Just Nicky

Sore & Sorry November 30, 2006

I went to the chiropractor yesterday and he fixed my back. At least I think he did. Today it’s sore in a different way and I think it will just take a while to settle down after being manipulated. In the meantime I’m limping and groaning like an old woman.

And I’m feeling a little bit sorry too. The more I see of human behaviour, the less I feel as though I understand it. This makes me feel angry, frustrated, disappointed, confused and quite sad by turns. It can really ruin my day at times.

I’ve resolved, though, that it won’t ruin today. Ultimately I have no doubts about myself or the people closest to me and it really doesn’t matter what others do, say or think.

Hmmm… November 28, 2006

Pot calls kettle black by Timothy Neesam

There is much I could say … my fingers are itching to type … but I won’t …

OK, I will just a little bit…

Someone, who shall remain nameless, said on their blog, “It never ceases to amaze me the level of fiction some people need in their lives”, or words to that effect. At the time my thoughts in response were very much along the lines of ‘you, of all people, would know’.

I wasn’t wrong.

My little ‘helper’ November 27, 2006

Cosmo inside the doona cover by Nicky P

I decided at about 10pm that I should finally put the doona cover back on so that I could go to bed at some stage. As I expected, Cosmo hopped up on the bed to help. I think I’ve mentioned before that he really likes ‘helping’ to make the bed.

What I didn’t expect was that he would scuttle inside the doona cover as I was putting it on.

Fortunately, he’s come out to see why the game has stopped so I don’t have to work out how to extract him without getting shredded.

Afterparty November 26, 2006

Well it’s Sunday morning and we are all intact, if a little tired. This is fine, good even. It’s evidence of a good time last night and we will have nice slow day to recuperate. Mark, being the wonderful person he is, has already finished the last of the cleaning up so there is nothing to be done but lounge around.

When no one had turned up initially yesterday afternoon we briefly believed that no one would, but then you all came and it was lovely to see everyone. Thank you to you all for coming. Thank you to you all for being lovely people. A particular thank you to Rhonda for Finn wrangling during the anxious wait for Danny’s arrival (including 20 minutes spent out the front watching the street). And another particular thank you to Fee, Fig, Colin and I’m not sure who else for general boy wrangling, story reading, monster acting, etc. I love the fact that I can completely lose sight of Finn at these things but know that there will always be someone looking out for him and indulging him. It’s good to be surrounded by good people.

As is usual at these things there were people I would have loved to have talked to more and didn’t and we will have to make plans to rectify that soon.

A final big fat mmmwhaaa! has to go to Mark for his gargantuan efforts. I may have had the bright idea to have a bbq, but he’s the one who actually makes these things happen, runs around like a blue arsed fly being a good host and does the clean up afterwards. You’d have all been sharing peanut butter sandwiches with the dogs without him.

RIP Frog November 24, 2006

The Mavis rang this morning to tell me that they’d had their cat Frog put to sleep earlier in the week.

Froggy was about 14 years old. She was originally my sister’s cat, then lived with me for a while, before ending up becoming The Mavis’ friend. She was a gorgeous, grumpy dark tortishell girl.

She’d recently had a rotten tooth removed and when her mouth didn’t seem any better she went back to the vet for xrays. These showed a tumour in her jaw. Removing it would mean removing part of the jaw and my parents didn’t feel that this was fair to Frog, so they asked the vet to put her to sleep.

Although The Mavis thought that they either wouldn’t get another cat or at least not get one for a while, my dad insisted that they go to the shelter and get another one yesterday. So now they have a black and white 7 month old female. Dad wanted to call her ‘Fred’, but The Mavis has decided that she will be called Flossie.

When I was talking to The Mavis this morning she was grumbling about being bitten and scratched by kitten teeth and claws, but I could tell that Floss is already well and truly on her way into The Mavis’ heart. I’ll have to get around to knitting some feline dim sum before I see her next week.

Que Sera Sera

Girls with Guns: Doris Day by peter-noster

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

Of the list of items we wanted to have done for tomorrow’s bbq Mark has completed about half of his (8 out of 16 or so), while I have yet to complete 2 of my 3. What can I say? Mark is wonderful and I am irredeemably slack.

My attitude to the list is rapidly morphing from anxiety to fatalism and that’s probably a good thing. The house will either be clean by the time people arrive tomorrow, or it won’t. Worry won’t make it clean. Cleaning would make it clean, but that requires effort that I’m not sure I’ll muster.

Every time I have one of these moments I am reminded that if I did a little bit regularly, a la Flylady, I would be saved the anxiety and could just be sanguine about it all. One day the lesson will stick.

Animals in the Womb November 23, 2006

babyelephant by Nicky P

I just read an article in The Age online about a documentary film which traces the development of baby animals in utero. When it eventually comes out, it’ll be a must see by the sounds of it.

This bit about baby elephants, which are in the womb for 22 months, really stood out for me:

By 12 months, the foetus is a replica of what will emerge 10 months later — except it is just 45 centimetres long.

A little 45 cm elephant would be sooo cute!

Voting

So we have a state election on Saturday. Although I’ve been doing my best to avoid the bulk of election coverage I thought I had a pretty good handle things. The Liberals would need a swing of nearly 25% to take the lower house electorate we live in so there didn’t seem to be much to think about.

I’ve just found out/realised/bothered to notice that there are some changes in the upper house. They’ve changed the seats (which were called provinces and are now called regions) and they’ve changed the way you can vote. If you vote below the line - which tends to be my preference because I resent how to vote cards (and yes, I know that’s a bit silly) - you only have to fill in five boxes. How easy is that? I can’t believe that I was totally unaware of that until now.

I know that I should be more than a little ashamed of my apathy. I have no excuse other than to say that this election is incredibly boring. As I said we’re in a very safe seat, so our votes are unlikely to determine who forms the government - not that we’d want to change that and, in spite of some stuff I’ve seen reported, I’m pretty sure that the Liberals have a snow flake’s chance in hell of winning.

I think compulsory voting has something to do with it too. In other places where voting is voluntary just walking into a polling booth is a political act. Here it’s really just avoiding a fine. It’s not something you do because you feel strongly about the issues at hand or because you believe in the political process. It’s something you do because you have to.

This is not to say that I’m against compulsory voting. I’m not. In fact I’m strongly in favour of it. The requirement to vote is what has encouraged me to find about the upper house changes. I figured I should have some idea of what’s going on before I hit the polling booth, so I did a little research. In an election as boring as this one, it’s unlikely I would have bothered if I were not compelled to vote and just as unlikely that I would have bothered to go and vote. And being compelled to vote is better than not voting at all.

Getting too old for this November 22, 2006

Cosmo spent last night outside. This is not supposed to happen but sometimes in the chaos of dogs coming in and out and trying to keep cats in things don’t go according to plan. So the fat boy was out all last night sitting under the pergola watching the world.

This morning he’s looking very tired and has flaked it on our bed. I can’t help but imagine him saying to himself, “I’m getting too old for this shit…”

It seemed like a good idea at the time…

At the start of this year I signed us up for some Chrisco hampers. I’ve always thought these things were potentially a bit of a ripoff, but with me working full time and Mark being busier this year, it seemed like a good idea to set ourselves up with a collection of goodies to get us through the Christmas period. I was also expecting that we might be away for New Year like we were last year and figured that the hampers would yield a good collection of stuff to take with us, so of course, one of the hampers I chose was all alcohol. Having put the order in, I promptly forgot about it. Then as the year progressed things changed, as they do.

In October Chrisco started sending me mail about signing up for hampers for next Christmas and I took a moment to actually think about what I’d ordered for this year. I decided that the alcohol hamper was a no go, since I won’t be drinking this festive season and we won’t be around anyone who is likely to drink their way through that much booze. Fortunately I was able to swap it for a toy hamper which looked like it could yield most of Finn’s Christmas present.

The boxes arrived today and there’s a jolly shitload of stuff. Both freezers are now full of frozen vegies and desserts. We could live on nothing but biscuits for a month. And we have enough lollies and choccies to send all our guests into diabetic comas on Saturday. The toy hamper is pretty good too.

Whether this turns out to have actually been a good idea remains to be seen. We have a lot of stuff, but the big question is will we use it? And we probably won’t have that answer until after Christmas. If we do use most or all of the stuff then I might consider doing it again for next year. On the other hand, though, I could just put a set amount of money in the bank each week and see what that will do for us come next December…