with all manner of shopping that I was far too stubborn to put down, I grabbed a key (one handed) and barked at myself,

"No, dammit, that's my work key."

My fucking work key.

Work key.

Work.

Key.

B

I

M

B

O

My doll of Me.

2008-12-04T01:42:00.000-08:00

Jeff's sister Lila makes dolls too.

This year, instead of buying each other a gift, I had the brilliant idea of exchanging dolls.

But the dolls we each make will be of ourselves.

My doll sewing is very unorthodox.
This stems from the fact that I just make it up as I go ala Vicki.

Vicki is a sewing friend we met through Bronwyn.
She is what I would term a free-baller and I will ever be delighted that she taught me how to make dolls this way.

I dig.

Just grab some fabric and slap it on and around, just roll it up and twist it, stick a ribbon on it if it doesn't work out, despair of the whole thing and wonder if it's too late to throw it in the bin, swear, have some tea, sew one more stitch before realising that it looks fucking awesome and that you couldn't be happier with the result.

Once she's done, you need to assess her and give her an appropriate name, although, in my experience they name themselves.

I often think that I must experience each and every emotion when I make something before I can actually begin to like it.

No pattern, no understanding of how to make clothes, no control or real clue as to the outcome.

Except that this time, I did need to control the outcome.

It's taken me some months to work up the courage to decide whether to represent myself accurately, take the piss or to make the doll of my essence.

But what is accurate, what is piss, and can they live together in harmony?
Won't my essence put them out?

I originally thought it would prove to be an easy task.
Nuh-uh.
It was quite daunting in many ways.

And to be truthful, I'm still not sure which approach I took, but it kinda felt like a little of each.

After buying a metre of delicious lime green lace, thinking it would team up nicely with my lime green leopard skin fabric, I panicked, backed out and dressed her in a sassy black and leopard skin number with black lace, silver butterflies and emerald green detail.

Yes! That's me.
I would soooooooooooo wear that.
I probably have too.

Even as I dressed her, I got that powerfully feminine feeling that you get when you're pulling on an outfit that truly makes you feel totally together and sexy - although I do get that feeling in my Souths jersey too.

You feel like the ant's pants as Viv would say.

Like it.

For me that's vampy black lace, ribbons and boots with just a splash of colour.
And something silver.

It.

Well this doll has my mojo in her.

And you know, trying to sew a face is really, really, really difficult.

Trying to sew your own face and capture an expression is fair nigh impossible.

And maybe because I'm no good at it, I pulled it off.
Or maybe the sewing God herself heard the all commotion and dropped in.

Who knows.

Well, I'm not quite done with Ms. Simone.

She has no pubes yet, poor thing.

No good at all.

I did warn Lila that my doll would be anatomically correct, so I fully intend to go ahead and sew myself some red and green stripey pubes.

And maybe add a seed pearl or two.

Ahhhh, hang the expense, I'll add three.

Now that I've added the photos, you may care to notice the 4 kitties crawling all over her, the skull necklace from Sophally and the gingerbread in her hand.

I also made her a lime green lace and black gift bag, tied with a hot pink ribbon.

Shitmas!

2008-12-03T02:33:00.000-08:00

Intermittently traditional.

That's what it's going to say on my headstone.

And here's why.

As much as I like to follow tradition (should it appeal to me), I'm equally as fond of starting traditions.

This year I decided to break with family tradition by having Xmas Eve out - shock, horror, sound of multitudes of Oma's spinning in pretty European graves.

But I have been responsible enough to counter-balance by initiating the tradition of Shitmas also.

Shitmas works as a Kris Kringle draw for dreadful/inappropriate presents.
The gifts are to be opened on Xmas Eve, with the sensible gift giving having to wait until Xmas Day - not standard in European households.

I tried to make the budget $2 per gift, but was cried down by Yoga Boy on the basis that a restrictive budget would force him to think about it too much.
And this is a pity because that was my cruel objective all along.

I don't know what all the complaining was about, I could manage to buy something ghastly for each and every person I know for $2 and still have each gift be relevant, annoying and endearing, for that has clearly been the superpower allocated to me during this fleshly existence.

I've used it well without becoming conceited, I believe.

So, all the money, time and trouble caused by Christmas, and I'm really only concerned now with the giving of Shitmas gifts.

The names came out like this:

Sim --> Jeff
Jeff --> Adrian
Adrian --> Sim

I bore witness to Jeff's purchase for Adrian of a giant tin of Croatian sausages that appear to have foreskins.
I also took the time and trouble to add into Adrian's stocking of horror, a light up Pooh pen - he hates novelty items - a Rolf Harris 3CD boxset which I'd bought just so I could burn Six White Boomers onto the Xmas CD that I made for Gretchen.
So, I guess Gretchen is kind of a proxy member also.

Adrian tells me that he's making my gift and yes, I'm very, very concerned as making things really isn't his thang.

As another ring-in member (that's what she said), Adrian's girlfriend, Lynda, although not a formal participant of our inaugural Shitmas, seems to have jumped in, courtesy of what I suspect has been a poorly informed purchase.

Recently, they were sitting on the lounge with me, and Lynda asked if I'd seen a mini-series called The Tudors.
Please...
I've been excited and focused on Tudor history since childhood and have read any number of dry history books with glee.
I went to London specifically to visit Elizabeth I's underpants...

And yes, I have seen The Tudors.
I hated it.
What a chronic load of crap.

I hated the casting, the script, the glaring inaccuracies, charcterisation - Lord, I could go on forever.
Whatever they did, I hated it.

And naturally I saw no reason not to make mention of this when she asked me.

I was mildly surprised when she seemed a little put out by the violence of my response, and when Yoga boy went somewhat quiet, but gave it no more thought than I should have.

That is, until Yoga boy informed me that Lynda will be with us on Xmas Eve and that she has a Shitmas gift for me.

"That's odd," I thought, "she's not the type to be jumping in the deep end."

"Oh well, good," I added mentally.

But later it dawned on me that my Shitmas gift from Lynda may very well be a DVD of The Tudors.

And whether she purchased it before or after that conversation, shall determine how I view her sense of humour for the rest of my days.
I hope she goes for gold, because I like her.

But I'm not sleeping under the same roof as that thing.
So there.

Today, I took myself to Hot Dollar, home to the best Shitmas gifts in the world, and picked her up a bottle of evil perfume oil called Australian Bush (teeheehee) and another called Poison.
That ought to do it.

I did Jeff's Shitmas shopping almost in one go.
He's so easy.
He wears his hate on his sleeve, that boy.

I'll come back tomorrow and insert a description of the items and photos after he's read this through.

OK, he's gone now.

Knowing how much Jeff loathes the Australian flag, due to not only the British bully boy colours and Union Jack, but also it's tendency to be worn by drunken, shirtless, racist cricket yobs under the pretense of being Australian.

I'm with him on that.
We need a new flag something savage.

Bearing all this in mind, I cannot tell you how delighted I was to happen upon a range of Aussie flag merchandise at Hot Dollar.

Jeff's Shitmas stocking is loitering with intent, filled to the brim with Aussie flag toothpicks, pens, sun visor, a giant flag with sleeves so that he may wear it in proudly public and of all things, an Aussie flag whirlie-gig wind catcher thing for the zen area near the koi pond.

Won't that look lovely?

Streuth! The cricket yobs would be proud.

But not as proud as me on Xmas Eve when I unleash Hell and perhaps end my 19 year relationship due to a lame sight gag.

Maybe I've gone too far?

Nah.

If anyone knows where I can purchase Southern Cross (the new swastika) fake tattoos, please let me know, cause that'd be grouse and that.

I found a Jesus bracelet on the counter of Hot Dollar and they gave me a free pen, so he's getting that as well.
Merry Shitmas!

National pride.

2008-11-27T02:13:00.000-08:00

Never really had much.
Probably due to the fact that I find white Australian history shameful and I would likewise rate it's "culture" right up there with all the intense flavour of a boiled potato.

The first time I felt any sort of stirring in the national pride arena was last year in Hong Kong, a place I chose to stop only because our carrier didn't actually go to Singapore and because my back wasn't up to the two 12 hour flights in a row.

We were walking through God knows what sort of furious back alley in this incredible China town that never, never ends.
I swear the China Town there actually has a China town.

I remember looking back up this neon jungle of a street, crammed as it is with signs and thing hanging in windows that have no English definition, and I was struck by the fact that I felt so completely at home there.

There!?
Whilst jet lagged and in the middle of Kowloon?

WTF?!

"You gotta be kidding," I thought to myself.

I had never realised how very Asian (Sydney) Australian culture had become.

And I had never given a second thought as to how entirely comfortable I was in it.

And at the same moment, I first felt proud of the way Australia was developing.

More tolerant, more open, more likely to embrace differences.
More interesting.
Possibly also related to the then recent dismissal of John Howard and his nasty, racist little conservative government.

What a pleasant feeling it is not to be contemptuous of your own country.
Since then, I have remained hopeful that the extravagant mix of people and culture that is Australia will eventually cough up something truly remarkable and soon dilute the plain freckly convict stock beyond recognition.

On the same note, I must mention a similar experience of national pride that I had just this week, this time courtesy of dear little Slovenia.

I have been spending a lot of time and energy on arranging and now booking the next Euro trip.

As it happens, Jeff and I will be spending 8 nights in Slovenia, the country of my father's birth.

The Tischler's themselves were of Austrian/Viennese descent apparently (makes a great deal sense- I feel totally at home there), and Mum's family were German (Prussian in fact, so look out), but Oma's -my paternal grandmother's family were full Yugo.

Having had a reasonably unpleasant time in Czech Republic when we visited, because of the "communist hangover" as Jeff calls it, and even having been mildly uncomfortable in Hungary due to the social and economic climate being so dire, I have been feeling a little anxious that Slovenia may be disappointing.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that I've been feeling down right freaked out.

Seriously - committing to 8 days in a country that may not even hold a candle to it's rich cousins across the border just because Dad was born there, is sticking my neck way out.

OK, so those rich cousins moved the borders quite a few times in order to absorb Slovenia's richest cities whenever no-one was looking, but still, if it has anything like the feel of Prague, I'll be devastated.

Last Sunday I had emailed a few hotels to find out about availability and whether we could possibly get a non-smoking room so that at least for a few hours each day, we would be able to breathe freely.

Just this year, Austria, Czech Republic and Hungary were so hard core with the chain smoking that I all but sprinted into Germany- perhaps the first person ever to flee in that direction for sanctuary.
Germany of course, went smoke free January 1st, they just never told them in the north, that's all.

Naturally I assumed that Slovenia would be worse again, smoking being couple in my mind to poverty, and I had already started with the mental preparations necessary to resign myself to being descended from chain smoking hillbillies.

You may imagine my surprise then, when I received the following email from Lake Bled.

Hello

I would like to confirm your reservation, Slovenia is nonsmoking (country) all rooms restaurants bars...is nonsmoking,

Train station is 5 km from Bled so taxi or i will pick up you for free but send me 1 more e mail to me a few days before your arriving

best regards Di etmar

So there you have it.

Another burst of national pride for Simone.

Not only does my country of origin have the balls and common sense to thumb it's nose at the backwards social customs of it's rich relos across the borders, it has people friendly enough to arrange a play date with a total stranger almost 11 months in advance.

Friendly, organised, healthy, ballsy.

Hmmm hooray for Dietmar, I say.

I have a travel book about Slovenia that describes her people.
Allow me to illuminate, courtesy of Lonely Planet.

Slovenes are a sophisticated and well-educated people. They have a reputation for being sober- minded, hard working, dependable and honest - a Germanic bent that is the result of 600 years plus in the orbit of the Hapsburgs.

But they retain something of their Slavic character, even if their spontaneity is a little more planned and their expressions of passion a little more muted than that of their Slavic neighbours to the south.

Think quietly conservative, deeply self-confident, broadminded and tolerant.

If you really want to understand the Slovenes and Sloventsvo (Slovene-ness), then there are two Slovenian words that you should know.

The first is the adjective priden, variously defined as 'diligent', 'industrious', hard-working' and - tellingly - 'well-behaved'.

The second word is the noun hrepenenje, which expresses a more complicated concept. The dictionary says it means 'longing' or 'yearning' but that's only half the story.

In truth it's the desire for something seemingly unattainable and the sorrow that accompanies it.

'Hrepenenje is the exclusive property of the dispossessed, the country's agonising history of border changes, emigration, alienation and powerlessness within a larger unit.'

Somewhere else in the book, it goes on to explain how important language and literature are to Slovenes, poetry in particular.

Goodness gracious, that nailed my family fairly accurately.
And Dietmar too I should think.
And I like it.

Doesn't really cover the swearing though, does it?
Or does that fall under the category of poetry?

That's perhaps the first time I've enjoyed being pigeon-holed.
That's what she said. LOL

Pics = Kowloon & Dietmar's hotel in Bled.

No idea what to call this- bum wad maybe?

2008-11-25T21:11:00.000-08:00

*** I wrote this a couple of weeks ago but have given up waiting for Jeff to download the footage from my phone, so I'm posting it without such trimmings.

Hands up who's been to Merrylands.

Goodness, what an interesting place.

I know that I have previously described it as being home to the world's hillbillies.
But I believe that today's display gives me leave to pretty much whatever I please without feeling even slightly remorseful.

So here goes.

Bear in mind that I arrived 20 minutes early to work this morning.

And that I was ushered into the newish car park by 2 security staff.

And that as soon as it was too late to avoid it, I found myself stuck in horrific traffic within the car park itself.

Can't go forwards, can't go backwards.

Gridlock.

Took me 15 minutes to get back out, only to see the same staff still waving people in.

wtf

Then I get back onto the street and stop to let 87 people cross very s-l-o-w-l-y.
Each of them has a shopping trolley containing a minimum of 3 microwaves, each in a pale blue box.
Plus half a dozen packs of 18 rolls of toilet paper.

I have never seen so many microwave ovens. I hope I never do again.

Having worked as a geriatric nurse, seeing masses of toilet paper did not alarm me.

Except for that African family who purchased 180 rolls of the stuff in one go.
Clearly they have a big weekend planned.

After waiting another 10 minutes for the semi-trailer to stop reversing across the main road during peak hour, I eventually made in to work at9:30.

Just then I discovered for the first time in almost 40 years that I had lost a key.

My $300 work key had come off my keyring and was gone.

Gone.

sigh

So I had to find poor, stressed Jim in the other shop and borrow his keys to open, which I finally did at 9:40.

Not bad.

But I'd had to battle I cannot tell you how many trolleys full of...microwaves and toilet paper along the way.

People were fighting in the car park.
It was glorious. A rare display of the best humanity has to offer.

I could have allowed it all to prompt me into having a bad day, but I just smiled to myself and thought,

"...hey, what a great blog!"

Anyway, as I later found out, K-Mart was selling microwaves for $29.
I chose not to enquire as to the price of the bum wad, or anal serviettes, as Jeff calls them.

I did take the time and trouble to film the bum wad/microwave procession though.

I thought no-one would believe me else.

Nope.

2008-11-22T01:30:00.001-08:00

Delete Zagreb (boohoo) and add the extra time onto the lovely Lake Bled in Slovenia.

Why did my family leave this place again?

Oh yes, fascists.

Crossing everything that we have good weather on October 7th so we can get plenty of killer pics.

Nailed it.

2008-11-17T23:26:00.000-08:00

Well if'n that wasn't the week from the lowest plane of Hell.

Moving at work under Jim's approach of, "I'm Sicilian, we don't make plans."

And coupled with the fact that we went along to the Euro Expo run by Flight Centre last week and in order to obtain their discount, we had to lock in and pay for flights by last Friday.

Well the money wasn't a problem, we knew that would happen, but the flight dates had to be sorted out for not only the two of us, but for 4 other people whose itinerary I hadn't finished working out.

Further complicated by the alteration of our initial destination from London/Berlin to Frankfurt/Vienna and I found myself with not a spare second to unwind.

But, hours of online detective work paid off and perhaps the 6th route I plotted has now become final.

I only ripped out 3 clumps of hair too, so that's pretty good going.

I had to give up Venice as getting there from Ljubljana may have required a parachute. The train goes there but first goes full north across the border into Austria before turning around and making about 20 stops for Italian and Slovenian Nannas to get on.
If it went direct it would be a 2 hour trip. It can take up to 8.5 hours.

Yet another fine example of good old fashioned Italian organisation.

Anyway, the point is, it would have allowed us only two nights and one day in Venice for almost two full days of travel to get in and out of the damned place.

I would have found it very frustrating to go to Venice and not have time to see the galleries and such properly.

So we diced Venice and have elected to spend one of the extra nights in London so that the boys can do an overnight trip to Amsterdam, plus the other night will be spent in Zagreb in a bid to make the journey from Berlin/Dresden to Celje somewhat easier.
Really looking forward to the passive smoking.

The final route will be:

Frankfurt/Vienna -5 nights - day trips to Budapest and Prague
Berlin -at Tone's 4 nights
Dresden - 1 night
Zagreb - 1 night
Celje/Vitanje - 3 nights (meet relatives/Dad's home town)
Ljubljana - 4 nights - day trips to Lake Bled, Piran, Predjama
Salzburg - 3 nights - day trip to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
Munich - 5 nights - day trips to Schloss Linderhof & Neuschwanstein/Oberammergau, Rothenburg/Harburg,Ingolstadt
London -5 nights - maybe a day trip to Bath
Hong Kong - incl Disneyland

And the best thing is that because I made a mistake , we will now be spending our 20th unniversary in London instead of on some God awful long haul flight.

We plan to do Beatles walk and cross Abbey Road again on that day. woot woot

Done and done.

2008-11-08T22:42:00.000-08:00

Well we booked our airfares today.

My only request regarding airlines was NOT GARUDA, NOT BRITISH AIRWAYS, NOT QANTAS.

Because I truly believe that Qantas are trading on a very old and very outdated safety reputation.
I understand they now out source a great deal of their mechanical work and I think we can all see that it's really starting to show.

With all their little problems of late, I suspect they're hedging up for something rather spectacular.

I do hope I'm wrong.

Especially since we just booked return flights with them.

Strange, but I heard quite a few people saying they'd prefer not to fly Qantas at the travel expo today.
Even Vivien, my step-mother has decided to dodge Qantas when they travel to Europe.

Just a few short years ago, they were in the position of charging almost what they pleased...

The biggest queue by far today was around the Emirates stall.
Couldn't get near them, which is a pity, because I've heard nothing but good of them.

Anyway, Qantas!

Bloody Hell.

Apart from safety concerns, I would prefer anyone else (not British Airways - too many whingeing Poms) because the last thing I want to do on an international trip is talk to Aussies.

And here's why.

I have included translation for Gretchen's benefit.
Mostly, these are things I have actually heard.

"Yeah Love, give us some more free beers and that, I'm gunna get pissed and stuff on the plane, eh!" = I am so stupid, cultureless and boring that my farts are more interesting than my conversation.

"Errrrrrrrr, brown bread.And what's this green shit? Can I get more mayo?" = I eat like I'm at a 3 year old's birthday party and never try anything new. I'm an idiot.

"I'm not eating none of this wog shit!" = May I have a dish with a little less flavour please? I'm afraid my First Fleet ancestors have eaten nought but damper, beer and swill for 200 years and this has caused DNA damage and resultant brain shrinkage, yet an increased sperm count.

"I hope the pilot's not Asian." = I'm a cunt.

When I go away, I like to go away.
And I like the adventure and change of culture to start immediately.

I adored being the minority and immersing myself in another culture.
There's nothing like it.
You can just feel it doing you good.

So, on this flight, my MP3 player will be turned UP (to 11), and for the second leg, I will be swallowing enough Temaze to deaden the pain caused by the proximity of the damper sodden twits who will also be representing our magnificent country.

If white Australian culture were a biscuit, it would be a Milk Arrowroot...extra plain. Unremarkable.
And it would stay in it's own packet, criticising the other chocolate coated, caramel, nutty biscuits for not being as plain as themselves, and for encroaching on their shelf of the pantry which they stole from all the other more interesting biscuits in the first place.

And if we fall from the sky during this flight, rest assured that bits of white bread and processed cheese will be washing up on foreign shores, wreaking havoc on flora and fauna alike.

Aussie Aussie Aussie!

Oi Oi Oi!

By the way, did you know that that chant was originally derived from a racist skinhead chant?
They don't eat brown bread either.

Christmas.

2008-11-08T01:58:00.000-08:00

After spending last Christmas in a hotel room in Vienna watching Jeff argue with a doctor about having a lumbar puncture, I thought I'd take the opportunity to fracture a few family habits.

Like the habit of putting in 6-8 weeks of work, just for one meal.

Fair enough it's a spectacular meal, but seriously.

The people 2 doors down from us are German, and I first figured this out when I saw them washing their windows with extreme prejudice exactly 6 weeks before Christmas.

Exactly 6 weeks.
Exactly.

I like to do Christmas Eve though, mostly for Dad's sake.

I bake all the traditional things his mother used to bake and prepare pretty much everything my 2 aunts and my mother used to do altogether.
But that's because I'm an idiot rather than because anyone expects it of me.

It is so much work that I have a standard work schedule prepared.
I won't be posting that, I'm too ashamed.

The last Xmas Eve I did, the menu was as follows.
Bear in mind that everything is home made except the pate and the drinks..

On Arrival:

Champagne, beer, soft drinks.
Hummous
Pate
Baked thyme fetta with crisped Lebanese bread
Olives and semi-dried tomatoes

Main Buffet:

Schnitzel - veal, pork (and chicken for those with the boring palate ie Adrian)
Baked leg of ham with fresh cranberries, garnished with oranges and cloves
Garlic marinated octopus (Vivien)
Fresh Tiger prawns
Sydney Rock Oysters
Smoked salmon
Watermelon, fetta and hazelnut salad
German potato salad
Slovenian cucumber salad
Roma tomato, bocconcini and basil salad
Fresh rocket lettuce salad with pomegranate.

Afters:

Apple strudel (fucking hate making this shit)
Vanilla Kipferl
Gingerbread
Anise Bogen (extra flat for irritation purposes)
Brandied chocolate cherries
Fruit platter
Fruit Mince Pies
Christmas Nut Wreath (as the centre piece)
Stollen
White Xmas (for Clair)

Tea and coffee.

So between the cooking, which takes me weeks, the general preparations, the shopping, the cleaning, the biggest time sponge is actually the table decorating.

I get bored and change my colour scheme each year, even though I promise myself I won't.

This year is lime green and gold to make the most of my new Henry VIII and his wives decorations Jeff bought me at Westminster Abbey last year.

Polishing the silver, checking the glassware, setting up trestles, finding exactly the right candles and centre piece, trying to fit everything in the fridge, making the perfect tablecloths - I lose the plot each and every year.

So, after last year's experience, I find myself comparatively relaxed about Xmas this year.
So far anyway.

We decided to take advantage of this and make the decision to go out for Xmas Eve instead.

To a German restaurant that does goose and pretzels. And has oom pah-pah bands.

You know that slapping dance that Chevvy Chase does in European Vacation?
Yoga boy can do it properly- learnt during his Munich days - they take it very seriously indeed.

woot woot

And then back to ours for presents and my very ridiculous dessert menu.
Dad calls it zuker bakerei.

If I don't bake Xmas goodies 2 years in a row, I think something in me will break.

Oh fuck, that means I have to make strudel, doesn't it?

Dammit.

Anyway, that will all start in the next 2 weeks.
I have already amassed most of the ingredients - need more glace fruit though. And brazil nuts. And brandy.

Naturally I need to make double or triple batches of everything so that I can take it with me to Jeff's family the next day for Xmas as well as down to Aunty Kit's beach house when we visit the next week.

Anyway, today I finished the last of the fiddly Xmas shopping - every stocking is stuffed to the point that they cannot take so much as even one more Mintie.

I spent today making an advent calenar for Bronte and Laura, my unGodchildren.

It awesome.
It's out of 24 large matchboxes, which you cover with nice paper, and then stick them together to look like a tree.
Then you fill the drawers with lollies and little toys, and they open one drawer each day for the month of December as a countdown to Xmas.
I changed the colour scheme to pink, green and brown so that they can use it for occasions other than Xmas too.
The girls are at just 5 and 6, so the perfect age to enjoy this I think.

So, I have less to do than usual, but still a great deal to get through.

Oh, and I'm not making a gingerbread house this year either.

So there.

It was nineteen years ago today...

2008-10-30T14:29:00.000-07:00

...that Sgt Pepper taught the band to play.

And what a year that was.

19-fucking-89 hey?

Watching my mother's body fail and die, learning to cross stitch and meeting my life partner - and all within the space of just a few weeks.
How did I do it?

Add to that, the sudden accumulation of a large Lebanese family, seeing the Ramones live twice in one week and a return to geriatric nursing, and you will be able to appreciate what a big year that was for Simone.

Just a few ups and downs.
Often at the same time too, which was nice. (TWSS)

I don't believe I've ever been called upon to change gears mentally and emotionally as often and as violently as I was in 1989.

Oh that reminds me. I think I also learnt to drive that year.

I vividly remember visiting Mum in the hospital on a Sunday morning just days before she fell unconscious for the last time and telling her with the utmost certainty that I'd seen him the night before.
Him.

She smiled, patted my hand and told me, "You know what you're doing."

It's a wonderful feeling to know that an esteemed parent can have such faith in your judgement, even at that age.
It's an even better one to have it proven right day after day, week after week, year after year.

Knowing full well that she only had days left to her, and having a fair idea of the gut wrenching, irrevocable grief that we were all about to experience as a result, I'm pretty sure I asked her,

"But now?!"

She answered me in a way that quietly confirmed to me the wisdom of the Universe's timing and the good sense of trusting in that.
She really was switched on.

I still miss Mum in a way I cannot understand.
I contort my mind sometimes and try to assess how much I've missed out on all these years, but it's like trying to look at the back of your own head in the mirror - you get a glimpse of a glimpse but no more.
But you always look again, don't you?

Anyway, not too long after that, our family lost it's axis.
So much change.

But I don't look back at it all now without choosing to focus on the wonderful things that happened that year as well.
Otherwise, what's the point?

Apart from Jeff, I was provided with a new family.

One I even liked! And still like!

How often does that happen?

Another of those 1989 moments that are frozen in time for me was when I met Jeff's mother, Yvonne for the first time, maybe only 6-8 weeks after losing my own mum.

As I stepped inside the house, all I could see was her silhouette.

We met half way between the front and back doors, and for some reason, we were alone there.

Applying logic, I guess Jeff had ducked into the bathroom with incredibly poor timing, which is his want, even today.

So here I was, perhaps trespassing in a hostile Lebanese house, staring down the barrel of either my potential mother-in-law or my worst nightmare.

Disaster or success?
Really, I don't even know what it all hinged on.

The silhouette was dead still and with no facial expression cues to work with, I just had to rely on my intuition, hope and expectation.

Surely the kind of woman who would bring up this person to be so friendly and relaxed must be cut from the same cloth.

We both paused for what seemed like eternity and then simultaneously threw our arms open and shrieked,

"Yeeaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy!"

It's been that way ever since.

Never had a cross word from that woman.
Actually, I've never heard a cross word form her full stop.

I have seen her play practical jokes on people and take the piss though.
Hey, I've even heard her call her husband a hairy grey donkey's arse.
Sure it loses a little something in translation, but it will ever be one of my faves.

She's a lot like Jeffrey. In looks as well as in nature.

When Jeff and I met - not straight away, as our first date was more or less a double date with both our brothers.
No, no, that came out all wrong (TWSS). I'll explain that presently, don't panic.

What I meant to say was that when Jeff and I eventually enjoyed time alone without our brothers hanging around, I peppered him with a few questions, carefully designed to expose any major foible.
What a crafty 20 year old.
Maybe all that Trixie Belden paid off.

Firstly, I asked him about his mother.
My theory being that men who have a poor opinion of their mothers, will extend that to their partner by and by.
His response was,

"You'll have to meet her, she's unreal!"

And she is too.

Then I asked if he could cook, while pretending that I could not.
He told me about some incredible chicken dish he'd made recently and that it was OK if I didn't know how to cook- he could do all that.

Then I sussed out addictions.

Nothing.

Uh-oh....

But yes, to clarify...our first date...

We were accompanied by both our brothers.
That's probably tradition on some planets, but we must have looked somewhat odd that night.

They hit it off in such grandiose fashion that the real reason for the outing kinda got washed away.
At one stage, I vaguely remember jogging along behind them, waving and saying,

"Hellooooooooooo, remember me?"

All these years later it still stuns me at how much these three adore each other.

That very night, after Adrian solved the riddle inscribed onto the rim of their latest single (they were in a band, no I'm not going to discus that now), they made him an honourary member.

Anyway, that was nineteen years ago today.

Nineteen fucking eighty nine.

Aggressive Beret Wearing 101. Part 6. FIN

2008-10-22T02:49:00.001-07:00

Reading back over my diary entries for that week, I find it funny to see how I tried to adjust to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as they were offered to me.

It's good to know that I tried.
I did.
I really did.

I'm pleased to see that I didn't become narky straight away.

Fairly typically, I gave it a go and then when it all became too much, I made the decision to flatten my ears, sharpen my focus and participate in day to day Parisian tourism with a level of disdain that left them all well in the shade and in no way my equal.
I out Frenched the French.

Seriously, I hated this place by the end of the first day, but I was fair minded enough not to grumble until the second or to state it unequivocally until after breakfast on the third.

That's pretty good of me. Don't you think so?
Considering the amount of coffee I was drinking, I think it was nothing short of a heroic act of charity.
Good on me.

Even as we were standing at Charles De Gaulle airport (about as big and exciting as Melbourne airport - I was shocked) with the boarding pass in my hand, I was experimenting with my brain - trying to focus on what I had enjoyed about Paris rather that what I hadn't.
An attitude of gratitude and all that.

But you know what I found to think about as I stood impatiently at the boarding gate, the keenest person in history to get on a long haul flight?

I thought back to all those devastating moments throughout my life when people have pronounced my name the French way.
Simone - rhymes with scone. *shudder*

It has always offended and sickened me.
You may as well call me a pretentious twat and be done with it.

There were a few years there too, when my mother tried to enforce this rather nasty pronunciation of the name.

You may imagine my surprise and horror to arrive at school the day after parent and teacher night, only to have a teacher apologise to me in front of the class for not pronouncing my name correctly...
Even at the tender age of 12, I was able to put a stop to it with such vehemence that it was rarely heard of again.
Not even Mum dared.

Serial offenders will be prosecuted.
And certainly have been.

Zero tolerance.

After issuing instant and savage corrections, I have occasionally felt the need to sweeten the repudiation by saying something semi good natured like,

"If ever we should happen to meet in France, you may call me Simone."

But not often.
By and large I felt it wiser to leave them swinging in the breeze.

So, as I stood at that boarding gate, desperately trying to stack up a few positives against the tower of Parisian negatives, I smiled pompously to myself and thought,

"Ha! I've been in Paris for 5 full days and no-one's called me Simone!"

Joke's on them!

When I realised that, I felt happy for the first time since leaving Dusseldorf - like I'd gotten away with something even.
Of course, just moments later, as I handed over my boarding pass, the evil witch smiled sweetly at me and said, "Ahh... Simone, oui!"

P.S. Pffffffffffffffft to the French, their mother's smell of elder berries.

FIN.

.

Aggressive Beret Wearing 101 . Part 5.

2008-10-18T17:29:00.000-07:00

Well, one way or another, I made it to those damned toilets.

Of course there were but 3 or 4 cubicles to service the busiest tourist attraction in the country, but I have to say that I was not surprised.

As I stood in the queue, I began thinking about all the different types of toilets and taps that I'd seen so far on this journey.

All sorts.

I also thought that of all the incredible things we'd seen and done, the world's toilets would be what I remembered in detail.

...and I was dead right.

There were maybe 4 women in front of me and the door to the ladies was propped open so that the cleaner could bang the dirty mop into your feet even as you stood patiently in line.

There was clearly no ventilation in this facility whatsoever, and once again, I'm fairly certain that she had undiluted urine in the bucket rather than Domestos.
At no stage did I get even the faintest whiff of anything resembling disinfectant.
Disgusting, oui oui?

I also noticed that the tiles chosen for this bathroom were the meanest, nastiest little tiles the 1970's could muster.
You know the ones - they're about 2cm square with half a centimetre of filthy grout between each.

And what colour do you think you'd choose for such tiles if you were planning the decor of the busiest bathroom in France?

Yellow?
Yup.

Festy, festy little dive.

This is what my head was full of as I stood there.
So, you'll understand why my mentally occupied sign read engaged as I stood staring intently into the next door washroom, craning my neck to see what kind of strange basin the man was using.

It seemed very low and I was confused as to what it was all about.

So interested was I, that I was all but in there with him, when he turned around and zipped up.

Zipped up!

OMG
Who chocks the door to the men's toilet open in such a public place?

The fucking French, that's who.

Happily pissing in front of women and children on the first floor of the fucking Eiffel Tower with a nutty Australian bird trying to cop a good look.
I'd like to read his blog.

He didn't even wash his hands by the way. Think about that next time you eat a baguette.

When I eventually returned to our very dirty table, I said to Jeff, "Well that's it, they've broken my spirit."

Jeff, nonplussed, returned volley by drawing my attention to the old Italian lady sitting next to us who looked exactly like Paulie Walnuts from the Sopranos.

This was our cue to get up and face to next 359 steps to the second level and a more distant view of the same things.
Took plenty of pics.
I had the Sopranos theme stuck in my head for the next 2 days, which is better than the Plastic Bertrand song that saw me through the first 2.

Then there is another level...the very top which may only be accessed by another lift.

A lift you cannot buy a ticket for at the same time you buy your ticket to get to the first and second level.
A lift whose special ticket box is intermittently closed without explanation.
A lift you must queue up for an hour to get onto, leaving many people stranded without a ticket because the information about tickets is at the front of the line.
Did Joseph Heller design this place?

We figured this out before we made it to the lift and Jeff did a rather heroic commando roll to get under the barricade to the ticket box which was now open.
The old Asian couple in front of us didn't and got sent back.

The Nazis were French?
Cripes!
Disorganised and bossy is a woeful combination, it really is.

January 20th - Paris

Same breakfast.
Why don't they use plates here? Yuk, cutting and buttering baguettes on the paper table cloth.

We went for a walk to St. Gervais church this morning so that Jeff could pay his respects to his God of comedy, Ricky Gervais, creator of The Office.
Blundered in to a Mass there and blundered back out at no leisurely speed.
It was interesting to note that Mass still sounds like absolute bollocks even when you can't understand a word.

Took the train to Mont Martre and hoofed it up the hill to Sacre Coeur, which is a nice church with plenty of gargoyles and an adequate view.
Nothing much green to look at in Paris though.
As a result, I have discovered that I much prefer natural views or at least semi natural views.

We walked through the Mont Martre markets where we were beset upon by artists of all description who wanted to draw our portraits.
Actually, they insisted.
They were so aggressive that Jeff got pretty cranky with them.

We had a look in one of the cemeteries not far from there, which was awesome.

Their graves look just like my perfect house.

We hoped it was the cemetery that has Oscar Wilde's grave and Jim Morrison's so we could pay our respects to both and have a good solid belly laugh at the Emo kids trying to out art school each other.

Instead we got to see the grave of the deGas family (LMAO) and where they had disintered Dumas from.
Pretty cool.

On the way back, Jeff was questing for the BBQ chicken he had sniffed out earlier and went a little nuts when we couldn't find it.
Poor thing.

We did stumble upon Moulin Rouge though, and may I just say, whoop-di -doo.

Returned to our hotel armed with enough chocolate croissants as are necessary for the task of packing for a long haul flight after 6 weeks of gift shopping.

Soooo looking forward to Hong Kong and the familiarity of Asian culture again. I've really missed that.

Oh, and I did utter a syllable of French after all.
But only because an old lady walking her dog stopped and offered to help us find something on the map.
The word I used was was escalates, which I correctly figured meant stairs.
Damn her and her unsolicited kindness which made me break my vow.

Bloody people.

Aggressive Beret Wearing 101 . Part 4.

2008-10-17T15:27:00.001-07:00

Simply not capable of walking a step further, we found the train and returned to St Michel that way.
The Metro is so dirty that you almost want to lay toilet paper on the seat first.
I prefer to stand.

Not just here, but also in London, buskers are prone to hopping on the trains and playing to a captive audience.
The bastards.
Jeff termed it public masturbation and I cannot disagree.

We walked through the very lovely Latin Quarter - felt much more like home to us due to the greater cultural mix there.
Plenty of African stores, Arabic stuff and heavy Mediterranean influence too.

The French seem to really like small theatres. Looks like a lots of independent movies playing and people gather on the streets after wards to smoke heavily and discuss.

We were picking our way through the lanes when Jeff jacked on the brakes and drew in his breath sharply by saying,

"LAMB!"

OMG I remember lamb.

It was a Greek restaurant with a window full of lamb chunks and seafood on skewers.
Fresh raw vegetables!
Not potato, not cabbage, not bread!

The owner quickly spotted 2 Aussies with their faces pressed against the glass, came out to smash a few plates on the cobbles and also to harrass us into the shop.
No problem there.
At this stage in the proceedings, we were prepared to pay whatever it took to bag us some poor delicious bastards.
And we did.
Well, actually I'm not sure what it cost, I don't think either of us bothered to look.

Anyway, suffice it to say that lamb made us both homesick.
As much as we both adore Europe, there's nothing like Sydney for variety.
If you feel like immersing yourself in Asian culture, Indian, Arabic, Italian, German, whatever for a time, you can.
And from where we are, I can drive from Vietnam to Lebanon in 20 minutes.
Hell, Sri Lanka and Sudan are now just up the road too.
It's wonderful.
Let's face it, the more that wicked First Fleet is diluted, there better it is for everybody.

No monoculture here mate.

So, after a harrowing day, tomorrow we're off to Versailles and the Eiffel Tower and it's hundreds of damn steps.
Better be a good gift shop up there.

January 19th - Paris.

Got up early, coffee and baguette breakfast as usual.
Decided to try shoe shopping as they have a much better selection of boots here then in Sydney.
OK, so 3 staff members and 1 customer should mean pretty good service.

Nuh- uh.

It meant turning their backs deliberately to ignore us.
Fabulous.

But that's OK, once I figured this out for certain, I helped myself to perhaps 6 pairs of boots and after considering searching for my own sizes, thought better of it and helpfully returned each pair to the wrong location.
And before you decide to think ill of me for that, consider that they would still not have noticed yet.
The French are not service oriented.

Ahh yes, Paris.
Nothing's changes over night I see.

It was nice of me to give it the benefit of the doubt though, wasn't it?

We took the train out to Chateaux Versailles with only one hitch due to poor Parisian labelling.
Found truly excellent chocolate croissants at the station there.
I cannot tell you exactly what was so good about them, but they are magical.
Almost as good as the deadly bacteria filled vanilla slices or festy flavourless pies you might find at any Sydney train station, but not quite.

See, I'm still glass half full over here.
Let's see if I can make it through a whole day?

Versailles has been one of the top 5 places on my list of must see destinations this life time.
I've read so many Jean Plaidy books that I feel I know the place.

When we arrived, we were instantly glad we'd bought Paris passes. They saved us over an hour of queueing even in the dead of winter.
We walked straight in.

Glass half full.

OK, here's a question.

If you need to hire out audio sets, would you first have people queue to buy an audio set and then again to pick it up?
Of course, with this option, you must make sure there are no visual clues for the tourists at all so that you may waste as much of their time as possible.

What utter nonsense.

The French cover up the fact that cannot organise anything by making everything seem as complicated as possible.
The Germans are onto them though.

Each and every time I heard a voice questioning such stupidity, it was pronouncing v's as w's.

Stalemate.

Well, after busting a gut to get to this place my whole life, I have to say that I found it underwhelming.
Which is ironic because it's known for it's grandeur and extravagance.

For one thing, the Hall of Mirrors really needs to have it's mirrors cleaned.
Really grotty.

Also, they had the throne etc set up, but whatever pieces of furniture they didn't have, they had made up out of cardboard to give you an idea what it might have looked like...
Cardboard?

WTF!?

Obviously the word reproduction has no French translation.

Please try to imagine what an 18th century throne looks like beside cardboard urns and tables.

Uh-oh glass half empty.....

OK, so many things from this place were seized during the revolution and either sold or melted down, but that was a few years ago now.

I'd rate the Versailles gift shop at 2/10.
Just one more example of how the French can't be bothered with tourists.
They got the taking the money part sorted, but anything else is beneath their dignity.

Hence all the tourists getting the shits and taking the piss by the wearing of berets.
I went with lolly pink today.

Marie Antoinette's bedroom was beautiful (and reproduced!) and it really was interesting to actually see the door through which she made her escape as the mob rushed through the throne room with pitchforks.

However, downstairs, not 20 metres away, is a public toilet, which would have to be one of the nastiest I've ever encountered.
Unless the French believe that mopping the floor with urine is in fact a reasonable disinfectant, I see no excuse for this place.

After seeing crazy King Ludwig's replica palace in Bavaria, the original seemed just a washed out shell.
Imitation certainly is the sincerest form of flattery.

I was a little upset by now and so we skipped Petite Trianon entirely. The gardens are it's strong point anyway, and they are all boarded up through winter.

So, we crossed Versailles off my list and skipped out of there like kids knicking off from an school excursion and headed to the Tower.

On the train to the Eiffel, Jeff befriended a group of American students from somewhere near Kansas.
He grilled them about the NFL and I have to say they were the nicest people we'd met all trip.

The Eiffel Tower was easily the best thing about Paris.
There is no angle or distance that makes it look bad.
Every bolt, every hunk of metal is beautiful.

From underneath it reminded me of a lacey petticoat.
It is decidedly feminine, which is funny when you think that it's all just industrial metal.

When you get underneath it, there are 4 queues.
One per leg.

Being tribal by nature, I headed for the South tower.
Jeff headed for the shortest queue, which by chance, was where I was off to anyway.

Apart from a 45 mniute wait just to get close enough to the small sign at the front to be able to read it... WTF, too late by then...Paris, Paris, Paris - get it together already.

Well, apart form that, there was ice water dripping on out heads in copious amounts. We later discovered that this was from an ice statue they had on the first floor.
Stuff the tourists underneath!

So, we persevered with the line, mainly because we really had no choice, and made it to the desk to learn that there is only 1 lift, which is what the long queue was about on the other side...
Naturally the Paris Pass doesn't cover it's most famous attraction, so we shelled out to walk up 400 stairs.

After taking in the view form the first floor, we had a cup of tea and went to the loo.

After three and a half days of being slammed into, nudged, tripped, brushed and smacked into by Parisians, I had finally had enough.
On the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, it happened - I stopped moving for people.
Simple as that.

So, as I crossed the floor to get to the ladies, a staff memeber was heading into my path with 2 bags of rubbish.
He belligerently decided on the shortest route with the least inconvenience to himself, which meant his speeding up and stepping fair into my path rather than waiting that mutually polite beat and negotiating smoothly.

He'd obviously noticed that I'm small and figured that he was more important and that I would move to let him through.

Not a single good manner between them, these people.

I'm trying to imagine barging a customer out of the way at work whilst holding 2 bags of rubbish... nope, no can do.

Imagine his surprise when I moved not a muscle. Unless you count the ones which dropped my shoulder and anchored my feet to the floor.

Simone played chicken and Simone won.
I even made him swear. :O)

I couldn't wipe the grin off my face for hours.

LOL that was one of the best parts of the trip.
I just wish I'd started sooner, although I don't like becoming what I hate.

Aggressive Beret Wearing 101 . Part 3.

2008-10-16T23:11:00.001-07:00

January 18th - Paris.

Well, following on from my late night realisation that something was rotten in the city of Paris, we headed, quite literally around the corner to the Pantheon.

Now this I liked.
Kinda like a small St. Paul's in London - good looking domed cathedral, but since the revolution, they discarded the religion and it became more like a monument for French intellectuals and a burial place for their greater minds instead.
Nice. So we paid out respects to Voltaire, Dumas, both the Curie's, Zola (my fave), Victor Hugo, Braille and Moulin.

Oh yay!
A great Paris experience!
Finally.

Then we walked back down to Notre Dame, just in time to hear it going bong bong.
So I phoned Adrian who was still in Vienna before his flight home and shared the experience with him. I interrupted his schnitzel, but that's OK.

By now it was raining and there was such a queue to get up the stairs to the top of the Notre Dame tower that we decided to give it a miss.

After a cafe baguette so crunchy that my gums began to bleed, we both put our umbrellas up and headed for the Louvre.

We hadn't gone too far when Jeff turned to me and said,

"Errrk, we have red and blue umbrellas, we look like Roosters supporters."

OMFG x10
We did too.
Should we split and walk on opposite sides of the rue?

Oh dear, I'd purchased them at separate times, and so was unaware of my gaff.

Fucking Roosters. I hate 'em.

As we walked, I was muttering to myself about the fucking Roosters when it finally dawned on me what it was about this city that was getting under my skin so badly.

How I had not noticed it before I cannot imagine.
Perhaps my brain had blocked it out in order to protect me.

Suddenly, everywhere I looked, there were red white and blue flags, lights, ribbons, streamers, T-shirts.
And I'm talking on everything.
Everything.
It was horrible.

No wonder I was antsy.
No wonder I felt uptight and provoked.
I was surely in Hell. I had been so focused on dodging dog merde I just hadn't noticed the pitchforks and horns.

Suddenly it all made perfect sense.
The way my Souths sticker had made it all through Hong Kong, UK and Europe unscathed, but didn't last 10 minutes alone in CDG airport....
The staring, the hostility, the inclination to be pretentious and boastful...

The Universe had tricked us into holidaying in the fucking Chook Pen for 97Eu per night.

Once my head had stopped swimming, I turned to Jeff and explained what was going on.
It was like trying to relate a nightmare to someone.

Jeff being Jeff, helped by exaggerating the situation by also drawing my attention to the sea of Roosters in shop windows.

Le coq!

Fuck it!
They were everywhere too.
OMG
It's some sort of hideous national symbol, that fucking thing.

It's like kryptonite to me.

This was a moment of my life I really wouldn't do again for a million dollars.
Never ever ever.

That and the time at a game when the Roosters supporter who wears the rubber glove on it's head touched my hand as we both threw something in the bin.
I considered prosthesis.

OK, so the Louvre is awesome.
But why does my lower back always start to hurt in art galleries?

I love portraits.
Jeff likes huge battle scenes.
Either way, we're both happy poking around in the 15th and 16th century stuff (TWSS).

Now if you run the most famous art gallery in the world, and you leave it open until 9pm, please explain to me why you would close the cafe at 2-3pm.

And why you would have only enough seating for 20 people.
That's quintessential Paris.
They make no effort to accommodate you.
I felt about as welcome as a stray dog the whole time.

So whatever.

We saw the Mona Lisa.
It seems to be guarded by 4 rows of Italian tourists at all times.
That's OK too, because the Venus de Milo is guarded by Asian tourists.

At this point, we were in the Italian Jesus painting section and simultaneously decided that we could no longer tolerate religious imagery, no matter how pretty, historically important or famous.
This is where I heard Jeff say,

"Oh fuck me dead, not this guy again."

I didn't have to turn around to now to whom he was referring.

So, after 5 hours, we thought we'd walk from the Louvre, through le Jardin (OMG grass!), past Concorde, up the Champs d'Elysee and then climb the Arc de Triumph...

Looked like about a 15 minute walk on the map. Easy.

Stopped in a lovely little kiosk (I won't bother comparing the content of an Australian kiosk with that of a European kiosk) and fuelled up on huge hot teas and the legal limit of chocolate croissants.

Being maybe 4 o'clock when we left the Louvre, the "sun" AKA that lighter grey colour that Europe goes during winter days, began turning to that lovely velvetty deeper night grey.
We both love grey weather, so it was pleasant.

But after a day in the Louvre and a huge walk in the morning, it was a long, long way to the Arc.

I'd finished 2 or 3 croissants and 1and a half teas by the time we even made it to Concorde.

By then we figured that we'd come this far, so...

We hit the Champs d'Elysee just in time for them to turn on all the silvery fairy lights.
They were very pretty.
The novelty wore off well before the 2 kms were up though.

I cannot remember being more tired than I was during that hike.
When I look at that map of Paris now and see the distance we covered that day, I still can't laugh yet.
Oh well, you see more on foot, hey?

So, arriving at the Arc and being confronted by hundreds of stairs was less funny still.

But we did and it does afford a comprehensive view up there.

We got to see the Eiffel Tower light up at 6 o'clock, which was nice because it glitters for 10 minutes like a sparkler.
Awesome.

But the view of Paris...I dunno, it's just same no matter which way you look at it.
Blonde brick, curly lamps and vespers.

I did maybe 2 laps of the top of the Arc before I figured out which was the Champs d'Elysee that we'd just trekked down.
OMFG that speck in the distance was Concorde... idiots.

And then they sucker punched me (TWSS)

I was looking at the Champs and Jeff had joined me, when I noticed something grizzly (TWSS).

Firstly, it's so wide and the Arc stands in the middle of it, so you feel as though it's pointing at you.
Each side of the avenue is flanked by the fairy lights as I said - as it grew darker, I can tell you that they were not white or silver and all, but blue.

The effect of that traffic in the lanes between them is of course white headlights coming toward you and next to that, red tail lights going away from you....

One gigantic blue white and red stripe....pointing straight at me...

Suffice it to say I had a very Hitchcock moment up there.
I went dizzy, swayed, felt ill and utterly incensed.
I'm attributing up to 30% of that to low blood sugar, but the rest was their fault.

I felt as though I'd woken up holding a gigantic Roosters banner, and that this fucking dirty little city had staged an elaborate practical joke.

Honestly, I swear I saw stars circling my head just like in the cartoons.

Aggressive Beret Wearing 101 . Part 2.

2008-10-16T02:52:00.001-07:00

My usual take on bad experiences that come in quick succession (TWSS), I picked up watching The World According to Garp, a movie a recently named a fish after.

My all time favourite movie scene is when Garp is inspecting a house prior to purchase when a light aircraft flies into it and wrecks it.

He instantly announces, "I'll take it!", later explaining that by his reckoning that the house is "pre-disastered."

Pre-disastered. An excellent concept.

Well, with this in mind, I figured that Paris had thrown all it's garbage at us nice and early and that we were therefore all set for an exquisitely easy and blissful few days.

Nuh-uh.

So we moved hotels and had breakfast at the new place. We are now relieved and happy.

We walked across the Seine and found Saint Chappelle, which although tiny, is spectacular.
Even has a tiled Rabbitoh on the floor and a red and green door. (see pics)

Pity that almost half of it is taken up by the gift shop.
Jeez it's gotta be bad for me to say that, hey?

Then we trudged a good distance to the Hard Rock Cafe to pick up our Paris passes. We had lunch there which was a God awful rip off.
Found an Aussie staff member who was a Souths fan. How do I do it?

He was telling me that as of January 1st, France went smoke free in restaurants etc. hahahahahahahahhaha
That explains why so many really angry looking French people are loitering around outside every cafe.
It's really quite intimidating.
They don't look happy. Or friendly.

Actually, they all look the same. Parisians I mean. Can I say that?
It's outstanding.
Less than a day here and I can tell them at a glance.
Dark, small, pointy and cranky.
They stare at you for inexcusably long periods of time, stand way too close and they walk right into you - even when it's not crowded.

Who walks into an 8 stone woman?
So far, there have been at least half a dozen encounters that I genuinely believe were deliberate.
I don't think I like it here.
Jeff always walks behind me, so I don't think he's noticed any of this yet.

hmmmmmmmm I'm getting all riled up just remembering this stuff...

Trudged back, got lost - everything looks the same here.
It's surreal.
If you turn your head for a second, you're done for. It's impossible to tell which direction you came from (TWSS).

Well, we both turned our heads...so.. yeah. Octagonal blocks don't help any.

And it rained, so by the time we made it back to Notre Dame, we were kinda scruffy.

Notre Dame is nice - but after visiting the cathedral at Cologne just a few days ago and seeing St Matthias in Budapest, meh.
I don't see what all the fuss is about.

In fact, if they ever re-name Paris, my suggestion will be..."what's all the fuss about?"
Everything is smaller, dirtier and less interesting than I've been lead to believe. I feel I've been had (TWSS)

It seems to me that lots of things about Paris are over rated. I don't really know what I was expecting, but so far it's just not hitting me.
Which is good because the aggressive pedestrians still are.
Crossing the road here cannot be any worse that in downtown Calcutta.
The vespers are just ridiculous.
We've seen things on these roads here that defy many of the most basic principles of physics.
And lets' not forget that we've only been here 24 hours...

On a positive note, we did see the Notre Dame cats though- all fat black ones enjoying their dinner.
Why would you look at Jesus when you could be looking at cats?
Contiki have no idea. They should let me re-do their itineraries.

Have yet to see a single blade of grass here. Plenty of dogs though. You do the pavement math.

Now, I like berets.
I wear them even in Sydney, to the football even.
However, I believe I have enough good taste to choose alternate head wear whilst in Paris.
That was until this morning anyway.

After having so many rude experiences, I got a little testy myself (TWSS) and marched into a souvenir shop and purchased 2 green berets, 1 pink, 1 blue and 1 brown - the better the be able to annoy the locals.
Tourists seem to be their Achilles Heel.

I'm wearing my berets aggressively from now on.
Without intermission and without apology.

Fuck it, they're all playing prison rules, why shouldn't I?

And I'm not going to utter a syllable of French either.

Not to alarm you, but I believe we are now in a state of war.

Anyway, I'll sleep it off and hopefully Paris and I can reconcile tomorrow. We're off to the Pantheon, the Louvre, Concorde, Champs d'Elysee and the Arc de Triumph.

I'm counting on the Louvre to save my opinion of this narky little city.

Did I mention that there's something insidiously annoying about this place?

Something ain't right. It just isn't.

Aggressive Beret Wearing 101 . Part 1.

2008-10-09T03:31:00.001-07:00

Well I'm thinking it's now time to perform an exorcism on my Parisian experiences.
I'm going to need sage, salt, pine oil, half a dozen black candles, a mirror and artemisia.
And lots of it.

Bit and pieces have leaked out here and there, but the water in the toilet bowl has finally stopped spinning and the final flush is at hand.

I'm even going to do the unthinkable and delve into my travel diary for those few days - something I have not yet had the courage to attempt.

Uh oh, this doesn't look good at all...

January 17th...Paris

Well, once again we are staying in a hotel across the road from a noisy construction site.
Considering the hotel is only a quarter full, you would think they would have placed us in a room elsewhere. Odd.
Actually, I'm not sure this is a room - not enough space for us to even pass each other. We had to throw the bags over the bed as they would not fit between the bed and the walls.
The corridor was just wide enough for my 8 stone frame and was exactly 2mm wider than my suitcase.
Both Jeff's arms rubbed against the walls and we think he may have had a re-birthing experience, we're not sure.
Who do you contact to find out? Should I phone the Australian Embassy?

...hmmm, honey, just wait until you get the full picture...

So, the noise just across the 8 foot wide lane and my cold made sure that we were awake at 6 am.
Tried to ignore it and doze and almost made it, but then the hotel sent workmen up to dismantle to heating at 7am and to use our door as a stopper for the sheet of metal they were drilling.
Why was I lead to believe that Paris would sound like piano accordions?

Additionally, they were all chain smoking and as the room was as large as an average sized wardrobe, I was having head spins from the nicotine clouds coming under the door.

It just got more and more ridiculous until we just gave in, got up, packed, dressed and left to find alternate accommodation.
Just around the corner, we found Hotel Suez - for 3 EU more per night the room is triple the size and we have a bidet.

What a fabulous thing.

So, we booked 4 nights and then marched back to the shit hole hotel and had to cancel the booking.
No surprises that the frosty cow tried to tell me that we would be charged for all 5 nights despite only staying 1.

While Jeff was upstairs collecting the bags, I looked her fair in the face and told her that whatever she charged would be worth it to get out of this dump.
You may imagine her surprise.
She gave me a hard time but backed off remarkably quickly when a group walked in to inquire about rooms just as I was half way through explaining what I thought of her and her hotel.

The non-verbal mutual agreement seemed to be that if I now shut up in front of the new people, she would not charge me for 4 nights accommodation...
I conservatively estimate that this took 5 years off her life.
I also consider this as my good deed for the day.

Watching her bite back her rage and slam pens around felt fantastic - something like what I imagine the Brits and Prussians felt like when they won the battle of Waterloo.

Never mind, fresh start.... although, this is my third fresh start here in under 24 hours though...what's going on?

They already wrecked my bag, and worse still, my Souths sticker at the airport, then the taxi we caught from the station to this prick of a joint ripped us off by driving us around many blocks instead of simply telling us that it was just around the corner...
Lovely people the Parisians so far...

...you ain't seen nothin' yet...

Monkey on my back -Take 2

2008-10-06T00:25:00.000-07:00

I posted this blog a couple of weeks ago, but have since discovered footage of the very monkey in question, so am re-posting it with the clip.

Isn't he beautiful?

Special thanks to Woody Guthrie for writing the perfect song for my monkey some 50 years ago.

__________________________________________________________

I'm currently taking Ginkgo. And lots of it.

A common use for Ginkgo is as a memory tonic - I'm taking it for other reasons, so the memory thing is more like a side effect for me.

Oh the things that I'm remembering and the connections I am making!

Jesus wept, it's too much.

But one thing I remembered today while busily preparing a nasty tasting herb mix for someone was a moment of time from last December while we were in dear old Wien.

HellBoy had been outrageously sick - to the point where we had to phone a doctor on Xmas day to do a home visit to our hotel.
The doctor was somewhat of an alarmist and suggested that he needed a spinal tap to rule out viral meningitis.
In return, Jeff suggested that he should GGF.

We were refunded for all those un-Godly expenses just this week, which is probably what has put this period of time into my head.

So, after cancelling the Polish leg of the tour due to whatever it was that wasn't viral meningitis, we holed up in Vienna for 4 extra days - hardly any punishment, I can assure you.

On the third day, he rose again, and we took him only as far as the Museum of Torture, and then, because it was down hill from there, into a 5 story Austrian Aquarium of sorts.

One section of this place is a tropical enclosure (indoors) - anything tropical is a big deal over there.
There was a wooden walkway surrounded by tropical trees and bushes, strange birds flying free, turtles, fish, frogs, lizards and so forth.

But also there were monkeys.
Lots of little fuzzy monkeys.

Having been away from home for 2 weeks by this stage, I was seriously cat deprived and in need of some lovin'.
I was shamelessly gazing at these little critters and imagining how similar they might feel to a kitty cat.
How heavy, how warm, how cuddly.
I think my eyes welled up with tears and rolled back in my head a little bit.
But that's OK, the monkey who was looking back intently at me was down with that.

HellBoy was still in the octopus section down the hall and YogaBoy and I were leaning over the wooden railing, watching 2 monkeys groom each other.
Yoga Boy was comparing them to Indian monkeys that lived outside his ashram in Rishikesh.

As he did so, I felt a little kerrrrplop on my back.

I knew instantly what it was -it felt just like my cat Cec used to feel when she would jump onto my shoulders uninvited.

But Cec never picked through my hair looking for fleas...while I was awake anyway.
God knows what goes on when I'm asleep. TWSS
I rarely have fleas - maybe that's why.

As it was winter in Vienna, and owing to the fact that they exasperatingly had no coat room facilities, I was wearing my bulky, hooded, fur lined jacket- thus shielding my delightful parasitic friend from my brother.

I straightened up a little, looked YogaBoy appealingly in the eyes and said,

"Adrian, if I asked you to, would you help me get a monkey off my back?"

He looked at me intently, a flicker of concern passing across his otherwise happy brow.

"Yes, of course."

His response didn't surprise me at all.
Adrian's good like that. Whatever he has, even if it's only honesty, he'll give it to you.

So, I turned 45 degrees to my right, thus revealing my adorable yet preoccupied passenger who was still assisting me by picking through my hair lovingly.

He stayed still for the exclamations, but disembarked once the laughter began in earnest.

Even though I'd so completely enjoyed the encounter and the warm tactile moment we'd shared, my arms ached to hold him and cuddle him like I do Alice or Poppy when I change the linen each week.

I think back to that and genuinely believe that he felt my longing for a cat-like cuddle and extended to me what he thought was a viable option.

A split second after he'd left, HellBoy arrived, and quickly became devastated to discover that he'd missed the whole thing.
And that's a pity, because Jeff's a big fan of the monkey in general.

Never mind.

Anyway, hooray for Viennese monkeys and hooray for Ginkgo.

Sim loses it in Vienna.

2008-10-05T22:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I snort when I laugh.

But I find that funny, and then I laugh even more, so that cancels it out.

Occasionally I have a day where I laugh at everything, usually this happens after something has struck me as funny in the morning.
No-one can predict it and no-one can avoid it.

But I must say that it is often animal related.
That's why we keep cats.

Anyway, I had a day like that in Vienna.

It began with the discovery of the shit shelf in the hotel toilet and eventually culminated with a very cold little dog walking through the courtyard of the Hofberg Palace.

Let's just say it was so cold here that two layers of thermals, wool stockings, various jumpers and a thick winter jacket felt as though they afforded me all the protection of a Lowe's singlet.

As I laughed, my tears were so cold that I had to lean forward so that they'd fall on the pavement.
They snap froze as they hit the 200 year old stones.

This poor little doggie was moving his fuzzy little feets as fast as he possibly could, in order to escape the cold. They were just a blur.
I think what really got me was the sound of the horses hooves clopping in the background which seemed as though they were coming from the dog.

HellBoy was kind enough to film my dignity reducing debacle so that I could share it with you all.
Not that anyone who reads this would be surprised.

BTW If I could name this dog, he would be called Gunther.
But I suspect it's real name would more likely be either, Mitzi or Fritz, which seems a pity.

Anyway, I've lost it in worse places than the Viennese Imperial Palace before and I regret nothing.

LOL

2008-10-05T17:19:00.000-07:00

Hands up who's surprised that we're now going to both Hong Kong and Vienna?

My hand would be up but I'm typing.

LOL @ me.

Oh dear.

2008-10-05T03:26:00.000-07:00

The tone of our trip took quite a turn once YogaBoy arrived for Xmas.

Completely shameless, he is fully capable of impersonating The Masturbating Bear from the Conan O'Brien Show in the streets of Vienna.
And he does it well too.

Compare these.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=4FU2l-XU5cg&feature=related

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh those Russians.

2008-10-04T05:21:00.000-07:00

For one reason or another, I just had to fossick through our holiday footage.

Mid fossick, I happened upon a clip Jeff had titled "Ruski with 20 kilo camera."

A title like that is always going to interest me more than something like "Historical monument", "Beautiful scenery" or "800 year old painting."

I know I shouldn't be proud of that but I don't know what to do about it.

Please enjoy and bear in mind that our video camera fits in the palm of my hand.

Ohhhhhhhh, those Russians...

Cool hat though.

For anyone who's interested, it's Vienna - prolly out the front of the Kunt Historisch Museum.
But that's a blog for another day, innit.

PS Such a pity Jeff stopped filming when he did because two frames later, James Bond parasailed down and took this guy out.

Shit

2008-10-04T01:27:00.001-07:00

Not 24 hours after dismissing dear Hong Kong, it's baaaaaaaaaaaack.
My niece is excited about Disneyland and my sister-in-law is excited about shopping.

And maybe it's overthrown Vienna.

Egad!

In other news, Jeff is delighted that we're going to Predjama castle in Slovenia because Jackie Chan once did a back flip out of it in some dreadful movie.

That's OK, I want to go back to London to gawk at Elizabeth's undies again.

Head full of gravel.

2008-10-02T03:28:00.000-07:00

Rolling over last night, I became aware that I was still actively planning our next Euro trip while sleeping.
I suspected as much, but now have concrete evidence, hence the gravel in my head.

Around about 3am, I was pitting the elegant virtue of Vienna against Leipzig and Trieste.
The battle wasn't all that pretty either.

Never mind.

Anyway, I thought that spitting it out might prevent Potsdam taking on Venice tonight, thus sparing my muddle from confusing the Earth's energy any further.

Three weeks of course has become five, and various magnificent cities have been auditioned, only to be cast aside due to reasons I can no longer pretend to guess at.
No Dubrovnik, no Oslo, no Northern Lights or fjords, no Split, no Heidelberg, no Amsterdam (boo), no Cologne.

OK, poor darling Hong Kong bought the farm this trip because it can be stinking hot October and I have to dodge hot weather.
Plus we're out of time.

We can easily duck across to Hong Kong for a week next year.
Also because I discovered that I can take sleeping pills and bomb myself for several hours during long haul flights, thus making the Asian stopover less necessary.
HellBoy informs me that after about three Temaze, I can sleep with my head on my knees.

hmmm

Paris disqualified itself by being self important, smelly and full of pretentious fuckwits on cheesey romantic weekends.
In fact, Paris can bite me on the fuzz.

Just yesterday, both London (my fault) and Venice (Jeff's fault) made it back into the mix.

By 9:36 this morning, I had to place an urgent phone call, almost waking HellBoy up, to tell him to start mentally preparing for Vienna yet again.

"OK. Good."

Any other response would have surprised me from him.

Should I call him tomorrow and tell him I'd like to collect space shells on Mars, he'd give me the green light without missing a beat.
He knows how much I like shells.

Well, in case I haven't told you, we decided that we'd bring our next Euro jaunt forward a year or so to coincide with Dad's trip.
Jeff's brother, wife and daughter have also decided to join us.

But not for the whole thing.
They are keen to go to Paris and EuroDisney and to Italy.
We are not.

Mickey Mouse + Paris = SIMONE HELL.

Plus, Italian culture is too dominated by Christianity to hold my attention.
Poor Jesus is almost as over exposed in Italy as Mozart is in Austria.
At least Mozart was real though.
And he has chocolates named after him rather than wars.

We all but sprinted through the Italian Renaissance section in the Louvre earlier this year.
I remember hearing HellBoy say,

"Oh fuck me, not this guy again," while looking at some crucifixion pic or other.

Anyway, Italy...I gotta tell ya, it's enough with the Jesus already.
Talk about monomania.
I'm trying to imagine my reaction to the Vatican City, better known as JesusDisney.
Quite probably the only place that would let Paris off the hook for being the cuntiest city.

We are having a total of three nights alone(!) after spending time with Tone and Line in Berlin and then are going to re-trace the Tischler and Planinc family footsteps with Dad and Viv through sleepy Slovenia.
After that we meet up with Greg, Giulia and Yasmin in Venice.

At this stage, the itinerary is:

Germany
Berlin/Potsdam(4 nights with Tone)
Leipzig (1 night)
Dresden (2 nights)

Slovenia (meet Dad)
Celje (1 night) = birth town
Vitanje (2 nights) = home town
Ljubljana (2 nights)
Bled (2 nights)

Italy (meet Greg and Gules and Yazzie)
Venice (2 nights)

Austria
Vienna (3 nights)
Salzburg (3 nights)

Germany
Munich (5 nights) incl trips to Rothenberg and Inglostadt

UK
London (4 nights) - return visit to Lizzie's underpants.

Yes.
I think I feel better with that stored somewhere.
It'll be interesting to see how much it changes before I make final bookings.

So, this time next year, we'll be in Celje.

Of course, my only real concern is that Souths will take this opportunity to make the finals and force a very ugly decision on me.
Those bastards.

The strange kindness of strangers.

2008-09-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

Rumour has it that I like South Sydney.

So much so that strangers have taken to making me things for my altar at work.
Red and green things.

I have an Aboriginal player doll, a blonde South Sydney Cinderella doll, a Souths bunny doll, a tea cosy that looks exactly like a waratah, a few little bears with knitted jerseys - one as a replacement for one I gave to a small child at work who fell in love with it.
His parents bought 20 other bears trying to capture his interest, but no.
He remained staunch.

His mother, Christine would ring me before she came in and ask me to take the bear off my counter, hoping to spare herself a tantrum.
It didn't work.
He could feel it's magnificent presence.

I even went and bought a new bear for him myself - identical except that he has Warriors jersey on rather than Souths one.
Not fooled for a second.

In the end I gave the Souths one to him and he cried with joy.

I had a phone call a couple of weeks later to tell me that he sleeps with it, eats with it and it's the first and last thing he asks for each and every day.

I told his mother to let her husband know that his son was destined to be a Souths supporter.
He was unimpressed.
Or dare I say it, intimidated.
Not everyone can cope with spawning such greatness.
He'll learn.

The weirdest thing I've been given (made) is a Souths tunic which currently on my promotional Comvite honey bear.
A good customer, Marlies knits them and sends them to Africa so that they have something to put on the babies who die from AIDS with such monotonous regularity over there, rather than throwing them naked into a hole.

What kind of world do we live in?

Whatever kind it is, you can always depend on the kindness of strangers.

That's what she said.

2008-09-23T16:08:00.001-07:00

That's what she said jokes are a big thing around here.

And they've been big for a while and they're not leaving anytime soon.

In fact, HellBoy works with them so often and with such commendable mental dexterity that he's developed a gesture capable of replacing the statement itself in order to save time and conserve energy.

He once told a friend that he should just write it on his forearm and simply raise it when it suits him. (TWSS)

Not being in the least bit commitment-phobic - he's been with me these 19 years, he recently announced his intention of taking it that step further and having That's what she said! tattooed down his forearm in Chinese characters.

After snorting my chamomile tea through my ears and scratching my head at his comic timing - we were watching the weather I believe, I asked him why not choose Arabic writing?

He tells me he would like to be able to travel without being rubber gloved each trip, which is fair enough, but such encounters would surely give rise to many juicy opportunities for TWSS, making it almost worthwhile.

Or auf Deutsch in lovely old Teutonic script?
Yoga Boy kindly translated TWSS to Das hat sie gesagt!
Made even funnier of course by the complete absence of appreciation that most Germans would have for such lame double entendres.

So, he's off to school to ask the straightest Chinese science teacher he can find to write the characters for him.
He even tells me that he hopes this guy deliberately or accidentally writes something else.
That's HellBoy's true sense of humour, and I salute him for it.

Correction.

2008-09-23T02:43:00.000-07:00

A few months ago when I posted my blog detailing proceedings for my funeral, I told you that I didn't know anyone who shares my spiritual beliefs AND makes money from doing so.

This statement has since become absolute bollocks.

Her name is Eve Adam (yes for real) and her qualifications are as follows:

she has a bizarre blend of interesting yet reasonable beliefs (except that one about DNA/Palladians and the Middle East)
she is my friend
she is a Pisces
she really doesn't like the name George
she can belly dance
she is a militant vegan yet is a strong advocate of human organ transplantation
she is now qualified as a civil celebrant
she has already agreed to do it providing she still has breath in her own lungs

So let it be written, so let it be done.

Left holding the baby.

2008-09-21T01:40:00.000-07:00

Hell Boy possesses an extreme talent for dealing with difficult teenagers; mostly because he was one himself.
But also because he likes them.
You can't fake that.

Whenever there is trouble at school, they head straight for him to come and sort it out.
And this he usually does with just a look or a gesture.

After all these years of teaching, he remains baffled as to why other teachers cannot just as easily accomplish the same.
But then he doesn't know why teachers would choose to eat their lunch in the staff room instead of outside with the kids.

I doubt very much whether any teacher (ever) has been as beloved as Hell Boy.
Grand statement I know, but then maybe you haven't been with him when we've been out shopping.
He gets mobbed. Regularly.

I would have added kilometres to my journey to avoid a teacher socially when I was that age.

One group of boys used to tease each other with fake Affas sightings.

We've long since run out of places to shop locally without being offered extras by students and ex-students alike.

It warms my heart just to think about others loving him, but more importantly, to think about them liking this guy as much as I do.

As the years tick by, layer after layer of good karma is built up, or repaid as he sees it. He's almost done, he thinks.

So, with this kind of raw ability for taming and moulding headstrong and disadvantaged children, what do you think he might have done when asked to mind sick 14 month old Lina while her mother, Tone and I ducked into a German supermarket for dinner supplies?

I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to guess what they were doing.

This clip makes me cry for all sorts of reasons.
I recently played it to Viv, she was wiping tears away by the end too. But she was laughing.

Typical of Jeff, he doesn't see what all the fuss is about.

Who knew that the highway to hell was actually in the car park of Tengelmann's Supermarkt in Solingen all along?
Certainly not the locals.

Anyway, teach them well.

:O) :O) :O)

Vice rewarded.

2008-09-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was told by a spiritually trustworthy person, that in our society, vice rather than goodness is rewarded.

She explained to me that all the big money spinning industries such as sex, drugs, pharmaceuticals (IMO), gambling etc, all attract the big bucks.
NB I include you in that mix, organised religion.

The poorly rewarded vocations (AKA traditional female roles) are tied in to an unconscious belief that good should be done for free.
All JC's fault apparently.

People who help others for a living feel bad charging.
God, the amount of health practitioners and counsellors I know who shrink when it's time reach out and be paid is shocking.

I doubt that the people working in the local TAB or at the casino, the brothel etc feel anywhere near as bad when they take your cash.

And what has this got to do with me and my happy little blog?

Well just this.

This year I came in 2nd in Jo's tipping comp, netting me the princely sum of $560. A profit of $505.

I pay no attention to the tipping other than I decided to tip for spite this year.

If a team had beaten Souths (seriously,who hadn't?), I refused to tip them for a few weeks until I was no longer upset at them.
If a player had made a comment about Souths (ever), I wouldn't tip them to win either.

If a supporter of a team made a nasty remark to me about Souths (ever),well, they were gone too.
You can't be too careful.

Except for the Roosters.
Jo's ex husband still has a bit to do with the running of the comp I think, and stupidly drew to my attention that every time I tipped the Roosters, they lost.

So, death riding them quickly became part of my weekly routine.

Tipping at all some weeks was difficult, in that there was no-one I was willing to tip.

But somehow I muddled through.

And I muddled right through to second place, just using spite and malice to make decisions.

And I was rewarded, just as my spiritual friend had predicted.

But, fear not. I shall be using it to pay my tithe to the red and green God in the sky (who has been asleep for some 3 decades now, the lazy prick), so I guess that's as Robin Hood as I am ever going to be.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Nutritional Necronomicon

2008-09-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

Please Sir, may I have some more?
These are words that never were uttered due to the recipes which follow.

Having slept very poorly Wednesday night for one reason or another, I had to haul arse to work in a somewhat shabby state.
Not since I was in my early twenties have I left the house feeling so rubbish.

So, my plan of attack was to brighten myself and my surroundings up by grabbing my newest book, "Toilets of the World" and taking it in to work with me to show Mark.

Mark genuinely believes that the staff toilets at Merrylands are third world, and blessed as I am with a vagina, I must take his word for it.
I thought this book may give some pretty tidy visual comparisons, thus providing me with a ball park to work with.

Perhaps half way through my second coffee, I had to presence of mind to remember the book and due to my rummaging around looking for that, I also managed to put my lunch in the fridge.

One of the few examples of dirty toilets keeping food fresh and disease free that you may ever read about.

As I emerged from the back room, clutching said trophy, Mark himself came scuttling around the corner with his very own trophy, wrapped neatly and deliberately in order to prevent even the smallest amount of damage.

So precious was it that I was able to read through it at lunch, but I was not allowed to take it home.

Those books are my favourites.

It was falling apart, bound simply in tomato red.

Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book.

New and enlarged edition.
350 wood engravings.

OMG Mrs Beeton's!
The retro recipe collector's holy grail.

Published 1896.
Mark had bookmarked the section for dealing with servants for me, which was very kind.
However, my sixth sense for booky nonsense being what it is, I randomly opened it up to page 79.

Hooray for page 79 too.

To my delight, this featured the following recipe.

BOILED TONGUE

Ingredients:

1 tongue

Awesome stuff.
What a no nonsense Victorian matron Mrs Beeton must have been.
I like her.

In choosing a tongue, select one with a smooth skin which denotes it's being young and tender.
If dried and hard, soak for 12 hours.
If fresh from the pickle, soaking for 2-3 hours will suffice.

They pickled tongue?
Imagine peeping into that pantry as a child.
Makes me think of the anatomy museum at Sydney Uni.

Put the tongue into a stewpan with plenty of cold water and a bunch of sweet herbs and gradually bring to the boil, skim and simmer gently until tender.

Peel off the skin and garnish with tufts of cauliflower or Brussel's sprouts.

Everybodies favourites!

If serving cold, fasten it down to a piece of board by sticking a fork through to top to keep it straight.

Well clearly it's not just the French who know how to present their food after all.
English cuisine may not be as flashy by comparison, but they do know how to bring sideshow alley to the table.

I believe the right underneath the tongue instructions lurked information on how to make a sauce out of onions and milk to dress boiled tripe.
mmmmmmmmmm

My next discovery came on page 162.
This is a few pages into Cooking for Invalids.

Joy O Joy!

Gruel!

Yes Virginia, gruel does exist.

Gruel

Ingredients: 1 tbl groats, 2 tbl cold water, 1 pint boiling water

Mix groats with cold water, pour over boiling water, stirring, bring to the boil and boil for 10 minutes stirring constantly.

I'm not certain, but I think that's also the way you make wallpaper paste.
It's absolutely falls into a category I like to call bum glue.
I wonder why this generation of people were so horribly constipated?

Also in this section are Invalid's Jelly and Egg Wine.

I wonder the first person was to stir beaten egg into hot sherry and feed it to ailing children and geriatrics?
Don't you just love the British sense of humour?

Possibly the same person whose ancestors went on to make things out of crushed Jatz biscuits and white bread in Anglican Nursing Homes all those years later.

Good on them.

Well, that was all I had time for. But I'm sure you'll agree that the rise and rise of fast food is a direct result of this type of approach to cooking.

And so, applying no logic whatsoever, my implacable conclusion is as follows:

Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book -->McDonalds --> modern obesity/diabetes epidemic --> mass invalidism --> Jerry Springer --> the return of Satan

Far be it fom me to play the blame game, but realistically, it's all her fault.
Clearly her aim was to fatten up our babies and return from Hell's kitchen to eat them all with Lucifer himself when the Mayan calendar ends 21/12/2012.

Consequently, I suggest that her cookbook be retitled Nutritional Necronomicon and that her name be changed to Mrs Beast-son.

For what we are about to receive, may be truly evil.

Amen.

Breakfast of champions.

2008-09-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

I love breakfast.

I love Europe.

I love that you often have breakfast twice when you're there, and that if you plan you day right (or not at all), you can often manage a third.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Exposing ourselves.

2008-09-12T23:54:00.000-07:00

The concept of a common experience is self-deluded rubbish.

Kinda like, well, you know, even playing fields, religion and the promotion of dairy as a health alternative.

And I know all this because, once again I spent the day out and about with my boys.

First up, I had to drop in on the quilting lady and organise Clair's sampler quilt to be done for her birthday.

Plus I had to ask her all about the quilting of Dad's yellow circley prick quilt.
Fantastic news there, she can quilt the first verse of Wordsworth's daffodil poem onto it, thus saving me from a thousand expletives and perhaps 4 weeks of grief.
I hate stitcheries, and I don't care who knows it.

I also have the green light to go ahead and make my Aboriginal hexagon quilt as big as I please as it doesn't need to be custom quilted at all and therefore won't cost me $400. Phew.
So, maybe I will go on to make it the shape of Australia after all.
Creative extravagance or lunacy?

And, as my uncle had safely delivered her babies some years ago, and because I was kind enough to drop her daughter's shoes at a friend's place on the way home, she even booked Dad's quilt in before I've actually finished it.
Unheard of.
And she gave me a break on the price too.

So, it seems that I am now officially a member of the quilting community.

Anyway, I was inside with Quilting Lady (and rushing) but also talking sewing and cuddling her cat, and the boys were outside dying from heat exposure, cursing my nimble fingers.

Poor Hell Boy is sick again, which is extremely unusual for him.
The heat did him no good at all.
He looked kinda frayed and wilted when I came out, which I'm sorry for, but I emerged with the weight of the world off my shoulders.

Anyway, common activity, widely varying experience.

Next stop, Rouse Hill shopping centre food hall.

Food halls are pretty close to the way I picture Hell.
Hell would have more Roosters jerseys.
There was only one there today, but it was stinking up the joint anyways.

Seriously, the very sight of those rags makes me start spitting.
Hell Boy's somewhat worse than me, but today I noticed that even calm, loping Yoga Boy was heard to mutter "cunt" or similar, under his breath.
It certainy wasn't "ohm", I'm sure of that.

Has he finally seen the light? Or have we worn him down to a nub and conditioned him like Pavlov's dog?

We split up to select our lunch and when we met back at the table, I had to laugh at the highly illuminating selections we had each made.

Mine was brown bread with avocado, turkey, cranberry, spinach leaves and cucumber. No butter.
And water.
No nonsense, make it snappy.

Hell Boy opted for piping hot Asian prawn soup in a bid to really get his fever happening, and Yoga Boy returned with a Quarter Pounder.
He immediately proceeded to scrape off the pickles and the onions, rather like a flavour-phobic 4 year old, or an average Australian adult. Same diff.

Then he remembered that he doesn't like McDonald's chips, threw them away and purchased another burger, again without asking them to leave out either of the dreaded flavoursome items.

Our final stop was Border's of course.
And coffee.

We each purchased a book, and I believe that the titles could easily be used to sum each of us up successfully.

I'm not shy, I'll go first.

Mine was the very first book I grabbed off the bargain table for $9.95.
A fine display of my inclination (and talent) for making a snap decision and sticking to it.
I like that about me.

Simone's choice = Toilets of the World.
256 pages.

I like it because it has a picture of a female urinal device that allows you to pee standing up like a man.
I would like to pee like a man.
Squatting places you at such a disadvantage.
Besides, it would be handy for road trips and doctor's visits.

Yoga Boy's choice = The Compass of Zen.

Looks sensible, seems to be about spiritual paths, yet promises, "an often hilarious presentation" of Buddhist traditions and teachings.
I confess I've never married Buddhism and hilarity in a sentence before today.
Hmm, I don't think I'll borrow that one.

Hell Boy's choice = The Grizzly Maze.

An in depth account of Timothy Treadwell's fatal obsession with Alaskan bears, and his descent into madness as he lived (and died) with them.

Oh, and Jeff also purchased a copy of Juxtapoz magazine because he liked the picture of the tattooed goat.
Fair enough too.

So, there you have it.
Three closely connected people with similar values, identical voting preferences and exactly the same address, exposing themselves through choices as simple as literature and lunch.

No butter.

PS I think this may be my fourth blog in a row featuring urine.
Go figure.

Yellow snow.

2008-09-09T18:02:00.000-07:00

It doesn't very often happen that being pissed off coincides with pissing into a cup in the dark in public, but today's the day.

Most of you are aware of my recent health problem/s and my approach their the treatment.

Call me old fashioned, but taking drugs just for their side effects for the rest of my life is not my idea of "doing no harm."

But then neither is, "let's wait until it's critical and then rip it out or pump you full of radioactive material, even though your cancer risk is in the Guinness Book of Records already."

And I cannot accept "we don't know" as a satisfactory answer to a question as simple as "why?"

And just when I thought that describing to my friends the look on the face of the specialist when I refused his " final solution", was going to be the funniest anecdote afforded by this situation, along comes this morning.

Mercifully, Monica had been kind enough to me give a heads up, but really, there's just nothing like walking the walk, is there?

After visiting a doctor who treats and investigates biochemical variables and their role in causing inflammation and disease, I had to front up at the local laboratory to do the biochemically appropriate testing.

No problems there. After going through IVF, I don't much care what they stick in me... (that's what she said...)

Six vials of blood on day one of my period when I'm still quite anaemic? Sure. Why not?

But that was after a wait of one and a half hours.
Try and guess how many lame vampire jokes I heard from old men as they filed out the door during this time?

The correct ratio of course, is one per vial of my blood.

In a ninety minute period, that's one every 15 minutes.

Pretty annoying really - I was reading Rosemary's Baby and fake laughter always breaks my concentration.

Eventually, once everyone who didn't have an appointment of any kind had been tended to, I went in for my 9am appointment at 10:30.

And I was somewhat angry.
Thank God they weren't checking my cortisol or adrenalin levels.
Alarms might have sounded.
Anyhow, with my poker face, a polaroid might have been just as definitive as venipuncture.

So, blood test over, I was then handed 2 sterile cups and told that I must take the torch, the cups, go to the toilet, lock the door, turn out the light, pee into the container with the green lid, pour it into the container with the yellow lid with the Vitamin C in it, close the lid, wrap it in aluminium foil with the shiny side facing out, place it back into the plastic bag, mop up, zip up, not spill anything, find the sink again, find the torch again, find the light switch again, wash my hands and then return with whatever dignity I possibly could, so that they could then snap freeze and farewell my urine for $80 before posting it to Queensland.

And all while I was good and cranky, almost menstruating and functioning with perilously low blood sugar, no supplements for 4 days and worst of all, a caffeine withdrawal headache.

Oh, and no make-up.

So, I think it's reasonable to say that it wasn't just me that had a bad time of it this morning.

PS Don't eat the yellow snow. It's probably full of kryptopyrroles.