NOW WE ARE SIX

Oi!

2008-10-15T21:37:00.008+13:00

It's 'that' day again - Birthday Party now on at

Chapter 7 - The Daily Tissue.

RatFinks and Rad Cars

2008-10-14T23:12:00.005+13:00

I was reading a V8 Cars magazine at the tyre shop whilst getting some new rubber this morning and came across an article about a Porsche somewhere with a fucking huge donk planted in the back seat and a heat shield designed and finished to look like some flash, over-priced leather luggage, followed not long after by an article about the delightfully asymmetrical Orbitron.

Rad, eh! It's about as old as I am and created by Ed Roth, cartoonist, hot-rodder and a pioneer in automotive fibreglassing.

I especially like the additive colour mixing in the right hand headlight set up and if you don't know how that all works, this might help

this is subtractive colour mixing where you sort of start with white and take it all away until only black is left in the centre

and additive colour mixing where the opposite happens, you start off with black and work inwards to white

At night, it's dark outside, right? So where the three colours meet becomes a white area or beam. Cool eh!

Anyway, if you followed that first link, you could have seen pics of the car when it was eventually unearthed, employed as a rubbish skip outside an adult book store in Mexico and can move on to the Mysterion. If not, click it here, go look and stop pissing around then maybe you can keep up :-)

Enjoy!

PS and I thought collecting up all my peg people

lurking all over the house and making a hanging thingy for the garden was pretty cool...

Yakety Yak

2008-10-10T23:38:00.009+13:00

After the best part of 9 months volunteering his time, both as a general apron/hangar dogsbody and as a member of the Catalina restoration team at Classic Flyers NZ, Ads got his promised flight in one of the aircraft today - a Yak 52 and although the plane landed hours ago, he is still buzzing from his 30 minute jaunt. Around the Mount a couple of times, down the Main Beach, over Baypark stadium, across the harbour and around our house 3 or 4 times as we waved in the paddock, then with a quick waggle of the wings they were gone, back to the airport to practice a few touch and go landings and some twisty rolling stuff that made Ads glad he had the airsick bag within reach (just in case) and finally back to earth.

Sort of.

This is the plane he flew in today *

and this is some Yaks in Yaktion at Wings over Wairarapa **

He's hoping to hitch a ride in the Harvard, if there's a next time, I think it's his favourite. :-) ***

Lucky, happy wee bugger :-)

* Photo purloined from Classic FlyersNZ website
** Photo borrowed from Google
*** Mine, all mine

Let's get physical

2008-10-06T00:58:00.002+13:00

Honestly, I wish I looked half as good as Olivia Newton John did when she made that rather scary little Physical music vid, it would give me something to soothe me as I walk more than the equivalent of a city block tomorrow morning just to reach the front door of the hospital, in preparation for walking down their long loooong corridor that leads you to anywhere that isn't ED just to get to walk miles back down another corridor to get to the gym where my new physiotherapist (lovely as she is) will encourage me to do exercises to help with my mobility.

Oh, the irony. By the time I get to the gym I'll have to turn around and walk back the other way because by then I'll be needing ED.

Another irony is the lack of disabled car parks at Tauranga Hospital. Even the public carpark is a long steep ramp and a really slow lift ride up the cliff away. That'll be why they park all doctors right outside the building - because they wouldn't get there in time otherwise. Obviously the administrators of our fine Government funded healthcare institution didn't read the bit about their role being to provide accessible health care to their community. They don't want us spastics and cripples in their building, oh no. Yet it's us ~~sickos~~ sickies that keep them their jobs - without us they would have doctors standing around at 1am drinking coffee, eating cake and chatting about rugby together. Oh yeah, they already do. Bunch of over paid brain dead numpties the lot of them.

Shame I can't actually walk for shit at the moment, innit. I think I'd better go ask the Universe for a park outside the old Maternity Annexe - if they'd hurry up and bulldoze it now that they make the labouring Mum's walk down that same damned long corridor whilst in labour (I kid you not) and go up in the lift to the next floor they could provide tons of parking for disabled people. It's supposed to be going to be a carpark anyway...

[/grump]

I'm not doing very good at the moment - can you tell?

Tissue, anyone?

'Armless

2008-10-05T23:53:00.002+13:00

Ever wondered about shit? I bet you'll find plenty at What's the Harm and Skeptics Dictionary. No matter where you sit on an issue.

Wise council

2008-10-03T05:26:00.000+13:00

I had a thought today when parking in town. Scary, huh. I thought about the new Pay and Display parking chit dispensers dotted strategically all over out city that replace the old one per space parking meters and how the City Council might be double dipping on parking fees.

Yes, really!

Back in the day when each parking space had its own meter, if there was time left on the clock, you parked there free as a bonus if the previous tenant over estimated how long they were going to be occupying the space. If you wanted more time than was on the meter, what ever amount of change you inserted incremented the time. In other words, each meter had a maximum daily value it could generate fees for.

Now, with the new Pay and Display jobbies, you put in the required amount of money for the time you think you'll be, grasp the little chit spewed out for you and put it on your dashboard for the resident Parking Nazi to see when they walk past with their wee book of blank parking tickets and chalk and off you go. If you have overestimated and over paid, the next person doesn't get to piggyback on the time paid for because the chits are space non-specific; the next person pays all over again for the time already paid and accounted for. Each chit has the area (eg 1st Ave East) and cost per hour printed on it (it varies from $1.20 - $2.00), so you can't even take it and go park somewhere else to use up the time you already paid for.

Not only did they put up our property rates (again), renege on their promised costs and fees for water rates, do a pathetic half-arsed job of maintaining street lighting and road surfaces, now they are screwing over the ratepayers in other insidious ways as well.

How unusual!

Way to go, Tauranga District Council, you bunch of thieving lowlife bottom feeders. Dogs everywhere have bursting bladders and there is nowhere left to tie a horse. Maybe this guy in Napier had the right idea after all, even if he didn't know it at the time.

Outside the courtroom, Malot insisted to reporters that he had only urinated once on the parking meter, despite a council spokesman saying earlier this month that it had been doused four or five times in the past year.

He said he had been out with friends and wanted to urinate. When they wouldn't let him urinate against their car, he chose the parking machine instead.

"I was not aware of what I was doing," he said.

Malot said today he had not been deliberately aiming at the machine but "couldn't stand properly".

Police dubbed him The Piddler on the Roof because of the second-floor location of the meter and in a statement said: "He pees up in the air in a big arc, so it goes in the coin slot and out the hole where people collect their tickets".

Well, someone had to do it, eh.

A sticky situation

2008-09-29T22:30:00.005+13:00

Ages ago, I blogged about stupid sayings and pondered who the hell comes up with phrases like "better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick".

I found out today that, while there may be many things worse than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick, there are a shitload that are better and to prove it, I poked myself. In the eye. With a blunt stick.

I can quite confidently say that it fucking hurts, even some four hours later. I also recommend that you folks don't try it at home - I wish I hadn't. I am the idiot your mother warned you about.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Tomorrow, I might try running with scissors. Or walking quickly now I can't run any more. Somehow I don't think it will be quite the same though, hmmm?

Glum

2008-09-27T01:37:00.002+12:00

I'm feeling glum. My sleep patterns are all up the wop and I was walking the estate at 6.30 this morning, in jamas and ugg boots. Tres bon for gardening in pajamas (that's French for bloody choice, mate) saying good morning to the world while attempting to get my legs to work in sequence and my back to unseize. I do it most mornings, with a coffee in one hand and a ciggie in the other and with a dog and at least 2 cats in attendance, cussing each other quietly whilst dobbing each other in for the new footprints in the dirt.

Cats are lying bastards. In fact, Thomas is lying on my bed as I type, keeping my wheat sacks warm and demanding to know when I am coming to bed because it's very late and I've had a ~~very~~ busy day.

And that's why I'm glum - because I just want a week of uninterrupted peace and quiet to sleep to my hearts content and not have any busy days. That and next weeks 20 odd million PowerBall Jackpot.

That jackpot could buy me the solution to the problem.

I'm sore; I'm tired; I'm sick of spending my time fulfilling everyone else's needs and telling myself doing so fulfills mine; I'm sick of taking pills; I'm a wee bit sick of MS as well. MonSter Birthday Blues, I suspect. We have a birthday in 2 weeks.

Each day holds a lesson or two that even someone as thick as me can't miss - today's lesson is accept spontaneity. Oh, and accept my limits and limitations.

I can hear a Tui...

DUI or BUI

2008-09-25T23:55:00.002+12:00

When I win Lotto on Saturday night, I will be able to get around in the back of one of these and not have to worry about being skulled on Pams and codeine and not fit to drive even a keyboard. They look like a 6 star whorehouse on steroids and if I had to be shallow and swayed by the cover, not the book, I would go for his one

Classic lines, and my colour.

Blogging Under the Influence, a whole new crime.

Processing

2008-09-24T00:05:00.004+12:00

I am sick of looking at bloody computers. That's all I have done for weeks. Make up a quick and dirty old boat anchor for the Old Man to replace his that's blown the power supply and the motherboard; Build one for Beryl (unfinished); Tidy up Flattie's one and install some games; Pick up a bargain at the Seagull shop and install XP on it to start building a new PC for the Old Man; spend a day and half a night trying to get Mark's PC running again; fix the kids PC after I broke it trying to get data off Mark's hard drive in a hurry; Look at Deb's broken Compaq laptop - it's a shop job (whew, it's also bloody Vista); get Deb's new Toshiba laptop configured to use in a hurry - oops, it's Vista too, but it's supposed to be XP; get XP installed on laptop; race through 5 o'clock traffic to retrieve laptop from shop; configure laptop and install stuff.

Still to come this week - teach Deb how to make a newsletter and try to figure out why her desktop will dial up to the internet here but not at her place.

I've gone right off computers. I have.

I've gone right off everything really, or had done until we got $86 in Lotto and I spent it on buying paint to get on with upstairs cos that's what I asked the Universe for the other say and now it's provided it, I better follow through if I want more stuff to appear like that, eh! Next week is Round Two in Vic's Nan's garden, destroying 50 years of jungle to salvage plants before they all get sprayed. Instant garden, my idea of "ooooooooooh baby!".

I have lots more stuff I want to "appear" - a nice BBQ is next lol.

Out there

2008-09-19T21:55:00.003+12:00

What does one do at the end of a long day doing much too much in the garden?

Exactly - one takes a coffee and a smoke out into the arbor under the canopy, lights a citonella burner and settles back to ponder how tired one is and how much one hurts whilst listening to the sounds of the gentle drizzle on the canvas above while the corrugated iron fence a few metres away vibrates in synch with the beat when a certain bass frequency put out by the speakers of the sound system from the public venue 50 metres away, a stand of vegetation and 5 metres below us is applied.

Just goes to show how fast sound travels. Really out there, man.

Now that was worth waiting for. Eh.

Parables

2008-09-16T23:40:00.004+12:00

Like swamp-gas bubbles rising through the pond-weed of Life, so are the days of our lives.

We had a strange weekend. Someone special to someone special to us died. Some other special people are beating their heads on a brick wall to save their dream. The kids are still not over their colds and bugs and I feel like crap and I fucked the kids computer. It wouldn't matter much if they weren't using mine instead.

Bugger.

On the up side, the weather today was glorious and it was a beautiful day to be alive. There is an occasional upside to waking up in the mornings, after all. It's called coffee and ciggie on the patio in the sunshine before the kids wake up, sorting out which Miracles to perform today.

Almost bliss. Almost.

Adhesions

2008-09-12T23:42:00.004+12:00

And now for something completely different...

and

Ok so that one was a bit naff, but this one is different

No post-it notes will be harmed in the execution of our planned practical jokes. We have a little list, but if I told you what's on it I'd have to kill you. The wrong person might read it and fuck it up. I can think of better things to wrap in tinfoil, as well.

I do remember with fondness the one we pulled on Heather at the video shop when we got the assistant Damien to tell H all the Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen (a.k.a. Hairy Date and Smash Me Moleskin) movies were being recalled and burnt because they were utter crap. I'm sure I can date my first bout of incontinence to that event. So can Shari, she's better at this shit than I am.

See you on the other side of someday. Maybe you are on my list...

PS - Have you been reading those Cheeky Quotes over there <<<<---- ? Some of them are bloody funny.

Children of clay

2008-09-11T23:22:00.010+12:00

I find this strangely unnerving, almost like the singing budgie Kylie Minogue, but different. It bothers me on so many levels, perhaps because it's presented in a medium more often associated with childrens' entertainment. Unlike Kylie, whose largest fan base demographic is reputedly middle-aged gay males, according to an item I was reading a few days ago and I can't for the life of me see why that might be. Mind you, it's not hard to become a success when you start with a canvas like this, eh

Remember, nothing succeeds like a budgerigar.

Second Coming

2008-09-10T22:31:00.005+12:00

Was the re-enactment of the Big Bang in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN tonight really the Second Coming of Christ?

THAT is the question we should all be asking ourselves...

GENEVA -The world's largest particle collider successfully completed its first major test by firing a beam of protons all the way around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.
After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:36 a.m. (0836 GMT) indicating that the protons had traveled the full length of the US$3.8 billion Large Hadron Collider.
"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap.

more...

Even if it wasn't a Big Bang of Biblical proportions, the foreplay was a riot.

Legal bid to stop CERN atom smasher from 'destroying the world' - The world's biggest and most expensive scientific experiment has been hit by a last minute legal challenge, amid claims that the research could bring about the end of the world.

A bit of Black humour to end the day on - Black Holes are what you get in black socks.

I was waiting for the Earth to move, but...nothing. Very disappointing, story of my life, really.

Hey, ewe

2008-09-08T23:59:00.004+12:00

This having the flu tends to change ya perspective on life a little. Lying down a lot does that. For instance, I know from all my time in bed over the past week that there is far too much flyshit on the rosette around my light fitting and the wallpaper needs fixing properly. OK so I already knew all that in a cerebral way, now it's been optically confirmed, even without my specs on. I focused.

Anyway, one day I got to thinking about Happy Pills. It seems like everyone is taking them, or has taken them, or will be taking them soon; the same drugs in similar doses for different reasons, with almost ovine complacency. Because, for whatever reason, our life sux. The curse of the modern age is the cure of the modern age - no, not Viagra, Prozac. Or fluoxetine, citalopram, aropax, amitrips, valium or whatever flavour of little helper Mother (or Father) has been prescribed by their medical professional because for whatever reason, equilibrium has been lost. Because when it's too hard to fix a life unfixable, even if you have nothing else, you can always have drugs.

Wouldn't it be nicer to have a world where simple, ordinary desires are met as of right and everyone isn't living a chemically induced false reality and calling it "normal"? And let's face it, most people's happiness is only a chasm-hop away. One way or the other, they won't know if they lost on landing.

OK ok, I'll go take my pills like a good girl, but only because you promised I could wear the Gimp suit tonight.

Life's just much too hard today
I hear ev'ry mother say
The pursuit of happiness just seems a bore
And if you take more of those
You will get an overdose
No more running for the shelter
Of a mother's little helper - Rolling Stones

Nothing's changed much since 1966. Has it?

Throaty

2008-09-07T01:07:00.003+12:00

The sore throat that needed Throaties (see last post), became something more sinister as Saturday spun into afternoon and necessitated a trip to the Doc, half a chemist shop and meningitis watch over a teenager with a bad throat infection, oral thrush and a temp at times of 39.8 degrees.

It's 1am and it looks like the medicines are all kicking in, I didn't have to sponge him down to 38.1 - he got there himself. He polished off half a glass of water and 3 spoons of "Pam's* Strawberry Thrill Instant Dessert" too.

I think it's safe to go to bed.

* - Not to be confused with my Pams, which are more of a Strawberry Coloured Instant Thrill Just Desserts and has a completely different smell and texture.

More than you paid for

2008-09-05T04:10:00.005+12:00

I been stuck in bed all week with flu, you know aching, coughing, head pounding, nose running dead-on-ya-back flu, chewing on anti-Bs for the chest infection and slobbering down hot lemon, honey and aspirin drinks (with all the flesh left in), sleeping the days away and heating the wheat sacks all night. And then yesterday, Ads started coming down with it.

So, being the good mother I am (even if I'm not really fit to drive yet, I'm better than yesterday and there's not much choice when no-one gives a shit whether you are sick or well, not even your father who lives less than a kilometre away) I went off to the local run down ~~dive~~ little supermarket, where they are giving it a facelift which makes getting around it interesting, to buy Throaties for da boy only to be confronted with a demolition skip right outside packed full of stainless steel - display trolleys and shelves and sheets of heavy gauge stainless mesh that would be nicely Cocky and Ruby proof and on my way back out I stopped, looked, fumbled with my cellie to call Glorious and tell her when this guy comes along, says to some bloke having a smoke not far away "oi, what's happening to this lot" to which this bloke replies "take what you want away" and BOOM, suddenly 6 large sheets of heavy gauge, cockatoo-proof stainless steel mesh are walking up the footpath.

I put the phone away and got my beady little eyes on, eventually finishing up with two upright stainless steel display units poking a metre out the back of my car (one of which is a corner unit) and 8 big steel baskets for the garden. I'll take a pic tomorrow, if I remember. Now all I gotta do is figure out WTF to do with them...

Well Flattie built a fab new shade house for Lady Cat this week, I'm just a sad ol' broken ass trying to keep up with the Flatcats. Besides, being so sick that I can't drive up there as planned this weekend to celebrate Flattie's just-passed birthday, I figured I may as well give him a chance to point and laff at my magpie impersonation here - beats the hell out of a belated birthday present of an invite to three funerals because I wrote us all off in the Gorge instead of staying in bed, where I belong.

Maybe next week I'll be able to walk again. And the tingling and numbness will leave my hands and arms and that new spastic spot in my left thigh near my hip will abate once the fevers stop triggering new MS shit and we'll be able to keep our postponement appointment at the best lil Cathouse in the ~~West~~ East, next weekend.

Here ya go...

Dis be one of them.

Dis be something else.

Whine

2008-09-02T01:43:00.003+12:00

Got bot.

I hurt.

Nuff said.

*sigh*

As if the Bot or MS weren't enough on their own, in combination they become instruments of torture and NOT the kind I like ;-)

Hard at work

2008-09-01T02:14:00.003+12:00

Time: 2.10am.

I'm awake. And sick. Not just the usual lack of equilibrium, or the ability to stand up straight and take a step; I'm coughing and aching all over and I think I have a cold coming which, if it's the same one nearly everyone around me has had for the past week or few means I could be in for one hell of a ride.

I wonder what this busy little guy takes for a cold - honey drinks?

Yolking

2008-08-30T00:45:00.004+12:00

I took Muzz to the Pot Shop this morning. I resisted the very strong urge to spend money - he did not. He bought an egg.

It's browns and blacks; it's ceramic and glazed. It serves no earthly use other than to exist and it's really rather cool. We put it in his garden, then we went upstairs and had a cup of tea. From the deck it was obvious the Egg needed to be moved 4 inches forward to be balanced and take advantage of the positive chi from the north. I scavenged a piece of Hebe to grow, scored some lovely irises and set him on a path of building a pergola to carry his white grapes on, one of which is budding. Mine is still a twig. Then we talked Bonsai, which gave me an idea for my archway and something else I want to grow. Etc.

All in all it was the best day I've had in a very long time. I needed it.

Because H is at Woowis's house tonight, Ads and I had mini pizzas made on turkish bases for dinner (YUM!) and I had my pills and I was so tired I went off to bed during the Simpsons (about 7ish) and Ads woke me up at 10.30 when he went to bed. I was so disoriented I had to ask him whether that was daytime 10.30 or night time. This doing minor, ordinary stuff during the day just kills me.

There was more I was going to post but my pills just kicked me hard again and I'm fucked. I gotta stop. No wonder, really, I maxed out on everything again tonight.

Ciao4now.

*******************************

... a few hours later....

Well, now it's 4.44am and I'm awake again. Cos I hurt. I thought I may as well finish the post while I sit here with a couple of wheat sacks easing the spasms.

Before Muzz and I went off buying eggs, we dropped Ads at Classic Flyers and Muzz took a few photos and videos, one of them has ME in it, the swine. He knows I don't DO photos and videos, I just take them. You aren't getting to see that vid. What you can see is a pic of Ads though

posing on the wing of one of the Harvards. He's talking about getting a learner's pilots licence and I told him get off his bum, swot up and get his bloody car learner's and then we'll discuss it. Of course, that means I'll be simultaneously teaching 3 teenagers to drive (and two of them boys, I always hated teaching boys, back in my instructor days). No no, don't send sympathy cards, send cash - I'll need it for the chocolate supplies when they lock me up in my little padded room in the nut house. I hope they have lots of wheat sacks...

Pandering

2008-08-29T21:01:00.003+12:00

Picture it, if you will. A hazy room lit by candles - one for Mum, one for Nana, an incence stick each; a tall inverted pyramid candle for Hope and a Joss stick for Luck.

The speakers are rendering the delicately beautiful opening bars of 'These are the Days' by Van Morrison

and the listener alone has a skinful of prescription medications, enough for Africa, which lend an aura of peace and tranquility which helps to overcome the fact that the pills don't fucking work and then the the most horrific sound is heard, gradually getting louder, almost as if it's coming closer...

it's the dog farting, Again.

She really knows how to kill the mood.

Doggone gorjus

2008-08-28T06:32:00.003+12:00

Thanks to the dog and her nocturnal urination requirements, sometimes I have to get up a bit earlier than usual to let Piddle-Bum out. This morning, we both slept a little later than the usual exit time and today at 6am the morning outside was just glorious, a warm, dewy, still spring morning.

It looked like this

If the nice weather holds, I have plans for a sprayer unit, some woody weedkiller and the rampant honeysuckle in the back jungle block. If I'm not back in a week, send a search party; I probably fell down the bank and choked on the hose whilst impaling myself on the wand.

Nah, you don't get that lucky...

Cup a load of this

2008-08-26T23:49:00.004+12:00

Remember I said that I felt like a big cuppa, well...

when the cream alyssum planted all around the rim flowers, my cup shall frotheth over. Or something.

I'm a cappuccino kinda girl, just ask Muzz.

PS - Note the Raleigh 20 wedged into the bamboo in the background - this is the memorabilia area of the garden; it has the old front end loader bucket cum planter, the old stilson; old farm rake (I think it was a dung rake *shrug*) stuffed into the bamboo and they will shortly be joined by the Old Man's timber jack I found lurking under the honeysuckle the other day and the dead-fall tree trunk down behind the bamboo. To represent some of the jobs he did during my childhood and the tools I grew up playing with, of course.

PPS - Wait until you see the hanging planters I'm making...

Fillings

2008-08-25T01:58:00.016+12:00

I rang the hospital the other day to inquire about my current place on the waiting list to see the new neuro. Their reply was that, while they have received all the referrals, they haven't allocated me an appointment because the neuro is winding down his clinics on this side of the hill - last month and next month were/is botox treatments (apparently used for facial nerve damage/issues - therapeutic not cosmetic), this month was something else but currently there are no scheduled ordinary consult days planned and maybe there won't be.

"Can I see him at his clinic over the hill?" - "Probably not, we aren't allowed to take their patients, they won't be allowed to take ours".

The tests he ordered are not completed, treatment he promoted so confidently has not even been discussed (I haven't seen him since the private consultation in October) let alone administered, not a lot of chance getting any at this rate unless GP can organise an out of area patient referral with WINZ picking up the tab. Of course, that makes it "elective" and Government Departments don't go much for "elective" when there is a perfectly useless specialist on this side of the hill to waste people's time, energy and the Almighty Taxpayer dollars on.

So, I saw my GP tonight we chatted about changing the Pams to something else, only I already had the only something else that's available and it made me all but blind so he suggested changing anti-depressant medication to something that won't fuck up the Pams (and very much vice versa), carried on checking weight (stable), checking blood pressure (normal) and agreed that I was pretty much screwed by a Health System that benefits itself, not its consumers because I was born with MS and come about nowhere in the Healthcare stakes, rather than being some pisshead scumbag who wrapped a car around a lamp post and banged myself up, in which case ACC would have every out of town specialist I wanted available at my request, as necessary, at their cost.

So where does that leave me? Marginally better off than a year ago, and the 5 years before that. The only advance is that I have a benchmark of sorts now (even with only the two tests completed) that shows that I have MS, that it hampers my mental and physical abilities and that it's active.

And I'm gutted. It doesn't matter how hard I fight this fucking MonSter, I can't so it alone and between a system that doesn't care and an increasing pressure from the educationalists to bend over backwards until I snap in their desire to make my kid learn despite a major migraine issue, I feel like the filling in an overpriced and under achieving governmental sandwich where everyone matters except me. And while this blog is about me, that's all that is. I even mentioned to Ads traveling teacher tonight that they can all push as hard as they like, but when the stress they are constantly applying pushes me into care because I can't cope any more, as the only parent these two have there won't be anyone to get either of my kids to school and when it's all out of my hands and everything is in ruins financially and domestically, that the whole world does not revolve around Ads, sometimes it HAS to revolve around me. They seem to have unrealistic and ignorant ideas of what being a single parent with a degenerative disease really means to those who have to live inside it, and beside it. It's not just being disabled; it's being sick, too.

I'm sure it's easy in their well fed, overpaid, $120K plus income a year households with husbands to carry some of the load to turn a blind eye to how a big chunk of the real world lives.

As for us little $20K a year beneficiaries, we don't matter, I don't matter. Just as I thought.

And people around me on Easy Street (which is almost everyone compared to us) wonder why I want to just give up. What the hell is there to fight for and what am I supposed to do it with? Oh yeah, that doesn't matter, either.

For some people seem to think this is "living" because they (the lucky buggers) don't know the difference. I've given up fighting to live, now I'm just trying to exist and between you and me, it's not going very well. Once the last of your dreams die, there's little point carrying on, eh. And mine are all dead now - some of my best "friends" helped achieve that.

Some days, ya simply run out of spoons.

Grape

2008-08-24T02:41:00.004+12:00

I got my new grape vine this morning. It's an old fashioned white one, sweet and juicy, currently only 5 inches tall and looking decidedly dead.

But it's not, it has lots of roots and now it's carefully planted in its new home with peat and potting mix and nice topsoil, irrigated with diluted sheep shit water, topped with a layer of woodchips, surrounded by a specially installed mowing strip of red bricks and a few stakes to put a plastic shroud over to keep it safe if it's frosty. Grape heaven.

I hope.

I told Muzz over coffee, when he brought it around that the other grapevine has thrived through the best part of 20 years utter neglect - I'll probably love this one to death with pampering.

Oooh and the plum tree is starting to blossom, the 40 plus strawberry plants are in various stages of waving happily in the breeze and the rhubarb plants are starting to poke out the nubs of new leaves. Hopefully there will be tomato and flower seedlings sprouting out in another week.

Spring is definitely here.

Flattie might not think so, but that serves him right for going down into the deep South at this time of year. I hope for his sake he packed his sporran heater, I have a feeling he might be needing it. And some long socks.

A quick cuppa

2008-08-23T04:20:00.007+12:00

I've been spasming, despite the Pams - my left hamstring, to be precise. In the absence of a specific spasticity exercise programme and because the hospital physiotherapists forgot they had me and I have to start all over again with a new Doc's referral (with associated wait time), there might be a few more days like this before I get a chance to see their new neurophysiotherapist.

Try spelling THAT right first time on Pams *snort*

So I did a bit of walking back and forward to keep it stretched and warm yesterday and moved a few concrete roof tiles from their 20 odd year home under the plum tree; today I made a new garden where they had been, moved a self sown punga in from under he laundry window, and a whole lot of various other things stashed in the Winter Heap by the fence until a new home was forthcoming. I put the huge Stilson up against the bamboo/front end loader bucket, stuck a huge old multi-tined pitchfork thingy into the bamboo and wedged the old green Raleigh 20 into the side of the bamboo clump for decoration and moved the old cast iron copper base out beside where the picnic table will go, next week, for the brazier under the plum tree, which is starting to blossom.

Then I stepped back and thought "I need a really large cuppa".

So I stopped off at the Flatcat's favourite pot-purchasing facility on the way to get Ads from planes and bought myself one. I don't have a pic, but I will tomorrow. Maybe.

I'm supposed to get my new grape vine tomorrow. I'm very excited! I'll probably love it to death and never hear the end of it.

How fucking sad is that? My only interest is a stupid bloody garden that no-one but me ever goes in... it's looking quite good though... I think you'd like it... I should find you some pics, eh...maybe make heeem into a slideshow... whaddya think?

I could do voice-overs and commentary and stuff... like me talking to the Clivia... how cool would that be, eh!!

A matter of perspective

2008-08-22T20:37:00.004+12:00

Today would be the very first time I have ever, even idly, wished I'd been an All Black.

That will suffice until I write the real post. Later. When the Pams back off a bit...

Hot stuff

2008-08-21T01:04:00.006+12:00

This morning was just glorious and I hit the front patio by 7.45 with ciggie and caffeine in hand to enjoy an invigorating, sunny morning. Bloody marvelous, it was. So marvelous in fact that I had an overwhelming urge to plant the tomato and sunflower seeds I bought last night, and repot the perennials I scored from the "dying darlings" area at the Red Shed.

Sow I did. Sitting down.

Then, because I had no legs today, I spent a few hours crawling around the gardens weeding and tidying the edges and shit. You know, mindless emptiness to just freewheel past life's issues and go right to a state of utter indifference. That is, until the dog walked through the new garden and left paw-prints in my immaculately groomed soil (I couldn't get up off the ground, so I titivated the garden, ok? Anyone would think I'd been ironing underwear or something. Hell, anyone would think I'd been ironing. Errk)

For the first time in my adult life, I have a tidy, nice looking garden. I'm gonna manicure that bitch into submission if it fucking kills me. Legs or no legs. Pain or no pain. Help or no help. I've become the sort of gardener my mother always wished I was - a convert. My kids already cringe about Mum nicking cuttings... and picking up pots on the side of the road *oops* H says I am becoming my father.

Noooooooooooo

As an aside, did you know that time it takes to heat a wheatsack for the 3 minutes and thirty seconds required in a microwave, is directly dependent on how cold/tired/sore one is?

And you thought watching pots was bad... ha!

x3 = time to write a blog post and smoke a ciggie as well; thank God for multitasking.

I am

2008-08-20T06:53:00.001+12:00

Gotta love stupid Facebook apps! I sure as Hell have no time for plastic people and greasers

Programming heroes

2008-08-19T02:32:00.010+12:00

Hero - a word or title that conjures up different things for different people. The war hero; the unassuming suburban type; the person who goes beyond that duty which calls to save a life, or a country, or an endangered species or an ideal. Some get huge public recognition and medals whilst others only the quiet satisfaction of knowing they made a difference that mattered. Some scoff, some quietly applaud, some write movies about them and others compose songs. Some simply haven't the brains or ability to give a crap.

Lots of people know one and don't even realise it.

I was reading an article in a waiting room the other day, it was a New Scientist magazine. It made a change for the usual Tabloid horrors on offer, that's for sure. Fascinating, it was. This is, in essence, the article. It has illustrations, too.

It starts off talking about the request of Leonardo Da Vinci by Francois of France to build a mechanical lion, which he did - a fabulous undertaking that saw a life like lion walk, pause and its chest open to display lilies. The article explains the programming process and delves back into history for earlier examples of programmed mechanical devices, mentioning that of Al-Jazari and his "drinking boat" in 1206 which carried four mechanical musicians: two drummers, a harpist and a flautist and even further back to Hero of Alexandria who amongst other things, created a programmable (albeit crude type) mobile theatre which held six automata 1500 years before Leo and his Lion.

And to think they accomplished these things before there was the (programmable) computer to do the maths on or the (programmable) microwave oven to reheat their forgotten lunch... now, for the most part, their amazing abilities (and sometimes their mere existence) is forgotten in the dusty annals of history.

I
I will be king
And you
You will be queen
Though nothing
Will drive them away
We can be Heroes
Just for one day
We can be us
Just for one day
David Bowie

Not being any sort of hero, all I do is use this technology to write about the ancients at 2.30 in the morning. I know who my heroes are; do you know yours?

Wasted

2008-08-17T03:53:00.003+12:00

So it's 3:49am; a still night lit up by a full moon and I'm standing on the front patio in the moonlight soaking up the Lady's benevolence and...

...the dog walks under the sensor whilst picking her way back from having a piddle and the floodlights come on. What a mood killer, I may as well go back to bed.

Waste of good ambiance, that was.

Scratch that location

2008-08-16T04:03:00.006+12:00

Do not ever let anyone tell you, "it's just a scratch".

There is no such thing. What there is, is a sliding scale of injury, from "ouch" through to "OUCH" and all points in between. Size, conformation, depth of penetration, length (starting to sound like a Viagra advertisement, innit...) and infected status all matter - it is NEVER "just a scratch".

I have been sliding downhill again lately, hence the sporadic nature of my posts here. I go to bed each night in a state of fear that the dark hours will bring not enough sleep and too much pain, I awaken at 2, at 3 at 4 or 5 in the morning in despair that my fears were once more realised. I burn, I writhe, I ache and I hurt and I commiserate with myself because there is no bastard there to do it with. Even Tommy doesn't care.

And now, freshly acquired, there's The Scratch. It extends down most of the length of my right ring finger, on the underside, in the middle. It is shallow; it is narrow and it is fucking SORE. It is NOT just a scratch but an instrument of torture put there by a sharp piece of wire on the old rabbit cage which I can't quite bear to dispose of cos I like bunnies and might want to have another one one day.

The Scratch has two small companions on my left hand - one is approx 7mm long in the crease of my little finger's first knuckle, around the side a bit. The other is slightly shorter and in the crease between index finger and thumb. I am no wimpy wussy sook, but this Evil Trinity of Physical Violation has disturbed my equilibrium tonight as much as my MS simply because I did not realise how much one uses one's fingers when doing absolutely any bloody thing (including nothing) at all, especially the ring finger. Even sleeping. It's 4am, my finger hurts and I want my Mummy.

No, I am not going to take a bloody picture for you but it's lucky my middle fingers are undamaged, eh. I can still use those. See?

Excrement occurs

2008-08-13T00:54:00.006+12:00

I've been dabbling with sheep shit pellets, for the vege garden you understand and now I need some horse shit to go with it. Strawberries and rhubarb love shit and this is where they will be living in it.

There was shitty traffic this morning as, once more, the roading repair gang, in its infinite wisdom coned off a main commuter route during peak traffic to start the days work on a trench they are digging across the road. That's two days running they have done that in the same place. I think they might have shit in their heads, although even a shit head should be able to wait until 9.10am when the rush disappears to start work. What's an extra 40 minute wait compared with the congestion they cause, hmmm?

There was shit flying when I dropped Ad's bed on my foot this morning (don't ask) and a few other expletives. Not enough noise to get Tommy out of bed, although I think I broke my foot cos shit it hurts.

Things got a bit shittier when my washing machine broke about lunchtime. Tommy left the building after that.

There is plenty of shit happening for Living Art Wildlife Park, with a mortgagee sale looming tomorrow. Having been friends with these very special people for 20 years, it makes me feel pretty shitty, too. They featured on Campbell Live tonight. The video is here or YouTube

Then there is the shit that the Flatcats have, as previously mentioned.

I'm not frequently brought down by stuff like this, but I've been forced back onto the clonazepam at a more frequent dose than I like and apart from the deep depression it rapidly brings on, I still spend half the night wandering the house in pain and that makes me feel like shit all day. It's not like there's going to be any respite soon. If at all.

Life really is shit sometimes. In lots of nasty ways.

****************************

UPDATE: Living Art gets to live one more month with a court ordered stay of execution and a halt to the auction, just minutes before it was scheduled to begin. Now all that's needed is a rich philanthropist with a burning desire to save the world, one wildlife park at a time and starting here.

Or tomorrow night's Powerball numbers. Either would be good right about now.

Faith and fire walking

2008-08-07T00:07:00.003+12:00

I was just thinking, as I was putting marmalade on my toast just now that if one does not have some satisfaction in life, one really has nothing. But that comes with a rider...

For instance, today I weeded the front garden and topped it up with wood chips. Not a big thing, unless you know what my front garden looked like 6 months ago, in which case you are probably thinking "the silly bitch has been overdoing it again", and you would be right. The payment for an intense satisfaction at having a tidy front garden for the first time in nearly 13 years is an equal and opposite DISsatisfaction with the spasm and pain in my legs. But still, the day was sufficient unto itself, as every day should be.

My Lady Flatcat said in passing, just the other day, that some small annoyance wouldn't matter in a hundred years time. And she is, of course, right. The broken plate, the unfinished projects, the loss of time to finish living the way you want, the weedy and overgrown garden, these will not be remembered in 100 years time cos we'll all be gone then and so will our kids and if we took anything with us to the Great Beyond, I reckon it's the satisfaction of a job well done. No matter what the job was, we'll take the memories of our achievements with us.

The rider is that we have to search for our own satisfaction; no-one can give it to us.

All we can do is our very best; all that is required is an honest commitment. All that matters is that we were the best people we could be. But it all happens one day at a time, one hour at a time. etc.

Flattie and I keep telling each other that we must have Faith. At the moment neither of us can practice what we preach. There are some jobs that seem to lack any possibly satisfaction, but it's there, buried deep. He'll find it although it will be a hard and painful road through the flames.

That's Life for most of us, eh.

Our lives are made
In these small hours
These little wonders
These twists and turns of Fate
Rob Thomas.

Out of my tree

2008-08-04T23:44:00.002+12:00

Flattie and Lady Flattie came down for lunch today, with knitting and chainsaw in tow. The chainsaw was put to excellent use, wielded in the fight against oppression - in this case the few remaining privet around the perimeter of the section got cut off at the ankles. So did the rotted trunk on one side of the plum tree. The burnables went in the back of Sherman, a couple of interesting pieces I put aside for garden decoration (it's a pretty, pink wood, plum) and the rest I gave to the bird down the other end of the driveway. The feathered kind, a cockatoo named... wait for it... Cocky. Cocky has a wife named Ruby (but she isn't ruby coloured because that would be plain wrong) with whom he chats at a hundred miles an hour. From the look on her face I don't think she understands any more than we do when he starts running off at the beak. But he certainly took a liking to the pile of plum wood outside his aviary, all crumbly as it is in the middle with slaters and ants all through it and became so animated that his Mum gave him some to play with before bed just to shut him up.

It's a hard life, being a ~~spoilt brat~~ bird.

The truncated privet has largely been binned over the bank (and I nearly sent myself over a couple of times in the process) and all that's left to shift is a thick clump of creepers and vines that have had years undisturbed in the far reaches to grow thick and lush and into something satisfying to sink the loppers into.

I don't think I'm the only one has found wanton destruction cathartic in the Battle of Bulbar Palsy; I think Flattie did too.

Jam and pam

2008-08-01T23:40:00.006+12:00

I've been taking my pills, and not taking other pills that don't go so well together. First night - 2 x clonazepam (Pams); second night - 2 Pams and finally relief from the spacticity was forthcoming, Third night - one Pam and one Pam tonight. No Pams tomorrow night, all going to plan, Unless this spasm gets worse... All things in moderation, especially nasty yet unavoidable medications. And gardening, grieving, boozing and eating. After all, some things leave a bad taste in your mouth and grubby hands.

We received bad news the other day, the sort of news that makes you sit down and say "Oh Jesus fucking Christ in a sidecar". Or something. Someone close to us and treasured enormously, someone very lovely, very special has something very, very nasty. And no-one can fix it.

And it makes me frustrated, sad and very fucking angry. It also reaffirms my attention to a frequently ignored little voice that lives inside me, whispering seditious things, things in conflict with my normal beliefs, things like "to get anywhere in this life, you have to be a complete shit". Because that's what it looks like at the moment.

I could rattle off a list of names of decent people, kind people, loving and generous and smart people who have spent at least some of their lives fighting battles in a war they could never win - the war against chronic illness, pain and early check outs.

So I went out in the garden today, driven by my new found ability to walk post-Pam and I dug. I dug and I wheeled and I dug some more in the hope that that voice inside me would stop comparing the lot of the Jude's and Marks, the Riccardos and the Alisons of this world who battle the odds with honesty while the likes of the Tiggers, the Colins and the Wonderboys go through life backstabbing and destroying the people who trust them, give more than is required of them and foolishly honour them.

So I filled the barrow a few times and I emptied it into the new vege tower, and I started planting the little camellias along the front garden and as I laboured I thought to myself, I should become a complete cunt, one of those jammy bastards, and then Life would be a doddle. They make their OWN misery to have something to wave around for attention. But that other voice inside's been reminding me that no-one ever said Life was supposed to be fair. Just as well, innit, or some bastard would be getting one Hell of a kick in the cods, right about now.

Life sux and God's a bastard. He gives the bad stuff to the wrong people.

It's a shame beer and Pams aren't supposed to go together, cos tonight I really don't give a shit. Eh.

Weathering the storm

2008-07-31T14:08:00.004+12:00

It's been a wild week weather wise. The wind blew, lots. It rained some, too. Then it fined up long enough to be able to notice when the wind and rain came back, only this time it rained more than blew. I think.

We had waves at the Mount

and a duck pond down at the park

and the dog refused to go out for a pee in case her feet got wet.

Anyway, some people have died, some have been deroofed and some have shown themselves to be the luckiest bastards on Earth. These ones, to be specific.

God I wish some of the rest of us got that lucky cos sometimes life in general just sux. This week's bad news proves that. There are potentially worse ways to die than having a tree fall on you.

Joint at the hip

2008-07-28T22:38:00.007+12:00

It's been a bit of a rough autumn and winter, emotionally, physically, mentally. I had those Clonazepam pills to control the muscle spasms which I stopped taking some weeks back when they ended up making a zombie out of me (both the pills and the spasms). Not a state I enjoyed being in and certainly hard to function even minimally whilst under their influence. But six odd weeks after ditching it, I've taken a very sudden and serious physical decline to the point where, in only a few days my good leg has become my bad leg and my bad leg, whilst constantly pumping out enough warmth to heat a small village, does not give me even a tenth of the pain and misery the other one now does. If you told me to get knotted, I'd say I had already started, as my entire right calf muscle has been in spasm for the past 15 hours without let up on a leg whose hurts start at the hip and peter out at the ankle.

It tends to cramp ones style - literally. The codeine hasn't helped.

So, after 4 days of ceaseless pain and rapidly declining mobility, I bit the bullet tonight and restarted the Clonazepam, as per doctor's suggestion to stay off it a month minimum then reintroduce it for short bursts that won't (hopefully) be so debilitating.

I'm still waiting for a neuro appointment; I wish he'd hurry up. I'd happily undergo his bloody IV steroids if it meant my legs would return to (ab)normal and stay that way. I feel like I'm staring down the barrel of a telescope called Destiny and the mirror finish is distorting the reflection coming back. I don't like what I see...

Oh yeah, I was going to tell you why what ails you, ails you.

Check out this site - Health Problems and Emotional Causes. It has the reason for everything, from Abscess (hurts, slights, revenge) to Zoo-Phobia (fear of accepting life’s gifts and joys).

In the meantime, I will be working on my Multiple Sclerosis which is apparently caused by mental hardness, hard-heartedness, iron will, inflexibility, traits PWMS potentially build within them to help them cope with a shitty existence the disease brings with it and the people around them who just don't give a fuck, and therefore don't measure up in the Humanity stakes.

Have fun exploring what makes *you* tick; I hope it amuses you as much as it did me. I do like a good joke ;-)

Update: It's 3.17 am and I'm up for the third time. Wheat sacks aren't working, COG painkillers aren't working, can't take another dose of codeine because I gotta function and drive in a few hours. God knows I've become adept at ignoring pain, but this lot is taking a bit more effort.

Oh, and there is big rain forecast for much of this week. Getting repeatedly wet is guaranteed to help with aches and pains. And increase the likelihood of a slippery fall, like I took in the paddock the other day. Tommy and Nushie were the only witnesses and I know they wont tell.

The outlook seems quite bleak from here. Eh.

Going round in circles

2008-07-26T01:03:00.007+12:00

We are having a storm, a weather bomb, a cyclone.

Lots of people have no power, some people have no trampolines. A few have no roof on their house and across the Upper North Island, random garden sheds have taken to the skies. We have been fortunate that, so far, our damage is confined to one bamboo length snapped off about 20 feet from the ground and I would be happy if things stayed that way.

I took these pics at the main Beach this afternoon. You know me; any excuse to get up close to a wild and raging sea. This one was better than nothing.

Now that was worth reading, eh! Tune in tomorrow and I'll tell you all about why you have the diseases and ailments you have.

I can't wait, either.

PS - there were surfers out in that this afternoon and it's been reported that 3 kayakers set out to paddle 30 odd kilometres from Maketu to the Mount in that sea, despite the Met Service warnings. One of them is still lost and the other two might be paying for the Search and Rescue operation they caused. Time will tell whether that story is accurate. Maybe it's a ~~tough~~ expensive life, being "human". It can come to a sudden halt, too. Death is a rather extreme consequence for making a mistake, as I'm sure Darwin would concur. I just feel sorry for the SAR people, risking their lives because others get themselves lost.

Oh baby

2008-07-25T04:54:00.004+12:00

What's taller than me, heavier than me, the opposite gender to me and reaches things that I can't?

That's it, my baby who was born 15 years ago this day. The one who slept all the time, the one who smiled all the time he wasn't asleep, the one who was hooked on cooking almost before he could walk, ~~victim~~ aficionado of food prep infomercials; he who loves diggers and trains, trucks and planes and soon will be out on the roads with a learner permit under his belt and a steering wheel in his hands, the one who still can't beat his sister at Monopoly - Chuck Chucklebutt

Happy birthday, Baby, I love ya.

Name and shame

2008-07-24T23:59:00.002+12:00

This wee gem has been in the news today...

6:44PM Thursday July 24, 2008

New Zealand children have been given names such as Number 16 Bus Shelter, Violence and Benson and Hedges(twins).

But other names, including Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Stallion, Twisty Poi, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit, have been blocked by registration officials..

more...

A judge called it child abuse but CYFS, in their version of infinite wisdom don't agree...

A 'strange name' doesn't constitute abuse: CYF
4:25PM Thursday July 24, 2008

Child Youth and Family does not consider giving a child an out-of-the-ordinary name a form of abuse.

A New Plymouth Judge has forced a nine-year-old' parents to change her name from 'Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii'

The girl's lawyer told the judge she was so embarrassed of her name she refused to reveal it to friends.

A CYF spokeswoman says the name a parent chooses for a child does not constitute a care and protection issue in itself.

She says, however, if a child suffers serious bullying as a result of his or her name, this may lead on to possible notifications through the youth justice system.

Personally, knowing someone who went out of their way to give their kids the stupidest names I've ever run across in the name of some romantically perceived ancient family lineage (a.k.a searching for roots and only finding babies) my thoughts on the bestowal of weird and wacky monikers already lean towards the negative, but some of these are just beyond a joke. And if nothing else, the name Number 16 Bus Shelter just proves that prohibiting sex in public places is a very good thing. Oh yeah, I think Hawaii is probably over rated, too. Maybe someone should send these cretinous wannabe parents there with a one way ticket. They can take the CYFs workers with them!

Men in skirts

2008-07-23T03:22:00.000+12:00

This one's for Flattie *insert big cheesy grin*

Utilikilts - not just dresses for men.

Men and paws

2008-07-18T23:40:00.002+12:00

After 9 days of pampering and fussing, this evening Matey went home. But not before he had one last cuddle on Ad's lap.

Sad wee puppy, eh.

Speaking of sad, in honour of the Old man's big birthday this weekend, we all went out for dinner at the local buffet tonight with some of the out of town rellies. When we rolled up to the location, the kids Sperm Donor was standing outside by the front doors, waiting for his latest chicky to show up. So we had a chat for a few minutes and I asked what happened to last month's lady (they had a "parting" *rolls eyes*), then we wandered on inside to await the rest of the dinner party leaving him to his own waiting. Lucky fellow, he got to chat to his ex-father in law and ex aunt and uncle in law a few minutes after his conversation with his ex wife and ex kids while waiting for his current whatever.

An hour and a half later, as we were ending our meal and about to leave the restaurant, he and his lady walked in and were shown to a booth right next to our table. Of course the rellies, being the polite people they are, said good night to him and wished him a pleasant evening and the kids, being the polite and well raised pair that they are, insisted on going around that side of the table to say 'bye to dad on their way out and so got introduced to this week's conquest.

Taught them well, didn't I!

While we were waiting at the cashier's desk, I happened to cast my glance around in time to spot SD now sitting beside his lady friend and snogging her. When I looked back the other way, I saw my uncle watching it with a look of utter distaste on his his face and I cracked up laughing.

As I said to the kids in the car a few minutes later, I didn't really think a family restaurant was the place for tonsil hockey at 8 o'clock on a Friday night, not when tongue wasn't even on offer on tonight's buffet.

Timing is everything, don't you think? And his couldn't get much worse.

Now and den

2008-07-14T22:49:00.002+12:00

I'm a bit glum; I seem to have reached one of those points in life where change is needed but motivation (or guts) to do so is lacking. The crap weather lately hasn't helped. But even pottering in the garden today, sweeping, weeding and spreading wood chips in the sun, couldn't shift me from a sense of impending change. A desire for change.

I wandered around the upstairs again today looking at the space and thinking how nice it might be to finish the redecorating and shift all my stuff up here and hibernate for a while in the Refuge. I could just ignore the front door and plead old age and deteriorating hearing as the reason I didn't answer it. Knowing my luck, the minute I did that the Oldies would want to move back in and I'd have moved all my furniture for nothing.

Once the Old Man's big birthday bash is over this weekend, I think I'll just curl up on the couch for a few weeks and make the lounge up here my winter den. There's a lot less effort required for that. I always was a lazy bitch, apparently :0)

Besides, Ads has taken over the big den for his layout and I ain't gonna get any peace in there.

Flashy

2008-07-13T21:13:00.004+12:00

I blamed Flattie for this one, but he reckons he didn't send it to me. But I'll blame him anyway and you can too.

It's mint

2008-07-12T23:48:00.004+12:00

[geek]I've been rediscovering the joy of pissing about with my own computers and operating systems this week, having acquired a different version of XP and a new *nix distro, called Linux Mint, a variant of Ubuntu.

I downloaded and burnt the iso this morning, ran it as a live cd for an hour or 3 this afternoon then installed it on a spare hard drive tonight, slaved on the 733 shitbox in the upstairs lounge and dual booting with the Slim XP I installed on it in place of Win98 the day before yesterday. [/end geek]

Ripper.

I remember why I loved this shit now. I think it's the only bit of those Polytech years I'll bother to try to keep.

Ads got up on his hind legs today and went to Classic Flyers. He was rapt to be able to show me their latest acquisition when I picked him up this afternoon - the cockpit of a De Havilland Vampire which arrived at 8 last night from Ohakea. It's very cool.

Mistaken

2008-07-11T09:00:00.003+12:00

A young man who repeatedly shot at police during a two-hour pursuit between Rotorua and Waihi says his actions were "just a mistake inlife"(sic).

James Raymond Warren Samuells, 20, was shot by police after refusing to surrender and is a paraplegic as a result.

Yesterday, he made a sudden change of plea and admitted eight charges of using a firearm against police before a depositions hearing at the Tauranga District Court.

He also pleaded guilty to burglary and vehicle theft, and will now be sentenced in September. A charge of attempted murder was downgraded.

more...

The only mistake was that our Police can't shoot for shit.

Last week, there was this one, a real Prince among scumbags - beat the shit out of his girlfriend, stole her car, stole petrol in a drive-off and then wrapped himself and the car around someone's house while they were in it.

The man who died when his car slammed into a house after a police pursuit in Palmerston North early yesterday was Peter Joseph Kotsifakis, of Levin.

The 18-year-old failed to stop for police after driving away from a Palmerston North service station without paying just before midnight on Saturday.

Police said he had been involved in a domestic incident earlier in the evening.

Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Sheridan said an 18-year-old woman, known to Mr Kotsifakis, had been admitted to Palmerston North Hospital with serious facial injuries, some time before midnight.

more...

Want more low-lives on the run?

This one killed a police officer overnight...

A police officer was killed on duty this morning after being struck by a stolen car.

The Porirua officer, believed to be 40, was hit by a car after a pursuit in Titahi Bay, near Wellington, about 3am this morning.

Kapiti Mana area commander Inspector John Spence said the officer's death had "devastated" colleagues.

Serious crash investigators were at the scene on Dimock St, near the Downes St intersection.

Wellington district commander, Superintendent Pieri Munro, said the black Honda Prelude had been stolen and was later seen at Titahi Bay.

"Some spikes were laid for the vehicle to stop it and one of our police officers was struck in that context and died at the scene," he said.

Mr Munro said the car was being chased but details were still being gathered.

more...

The before-the-fact cure for all 3 would have been abortion, no matter how righteously indignant one might feel about the subject.

So be careful out there, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean these wankers aren't, by default, out to get YOU, too. They are on our roads. Have a nice day :-)

Old mates

2008-07-09T04:04:00.000+12:00

We gained an extra dog today, just a few days babysitting. Matey has returned to the fold for a few days R&R, drooling on the cats, sleeping on the couch, knocking things over with his windmill tail and putting Nush down a level to where she already was - at the bottom of the heap.

Here he is, fully engaged in Eyelid Inspection at 4am tomorrow (now).

Tommy did his job with much more style at 10am yesterday

Now if only they'd all stop pissing on my pile of woodchips. I mean, is it really necessary?

Yeah, I'm bored, too. I think I'll go back to bed. I can get a couple of hours in before the world starts to wake up, if I can get Tommy off my pillows.

Crystal clear

2008-07-08T23:56:00.002+12:00

It's a beautiful night out there - calm, cold, clear and every sound seems magnified. Just the right acoustics to really hear the fucking boy racers doing donuts and burnouts on the hill. About every 20 minutes or so and then they run away in case someone's called the Police. Then they come back...

At $2.18/litre, how the hell do they afford the petrol?

Medical procedures

2008-07-06T21:04:00.005+12:00

Tinks, our resident Cat Scanner. We have a shar pei so I can't give you a Lab report. Sorry.

Windy and insane

2008-07-05T22:25:00.010+12:00

It's windy and rainy and cold and snowing on the Kaimais. I don't remember an occasion in my lifetime where the Kaimai Rd has been closed by snow and ice, but tonight it is. This is the Sunny Bay, we don't DO snow and ice.

We are more the sea, sun, surf place, eh.

The Springboks didn't like the snow in Wellington tonight, they lost to us at the rugby.

Speaking of surf, I had never thought about the existence of wave pools until tonight and now I am fascinated by the extraordinary lengths people will go to just to get wet.

My dislike of getting wet is the stuff of blogging Legend, I'm sure I must have drowned in a previous lifetime. Probably in a Roman wave pool. Like this, but older, hmm?

I don't think the Romans knew about Japan or the Western world might have ended up predominantly Shinto instead of Catholic.

PS - Ads asked the surgeon if the bleeding-to-death person the other day lived. The surgeon said "yes". Ads said "good". Kids really do say the darndest things.

The deepest cut

2008-07-04T20:01:00.003+12:00

After the false start in theatre the other day, today went off without a hitch until it was dinner time and someone decided he wasn't staying over night like the surgeon insisted he do. Talk about whine and snivel and moan, didn't want dinner, didn't want to stay, didn't want to go to kids ward, or an adults ward, just didn't want to co-operate until the first real twinges of an anaesthetic fully wearing off hit and then he became a wee bit more tractable, co-operative and dare I say it, even docile.

Now he is tucked up in the childrens ward watching movies, eating ice cream and nuts and drinking milkshake-type drinks. In a couple more hours he can have a big dose of codeine and settle off to sleep.

I hope to do the same very soon. It's been a very looong day. Tomorrow isn't looking any shorter.

Faster

2008-07-02T00:14:00.004+12:00

The receptionist said be there at 12.30; the letter said be there at 10.30.

At 10.20, there we were at the surgical admissions unit to check in for Ads to have his toes fixed, and for the next 90 minutes, there we stayed, in the waiting room. Just before 12 they took him to get into a gown, robe and checked all his records were correct before plonking us in the day-stay area containing people in similar gowns and robes. Hungry people; thirsty people, people who, just like Ads had been fasting since the night before in preparation for their trip to theatre today.

We read. We chatted. We got very bored, more thirsty and hungry and a ciggie would have gone down rather well. Ok, maybe not for Ads, but I wouldn't have complained.

One by one they disappeared until finally, at 3.30, there were only 2 left - Ads and a guy having his veins fixed, who had been there since 7.30am. A doctor had just inserted a lure into Ads' arm and a nurse had finally given him something for his headache. After 18 hours with no food or water, his headache was pretty bad.

And then the surgeon came out and said "I'm sorry but I've been called away to someone at the hospital up the road who is bleeding to death, I have to reschedule you two for Friday morning, if I can".

So they took his lure out, brought a cup of water, some ham sammies (sans butter) and his clothes and off home we went.

After breakfast (at 4pm), a nap and dinner (at 7.30pm), his headache finally matured into the mongrel it had been promising to be and the vomiting and shakes started. My brave soldier went back to bed, with his manky toes untouched.

Poor wee bastard, what a shitty day for nothing and he gets to start all over again tomorrow night.

*sigh*

I don't feel too flash, either.

Over it

2008-06-30T23:42:00.004+12:00

Sick. I'm real sick and I am soooooo over this whole MS thing and all this hobbling around, waking at 4am in pain, body temp down and can't warm up, you know, shit like that. It makes me forget things, like that I have to buy milk when I pick H up from school, until I'm already miles from home and wearing an eclectic little ensemble consisting of big baggy jersey, trackies, red socks and Ads' big dark blue floppy slippers and no bra. Oops.

The Old Man reckons that sheer perversity (if not fashion sense) will keep me alive and kicking into senior years, just like it did Mum. Well he got the perverse bit right, maybe he does know me after all even if he can't remember when I was born ;-)

But he did have the temerity to mention I was "middle aged". Ha!

At least I don't look like Yoda

or Golem

yet.

PS - I thought the red socks were a bit much too...

Light show

2008-06-25T23:58:00.002+12:00

All that storm activity and none of it is on our side of the Hill. The West Coast is getting all the fun tonight.

Bugger.

Statistically speaking

2008-06-24T16:33:00.009+12:00

One of my favourite server tasks was the weekly round up of web server stats, pulled from the monitoring software. They were fun, they showed you just about everything that happens on a server; incoming link url, browser, resolution and OS being used, the country of origin, who the visitor is connected with, how often they visited, how long they visited for, where they went next if they used a link from the server and even down to whether they are on dial up or some flavour of DSL and if they are using a company or academic institution gateway to access the site or an anonymous proxy.

Makes my dim little life just that much brighter to be able to use tools such as this on something like a blog and see all the same details, especially when it comes to some of the weirdos who leave spam comments and stuff only fit for deletion, like some dozey bint did just the other day. It doesn't happen often now that Blogger has grown up and allows so many choices in who can access and contribute to what on your blog, but in the old days it used to be a real spam fest some mornings.

I can see why so many companies and universities, polytechnics etc make accessing social networking sites from their network gateways verboten. With such sites usually blocked out, either an incoming visitor from one of these is very smart in a user capacity, or very dumb in an administrative role.

Space wasters, bandwidth, resource and oxygen thieves abound in large numbers! Stats for real.

Doctor, doctor, gimme the news

2008-06-23T20:22:00.003+12:00

I got a bad case of clonazepam blues.

So I'm off that shit, for now anyway. Reckons a couple of weeks of more stress while the withdrawal happens, seeing as how they aren't nice pills, have a break for a month or two and try them again, see if they work then cos they sure don't work any more now and he won't up the dose any further. I wouldn't take a bigger dose anyway, I don't think.

Other option is the Baclofen again, but seeing as how I kind of need my vision to drive and stuff, that's out of the question after last time. So until I can see neuro and maybe start those IV steroids, it's heavy duty pain killers and true grit for the foreseeable future.

If this waking rigid in pain at 4am doesn't get better, it could be a very short one lol

The late, great

2008-06-21T23:54:00.003+12:00

Warren Zevon died in 2003 but before he left, he penned a little number that until this point in my life I hadn't really listened to the lyrics of, despite being a bit of a WZ fan.

Tonight, Flattie gave me cause to see it in a new light, as a song of relevance to Life; Aging and Decay, brought to you by YouTube.

My Shit's Fucked Up - live, of course.

Onya, Warren.

Warren knew that Life will kill ya.

PS I was going to post something completely different that happened early this morning, but I'll leave that for another night.

I can wait, I have nothing but time... eh...

Wearing fatigues

2008-06-20T22:17:00.003+12:00

I'm tired. Dog tired, drag the feet tired, fall asleep sitting up tired. I-just-wanna-sleep-tired.

MS tired.

Too tired even to bother yelling at the kids and that was the fun part of the day.

I'm sick. I think I have a chest infection brewing but the doc was busy until next Monday. The garlic is holding it in check. Sort of. My legs are wobbly and my eyes are droopy and the clonazepam has me doing a real bad zombie impersonation half the time and the rest of the time I'm hanging for the next dose to stop the spasms.

But I've now lost 24kg in total and 20 in the past 9 months.

Amen.

I need new drugs. Better drugs. Ones that won't make me lean but won't make me fat again.

Listening to: Sting - Desert Rose.
Reading: Nothing. I skimmed the last 3 chapters of Gabaldon and took the damn thing back.

I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand...

Sad

2008-06-18T21:16:00.003+12:00

Condolences to Raewyn Garner and the families who have lost two children and another is left badly injured in Starship.

It was like any other Sunday for the Garner family _ Samantha and her friend Kayla Rose, both 14, would spend the evening with Mosaic Church at Mount Maunganui.

And just like every other Sunday, Samantha's older brother Joshua waited at home for a text from his sister, and would go and pick them up.

But last Sunday none of them made it home and now two families are planning funerals.

Mr Garner's Holden car hit a power pole just off the Maungatapu roundabout while heading towards State Highway 29 and Welcome Bay at 9.20pm.

Mr Garner died instantly and back seat passenger Kayla received massive head injuries in the crash.

Raewyn was the friend of one of my neighbours, back in my old married days and I occasionally see her around town.

H told me about the other teen passenger being in hospital the other day, she has since died.

Our thoughts are with you all.

Teresa Green

2008-06-16T20:55:00.009+12:00

Thank God we finally got some rain - I was freaking out that I'd have to drag the hose around the house and water everything and that would involve an expenditure of labour I'm too damn sick to manage. Just walking around inside the house is mission enough; parenting is out of my league. The weather makes sleeping extra de rigeur in this house; and less guilt-ridden, if that's possible. I wouldn't mow the lawn in the rain anyway.

At least the rain will make the plants grow, bulbs flower and make sure the lawn and trees are green.

Militarily speaking

2008-06-15T19:47:00.015+12:00

Emperor Penguins
General Mayhem
Kernel Panic (it's a Linux thing, Muzz knows)
Major Delay
Captain of Industry
Loo Attendant
Corporal Punishment
Private Arrangement

Armies need a flag, Flattie got me a cool Skull and Crossbones one to put up the bamboo.

Potty

2008-06-14T22:00:00.003+12:00

Flattie has finally gone potty.

The Flatcats came down for lunch "the fishing's fucked anyway" was the excuse, and on our way to Classic Flyers after lunch, he espied a pot shop.

On the way back he made a stop and was very happy to become the proud owner of two very sexy and slender white pots for his courtyard at a knock down price. To replace a pair of naff frogs. Say no more...please.

What he didn't realise until he got back to pick them up was that he wasn't the only one who had espied something that took their fancy - Mrs Flatcat had, too.

And he'd planned all the packing for the journey home in his head advance too, I bet...

I think it looks great, Mrs Cat had fab taste!

Poor bastard reckons we are trouble together. Ha! He's forgotten his WOTW tickets already.

Social engineering

2008-06-13T19:14:00.009+12:00

How many people are using MSN and getting these pop up windows

like that, advertising stuff when you mouse over them? Fuck it's annoying. Now I use the mouse a whole new way and "sweep" around that area instead of across it.

Once enough people start doing that, all they gotta do is add a bit along the new mouse path and Bingo!, they got ya again. Do that a couple of times and eventually the user will give up and accept the need for constant advertising built into common apps. Or is that a trifle paranoid? I prefer to call it "forward thinking" and I know they are not out to get me, I checked. Several times.

By the way, can someone buy me one of these please?

I think that's so cool, I gotta have one.

Reading: Breath of Snow and Ashes (will it EVER bloody end??)

Listening to: Westlife - "You Can't Lose What You Never Had"

Crysis

2008-06-12T22:22:00.006+12:00

This week, we encountered something of a family crisis. It has now passed, but it served to show that when the chips are down, we can cross the generations, pull together and redefine our positions as required.

We are family.

Gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc - We gladly feast on those who would subdue us ...

You better believe it, baby.

Cocktails and ginger ale

2008-06-11T18:42:00.005+12:00

On a day that started with a power cut before breakfast and a cat shitting inside just after breakfast, one cannot help but wonder, when other really major issues pop up as the day progressively slides downhill, which God one kicked in the nuts first in passing without even noticing.

What would be an ideal ending to such a day would be 45 clonazepam, a full bottle of high strength codeine and 60 or 80 paracetamol washed down with 16 bottles of Lion Red and a bottle of Bailey's.

Shame I haven't finished that book yet so probably can't indulge my selfish self with a cocktail tonight.

And the Bailey's is only a half size one. I've already started on it, too.

Bugger.

Listening to: A tape made when Mum went to a clairvoyant just a few days before she died. It's all about what is coming on the other side. I was walking around the garden outside, crying, most of the time. In 12 years, I have never listened to it until now. It has the Old Boy's writing on it - I wonder if he listened to it, too?
Reading:Nothing - my eyes are shut listening. Occasionally I open then and type shit. Like this.

Cool, eh.

Early bird

2008-06-10T05:44:00.005+12:00

It's another early start. 4.30am this time.

Back hurts, leg hurts, so pills and cuppa and a wheat sack is called for while I knock myself back into sleeping shape in time for the kids to get up.

Such is life.

Today I have some lists to make. And lists of lists.

And a length of bamboo to cut down if I can get out there. I think I'll choose the one with the stupid Norwegian flag on it.

Riveting, eh. I hope Deb is having more fun in London than I am here at home.

******************************

Update: flag removed and disposed of. Who needs a Wonderboy reminder like that flapping 40 feet off the ground in the back yard for the next 15 years. Not me, baby.

Pawnography

2008-06-08T19:28:00.004+12:00

A source link on my stat page went to a Google search. This is very common, but when I followed it back, I found I have indeed reached the Nirvana of Google searches - I'm now classed as pornography. And only second in line!

I would have sold my soul to the Devil (if I hadn't already) to get that.

Go, you good thing ;-)

The real D Day

2008-06-07T19:01:00.003+12:00

June 6th or D Day has become a euphemism for anything that is a turning point in some important way. It's had a few beauties in the past - dreadful fires, wars, politically constitutional actions, a president riding his f1rst train, Colonial declarations and even volcanic eruptions. There are loads more things that live in historical hindsight at that link back there.

The most well known, or the one that first springs to mind is usually June 6 1944, the day that the Allied forces in the war in Europe took it to the Germans at Normandy.

Today, the 7th here but still the 6th in some parts of the world, Classic Flyers museum in Tauranga put on a big day of displays and re-enactments which was very exciting and wore poor Adam right out in his volunteer capacity.

And what a day it was, with a great assortment of military stuff and aircraft, both on the ground and in the air.

Happy, tired Ads.

D Day

2008-06-06T20:16:00.005+12:00

Today is D Day, the anniversary of a special day, one with wide reaching ripples and ramifications.

Yes indeed, 40 something years ago today, Em made her entrance into the world. Sister of my Heart, six months and 4 days younger than me, I haven't seen her in 16 years but time means little, it's just the distance that makes things tough. It's a long way to Melbourne. (There's West again...)

Happy birthday Em, love ya sweets :-)

Oh, and there was a big beach landing 20 odd years before that which was a big deal too, but more about that tomorrow. I don't have the image I need for it on this PC lol

Westing

2008-06-05T18:57:00.007+12:00

What is it with the word "west"? The best show on TV is about a family named West who are, er, Westies; Annie Lennox sang a song for one of the LOTR movies that was all about going into the west. In 1604, John Webster and Thomas Dekker wrote a play called Westward Ho! (which incidentally happens to be the name of half a dozen places and golf courses (golf courses???)) and Galadriel said she would "diminish and go into the west". Mind you, LOTR had Easterlings as well, so I guess Tolkien at least evened that one up. In The Wizard of Oz the wicked witch came from the west, and southpaws are only that if they are facing West. Even household appliances aren't safe. Hands up who's NOT heard of Westinghouse, hmmm?

The sun sets in the west; young men were exhorted to "go west" by John B. L. Soule in 1851. The Poms went west in their wee ships to find the New World, and later on went further west in search of land and adventure and freedom from whatever it was they wanted liberation from and even more of them "went west" when they blew up/fell down/generally expired during wars and shit.

I should go west, that seems to be where my life has gone, except that west is Hamilton and they have needles there, not nice ones, either. Even further west is Australia and that's worse; it's full of Austruckingfalians, and you know what THAT means, eh cobber. There's Oz again AND associated with west.

I'm not coping with anything today and to top it off, to get out of this room I have to walk to... the west.

I haven't the heart to check tomorrow's weather forecast, it'll likely be westerlies.

*sigh*

If you find any major grammatical or spelling errors in this post, just suck it up; I'm 10 feet wide and ~~mulletproof~~ pulletproof and not afraid to abuse it. The pills will do that to ya.

Cornice

2008-06-02T19:09:00.005+12:00

Almost every house I have lived in has had plaster cornice. This is because almost every house I have lived in has been built by my father who has a love affair with cornice and fucking built in pelmets.

I hate pelmets but I like cornice and not for the reason most people do, I bet.

When I was little, I shared a room with my sister. We had separate rooms after I was about 4 I suppose. I woke one night with an odd feeling. I was eyeballing a spider in its web. On the cornice, above the bedroom door, in the corner. It was cool and I wanted to tell Sis, but I had to look down and behind me to see her sleeping in her bed and that was scary and suddenly the spider disappeared and I was crying and woke Mum up. She said I'd had a bad dream and go back to sleep but the next day I dragged a chair in and climbed up as high as I could to look at the spider that lived in the web on the cornice in the corner above the door.

It was a daddy long legs.

In 1985, ex-hubby and I built our house, a two storeyed Villa-80 kitset home. Good buying, kept the mortgage affordable, and because we were then childless, we didn't need to finish off the top floor so it was just gib walls and junk and fleas in summer. We slept in the bedroom downstairs and climbed a ladder to get up there for anything stored. There were no stairs for the first year anyway.

One night, not long after we moved in, I was sitting up by the top ridge pole of the house looking at a nail that had come slightly through the side of a rafter, hidden right in the dark where the beams met. It was intriguing - no, not how did the mail come to be there, how did I come to be there seeing as my body was asleep some 20 feet below and a floor away. I was going to tell E-H about it but decided I'd rather brave climbing a ladder to look myself. Then ya don't look like such a twat, eh.

So I climbed up to the top floor, sprinted into Heather's-to-be room, past the hordes of fleas living in a roll of carpet and always with an eye for the main ~~cat~~ chance to get on and have a feed. I dragged the other ladder into the middle of the floor, climbed shakily up and had a look at the beam with a torch. Right at a nice shiny nail half protruding from the rafter.

As I climbed back down the ladder I mused on my findings. Actually I said "I gotta lay off so much weed for a while, it's fucking with my head".

Until I remembered my wee spider friend 18 odd years before. Before I'd heard of weed as more than something Mum bitched about us missing as we stomped her plants flat.

I haven't done it for a while, I have Spirit Fingers now instead but those bad practice takeoffs and hard landings seem to be a thing of the past since clonazepam fucked what was left of my intellect.

MS - if the disease don't get ya, the drugs will, man...

PS - don't touch the green acid.

"Nods sagely"

2008-05-31T23:11:00.005+12:00

I had a giggle of a chat on the phone with Mr Sagacity himself, tonight (he'll have to strut and preen at getting a special mention now - in other words, become more insufferable, if that's possible...awaits fallout). Mr S (as we shall call him) had this to say.

I have paraphrased - I can't type all the times he said "just, shut up will ya".

Anyway, in essence Mr S said that Life is about letting the day be sufficient unto itself - don't look for hiccups that you haven't created yet and maybe you won't, you know, have them. And learn the Lesson well, save the bother of repeating a class.

I think. I'm sure he will tell me if I'm wrong; he seemed most insistent that I remember what he said. After all those drugs he's lucky I can remember my name.

It's Eileen, innit?? *wanders off to torment 17 year old, cos I have one and I can*

Wish I hadn't run out of paint - and money...I want to paint the stairwell wall. Now.

Well, I've been asleep all day... painting at midnight isn't late, not for Saturday. Except I have no paint, so I can't. *sigh*

Mementoes

2008-05-28T22:41:00.006+12:00

On the top of my monitor in the Retreat, on one side, is a stuffed Lion named Leo that I bought Ads when he was a baby. He has a piercing just above his left nostril. On the other side is a jolly little fat chinese man who is a symbol of prosperity. In the middle sits a dear old duck called Delilah with a face that looks like it's been sucking lemons for 60 years. She must be Queen of something - she wears a crown and purple robes. She's pretty flash in her crown and her jewels

but I did mention lemons, eh?

On the right of my monitor is an old fashioned looking candlestick with an entirely intentional build up of wax drippings, a small fake marble container with a filigree top and a picture of a cute little girl of 18 months, sitting on her Nana's knee. On the left sits a picture of a Mum and Dad and 2 girls, the smaller one the same little girl as in the other photo, just a bit older.

40 years later, that little girl wonders how it all turned out like it did. Do you ever wonder why your life is this and not that? And if you could roll those years back again, what would you change?

I'd eat less corn chips just before bedtime, personally... it makes me understand stuff like this...and some of this and I find it a bit disturbing.

Chains

2008-05-27T21:52:00.005+12:00

I hate chain mail. I mean, I REALLY hate chain mail.

Rae told me a good way to deal with these wankers a bit at a time. She sent me a diatribe she had written about what scum they were, then printed it out and posted it, with no stamp, to all the names contained within the chain letter.

Bonus #1 - they get excited because there is mail being held at the post office
Bonus #2 - they get to pay twice the postage because it went without a stamp.
Bonus #3 - they get to see what dumb wankers they really are.

I love it - I got a chain letter today, and I have three stashed from a month ago. I might fire up the printer tomorrow...

Flattie rang very briefly tonight to tell me an item about MS was on TV.

And by gosh, he was right.

This one on Close Up.

Click the "LIfeline taken away link" to view it.

May 27, 2008

Multiple Sclerosis
At just 36 Jodi Kemp faces the prospect of having to live in a rest home or her husband may have to give up work and go on the dole to look after her because the government won't continue to fund home help. Jodi has one of the most aggressive forms of MS and for the last four years she has been in a wheelchair. Her husband works more than 12 hour days to provide for them both while Jodi is left at home but until now she has had a lifeline - Home Help for seven hours a week allows Jodi to live in the family home and be cared for. But suddenly she has been told she is not entitled to any help. A live interview with David Chrisp from the Ministry of Health and Neil Woodhams, Chairman of the MS Society.

Fav quote from the video?

"I'm 36 years old, I'm not ready to be shipped out yet".

I used to mostly feel like that, too. What a difference little differences make. Thanks for the call, Flattie.

Socks

2008-05-25T07:21:00.004+12:00

I was going to post a 4am but I knew you'd be asleep and I didn't want to wake you even though I was hurting and wide awake. Same at 5am. And 6am. Now it's just after 7 and I figure fuck it, you'll be awake soon anyway.

Last weekend we went to Thames and just before we came home, the Flatties worked a bit of their magic (oh twas heavenly) on me and my lower back pain was significantly reduced for 6 nights/mornings.

I think the lease on it must have expired because it's back (scuse pun) and back with a vengeance. Even overdoing the doing stuff shit on Wednesday didn't make a difference or maybe I'm paying for it now, but there are seriously some mornings (usually the ones like this morning where I can't stand up/walk/put my sox on) that the pain just drags me down into the Dark Place. Add to that a worsening in my legs and the extra spasticity and pain happening there, a sense of uselessness and being unneeded and I start thinking "Hurry up and grow up kids, Mummy needs to check out".

Soon.

It's not like there's ever going to be much worth hanging around for, after all.

Big Cats

2008-05-24T07:33:00.003+12:00

Ads spent the day rostered on at Kiwi Classic Flyers and he rang me in big excitement to tell me that the Catalina was flying in at 11am and he hoped he could get a look inside, seeing as how he is part of the Catalina hulk restoration project team at Classic Flyers.

This is the one they are working on as a static display in the museum

Well, he got to crawl all over the thing and had an absolute ball. He was gobsmacked when the pilot got out and was a woman. I said "chicks fly planes too, buddy" he said "yeah, but a Catalina??".

Yeah, baby - a Catalina.

This one. It is currently the only air worthy PBY-5A in Australasia and there aren't many left in the world.

Ain't she beautiful?

A bit later on...

2008-05-22T23:03:00.006+12:00

Kids are in bed and I am trashed all to Hell and back (ok, so maybe just to Hell) with a goodly dose of Telegraph Road live, occurring at an acceptable volume whilst I ponder how I have filled the gaping hole in my life for the past two days and what I will do to get myself through the next week.

I'm not just running out of ideas; I'm running out of able-ness to accomplish the ideas as well. Rapidly.

In fact, MS is starting to seriously suck this past couple of weeks.

Again.

Now all I need is a few months of chemo to really put me back at the bottom of that hole.

Again.

There is a neuro appointment coming - I'm scared he will take the aggressive path, the one I so heavily agreed with him on last year. Of course, last October so many things were different. For starters, I thought I had a long term reason to stay upright. The desire just isn't there at the moment.

I used to be scared he wouldn't....

Arrr and arrghhhhhhhhh

2008-05-18T00:33:00.007+12:00

R and R completed.

Too much nice food eaten.
Too much kindness extended.
Too much Runescape infection in all my teenagers all of a sudden.
Too many teenagers using MY computer. Hmmpff.
Too much bargain-hunting at the Seagull Shop.
Too much of my father in me.
Too much nostalgia as well.
Too much for Nush being made not only to use the dog-flap in the back door AND be manhandled into the Moo, but Mum forgot to stop for a widdle in the Gorge and she was really busting when we got home.

It's a shit life being a bitch. Believe me. Apparently that's what I am best at.

Perfection has its cost.

Happy 17th wedding anniversary to the Flatcats.

25 years today since Nana went.

Where do the years go? Can the rest go that fast, please? Or maybe a little faster? Sort of get it all over an done with?

Oh and here is my Refuge - in daylight. I adore it.

PS Too much humour value not to play Exaloo at Paeroa on the way home. I accosted a gentleman outside the Waihi loos yesterday as he climbed out of his Crossfire. I said I was hanging for one of those when I win Lotto and did it drive as nice as it looked? he said yes, it's nice and it's not really expensive.

It is on an Invalid's benefit, Sweetheart.

Boo

2008-05-16T09:28:00.003+12:00

It's me.

Missed me? I bet you have. I've been doing stuff, like working out my own script for a horror movie involving a grape vine, a crop of ripe grapes and a couple of million bees. It goes like this: the grapes never got eaten (by people), so the bees took over and decimated the crop, ate little holes in every grape they could find. The birds had a go but the bees drove them off. Enter Human, who decides she wants to harvest a few more before they are all gone. She manages to find half a bucketful of untouched ones and then begins to systematically (I like that word, systematically) strip the remaining fruit off and throw them in a wheelbarrow. The bees are a bit slow, it takes them half an hour to realise that their stash is shrinking and now they are competing. A bit later, they start getting twitchy so the Human, fed up with bees landing on her and growling, scampers off and vows to come back later when the bees have gone to bed. Which she does. Morning comes, bees come and there isn't a grape to be found on the vine.

Greedy little fuckers.

I've been doping myself to the eyeballs earlier and earlier every night and snoozing on the couch in my Refuge until late, before attempting to go to bed and sleep properly. Hence my usual blogging times have become snoring times cos I'm too trashed and sad to give a crap.

The kids went to the TGC Senior Ball last weekend and, as usual, looked a million bucks together - H in ankle length strapless, backless, fitting black velvet and Woowiss in black suit, black shirt and white tie.

This weekend Ads and I are off to Thames for some R and R - you can decide for yourself what that means for me, but for Adam it means Railways and Rolling Stock.

ciao4now

Balls

2008-05-11T20:51:00.004+12:00

The Ball is the BIG thing in the Girl's College senior year. You gotta go. You gotta go with a bloke, if you have one. If you don't, you take your bestie.

Your parents are expected to hand out huge amounts of resources (read:money) to buy the flashest ball dress so you don't look like a twat, even if the dress is a dreadful fashion mistake and you look like a twat anyway. Or an orange bag of spuds cos the dressmaker fucked up and it was too late to get anything else.

Or you can do it this way

and look a million bucks.

Last night was the Ball

If

2008-05-04T00:00:00.001+12:00

No, not a Bread song.

If today was yesterday, it would be the 3rd, and be a day without any specific personal meaning.

If today were tomorrow, it would be the 5th and be Scotty's birthday.

But it's not; it's the 4th of May and 12 years ago tonight I said good bye for the last time to my Mum when she went home with the Angels, just through the wall from where I sit as I type this in the Batcave.

I have finished decorating this room she spent so much time in. I have found unexpected boons and taken opportunities that were offered and it all just fell into place. Except the Venetian blind - that was a complete bastard. Pelmets suck.

Behind me, a few feet away, is the chair she always sat in - her father's chair, or so my grandmother told me. For a while it sat in a corner, up on longer legs for the Old Girl, but she couldn't get comfortable in it so when she stopped using it I got the leg extensions taken off it - it looked all wrong.**

During redecoration, I've moved it around a bit but only once taken it right out of the room - it's mainly lived under a dust cloth. My sister said one night "you have to put Mum's chair back in the proper place. Later I asked her to tell me why, without analysing her reply first. She said it was easy - if Mum is walking around here like we think, she is going to want to sit down in her chair. There.

So it's back where it belongs.

Some things never change and some hurts never heal - we all miss you Mum and 12 years is just a number, it changes nothing.

** PS - I guess the chair wasn't big enough for two... I'm not surprised it wasn't comfortable.

Disturbing.

2008-04-28T03:11:00.010+12:00

It's 3am. Again.

Happens every night, of course, but I don't get to see it every night (thank God). I am tonight, though and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because my latest project is almost finished and I know I need a rest but I don't know what I'll do to quiet my mind or maybe it's because I was short some of my pill dose tonight because I ran out. Maybe it's because my leg hurts in one place at the same time it burns in others or maybe it's my sore finger where I cut it yestoday on a rusty file but whatever the reason, it's 3am and I am up telling you about it.

Don't you feel special?

The Old Boy fixed some squeaky floor boards in the upstairs lounge yestoday and helped me put the carpet in. I told him to leave the stair lift in after all; at this rate I might need it to reach my cave. Or should that be tree house? Either way I need a DND sign for the doors. Even the kids don't bother me unless it's an emergency when the door is shut and "Do Not Disturb" is out.

Anyway, it's too soon for results from the evoked potential tests, my clonazepam has run out because of the 5x the initial dose I was taking, I'm waiting to hear about a meds change to something that might work better than the clonazepam does because it's not working enough but I'm starting to anticipate it being late enough in the day to take it and not be called out to drive anyone anywhere.

Not a good sign.

Anyway, this post was about Oggz. I love them. I have some Christmas sphere lights like them (sadly a little decrepit now) that are entwined in the arbor canopy under cover. Last Christmas they were wrapped in Alberic Barbier which is regularly pruned into a 7 foot tall standard configuration just to keep the bugger under control. Vigorous does not adequately describe this variety of rose - I have one I've sprayed half a dozen times with Round Up and the bugger still won't die. That's why we call it "Killer Rose" at home.

Back to the Oggz - I reckon they are so cool and if someone want's to donate me some, I would be suitably appreciative. They bring out the child in me. You can get them on Trade me too, called Morphing Egg Lights - Tripler and with a $49.95 Buy Now. They'd keep me amused in my treecave for hours, they would. I could have my birthday next week specially, 7 months early, just so you had a reason to buy them. Just leave me your address and I'll get back to you.

Please, think of the the children.

PS the waning gibbous moon tonight, as seen through the river fog which is lightly blanketing us is particularly eerily gibbous. A bit like a very cheap Peter Jackson movie. Cool, eh!

The spoon story

2008-04-27T03:51:00.000+12:00

This is not mine - I don't know who wrote it but damn, it sheds light some of the MonSter's limitations very explicitly, something PWMS constantly strive to do.

If you know someone with MS, please read it. For their sake and yours.

The Spoon Story
My best friend and I were in the diner, talking. As usual, it was very late and we were eating French fries with gravy. Like normal girls our age, we spent a lot of time in the diner while in college, and most of the time we spent talking about boys, music or trivial things, that seemed very important at the time. We never got serious about anything in particular and spent most of our time laughing.

As I went to take some of my medicine with a snack as I usually did, she watched me with an awkward kind of stare, instead of continuing the conversation. She then asked me out of the blue what it felt like to have MS and be sick. I was shocked not only because she asked the random question, but also because I assumed she knew all there was to know about MS. She came to doctors with me and she saw me walk with a cane. She had seen me cry in pain, what else was there to know? I started to ramble on about pills, and aches and pains, but she kept pursuing, and didn't seem satisfied with my answers. I was a little surprised as being my roommate in college and friend for years; I thought she already knew the medical definition of MS. Then she looked at me with a face every sick person knows well, the face of pure curiosity about something no one healthy can truly understand. She asked what it felt like, not physically, but what it felt like to be me, to be sick.

As I tried to gain my composure, I glanced around the table for help or guidance, or at least stall for time to think. I was trying to find the right words. How do I answer a question I never was able to answer for myself? How do I explain every detail of every day being effected, and give the emotions a sick person goes through with clarity.

I could have given up, cracked a joke like I usually do, and changed the subject, but I remember thinking if I don’t try to explain this, how could I ever expect her to understand. If I can’t explain this to my best friend, how could I explain my world to anyone else? I had to at least try.

At that moment, the spoon theory was born. I quickly grabbed every spoon on the table; hell I grabbed spoons off of the other tables. I looked at her in the eyes and said “Here you go, you have MS”. She looked at me slightly confused, as anyone would when they are being handed a bouquet of spoons. The cold metal spoons clanked in my hands, as I grouped them together and shoved them into her hands. I explained that the difference in being sick and being healthy is having to make choices or to consciously think about things when the rest of the world doesn’t have to. The healthy have the luxury of a life without choices, a gift most people take for granted. Most people start the day with unlimited amount of possibilities, and energy to do whatever they desire, especially young people. For the most part, they do not need to worry about the effects of their actions.

So for my explanation, I used spoons to convey this point. I wanted something for her to actually hold, for me to then take away, since most people who get sick feel a “loss” of a life they once knew. If I was in control of taking away the spoons, then she would know what it feels like to have someone or something else, in this case MS, being in control. She grabbed the spoons with excitement. She didn’t understand what I was doing, but she is always up for a good time, so I guess she thought I was cracking a joke of some kind like I usually do when talking about touchy topics. Little did she know how serious I would become?

I asked her to count her spoons. She asked why, and I explained that when you are healthy you expect to have a never-ending supply of "spoons". But when you have to now plan your day, you need to know exactly how many “spoons” you are starting with, which you wont know until you wake up. To answer your question we’ll start your day with twelve. It doesn’t guarantee that you might not lose some along the way, but at least it helps to know where you are starting. She counted out the12 spoons. She laughed and said she wanted more. I said no, and I knew right away that this little game would work, when she looked disappointed, and we hadn't even started yet. I’ve wanted more "spoons" for years and haven’t found a way yet to get more, why should she? I also told her to always be conscious of how many she had, and not to drop them because she can never forget she has MS. I asked her to list off the tasks of her day, including the most simple. As, she rattled off daily chores, or just fun things to do; I explained how each one would cost her a spoon. When she jumped right into getting ready for work as her first task of the morning, I cut her off and took away a spoon. I practically jumped down her throat. I said " No! You don’t just get up. You have to crack open your eyes, and then realize you are late. You didn’t sleep well the night before. You have to crawl out of bed, and then you have to make your self something to eat before you can do anything else, because if you don’t, you can't take your medicine, and if you don’t take your medicine you might as well give up all your spoons for today and tomorrow too." I quickly took away a spoon and she realized she hasn’t even gotten dressed yet. Showering cost her a spoon, just for washing her hair and shaving her legs. Reaching high and low that early in the morning could actually cost more than one spoon, but I figured I would give her a break; I didn’t want to scare her right away. Getting dressed was worth another spoon.

I stopped her and broke down every task to show her how every little detail needs to be thought about. You cannot simply just throw clothes on when you are sick. I explained that I have to see what clothes I can physically put on, if my hands hurt that day buttons are out of the question. If my shoulders and back hurt I wont be able to put on a bra. If my hair is falling out I need to spend more time to look presentable, and then you need to factor in another 5 minutes for feeling badly that it took you 2 hours to do all this. I think she was starting to understand when she theoretically didn’t even get to work, and she was left with 6 spoons.

I then explained to her that she needed to choose the rest of her day wisely, since when your “spoons” are gone, they are gone. Sometimes you can borrow against tomorrow’s "spoons", but just think how hard tomorrow will be with less "spoons". I also needed to explain that a person who is sick always lives with the looming thought that tomorrow may be the day that a virus comes, or a treatment reaction, or any number of things that could be very dangerous. So you do not want to run low on "spoons", because you never know when you truly will need them. I didn’t want to depress her, but I needed to be realistic, and unfortunately being prepared for the worst is part of a real day for me.

We went through the rest of the day, and she slowly learned that skipping lunch would cost her a spoon, as well as standing on a train, or even typing at her computer too long. She was forced to make choices and think about things differently. Hypothetically, she had to choose not to run errands, so that she could eat dinner that night. When we got to the end of her pretend day, she said she was hungry. I summarized that she had to eat dinner but she only had one spoon left. If she cooked, she wouldn’t have enough energy to clean the pots. If she went out for dinner, she might be too tired to drive home safely. Then I also explained, that I didn’t even bother to add into this game, that she was so dizzy, that cooking was probably out of the question anyway. So she decided to make soup, it was easy. I then said it is only 7pm, you have the rest of the night but maybe end up with one spoon, so you can do something fun, or clean your apartment, or do chores, but you can’t do it all.

I rarely see her emotional, so when I saw her upset I knew maybe I was getting through to her. I didn’t want my friend to be upset, but at the same time I was happy to think finally maybe someone understood me a little bit. She had tears in her eyes and asked quietly “How do you do it? Do you really do this everyday?” I explained that some days were worse then others; some days I have more spoons then most. But I can never make it go away and I can’t forget about it, I always have to think about it.

I handed her a spoon I had been holding in reserve. I said simply, “I have learned to live life with an extra spoon in my pocket, in reserve. You need to always be prepared” It’s hard, the hardest thing I ever had to learn is to slow down, and not do everything. I fight this to this day. I hate feeling left out, having to choose to stay home, or to not get things done that I want to.

I wanted her to feel that frustration. I wanted her to understand, that everything everyone else does comes so easy, but for me it is one hundred little jobs in one. I need to think about the weather, my temperature that day, and the whole day's plans before I can attack any one given thing. When other people can simply do things, I have to attack it and make a plan like I am strategizing a war. It is in that lifestyle, the difference between being sick and healthy. It is the beautiful ability to not think and just do. I miss that freedom. I miss never having to count "spoons."

After we were emotional and talked about this for a little while longer, I sensed she was sad. Maybe she finally understood. Maybe she realized that she never could truly and honestly say that she understands. But at least now she might not complain so much when I can't go out for dinner some nights, or when I never seem to make it to her house and she always has to drive to mine. I gave her a hug when we walked out of the diner. I had the one spoon in my hand and I said, “Don’t worry. I see this as a blessing. I have been forced to think about everything I do. Do you know how many spoons people waste everyday? I don’t have room for wasted time, or wasted “spoons” and I chose to spend this time with you.”

Ever since this night, I have used the spoon theory to explain my life to many people. In fact, my family and friends refer to spoons all the time. It has been a code word for what I can and cannot do. Once people understand the spoon theory they seem to understand me better, but I also think they live their life a little differently too. I think it isn’t just good for understanding MS, but anyone dealing with any disability or illness. Hopefully, they don’t take so much for granted or their life in general. I give a piece of myself, in every sense of the word when I do anything. It has become an inside joke. I have become famous for saying to people jokingly that they should feel special when I spend time with them, because they have one of my "spoons".

Paint it red

2008-04-23T22:22:00.014+12:00

I had this vision, after the oldies moved out, that I wanted to redecorate upstairs and jazz things up in ways I haven't done before. I decided on a feature wall in each room some different colour to what a wall usually is and everything else white.

So I started cleaning up the lounge after 20ish years of screws in walls, nails in walls, push pins in walls, shelves added, shelves removed, holes where the chair went into the wall, another fucking big hole where something else went and 5 really ugly 70's dark woodgrain Melteca kitchen cupboard doors over some cupboards added at some time... you get the picture, eh. I've been working away at it for a month or more, cos ya got to prep, eh, and then instead of saving it for him like I was going to, thought "bugger it" and I spent a hundred and bought dark red paint, and lots of white paint. He said he didn't want it, after all.

The next day, the old boy brought back a huge suitcase full of some of Mum's rugs that she used to make to keep herself from going completely bananas once she became all but housebound, and inside was a neat rug with a dark red border, green ivy twining on a white background and I thought "wall hanging on the red wall". Two days later I realised that she'd sewed a pocket cross what is obviously the top of the mat for to slide a rod through, to hang up on a wall, as a wall hanging...

Now, I got a dark red wall. I got no holes in the walls. I got dark green window and door frames, soon will have dark green skirting boards and I got a real hate on for gib-stopping and sanding and painting.

I never did like painting. Wasn't to keen on sanding, either. Or gib-stopping.

But I got a new cave!!

And what a cave it is, or will be very soon. Then I'll move on to the big bedroom and create a guest room, so finally I can have guests and offer them a bed. I reckon doing it all will take me 6 months. If I suddenly cease to post, I've probably fallen asleep in a can of paint and pigmented myself to death.

It should save on embalming, not that you'd embalm someone destined for the big spit roast up at the Crem, would you?

PS actually getting the red paint is a post all of its own...

Great potential

2008-04-22T22:31:00.006+12:00

I had my road-trip-by-myself to Waikato today for my evoked potentials test and it was lots of fun, window down, stereo up fun. It reminded me of the old days, seven years gone, when I used to beat a track over the hill at night in the Legend, music loud, moonlight shining through the open sunroof, doob in hand heading for Jon's place and a weekend of fun. And no kids, not if you didn't count the cat.

The places I go now seem so much more intense, other-worldly. Day has replaced night; electrodes and pulsing checkerboard lights have replaced nookie and takeaways;

clonazepam has replaced doobs; Primeras have replaced Legends and Commodores. Parking on the front lawn and wandering inside has been replaced by parking in a wobbly walker car park in a car parking building, walking 10 miles around a rabbit warren and paying for the privilege. Leaving your clothes on at the hospital has replaced taking them off in broad daylight at the Hamilton SPCA (don't ask...)

Abnormal has replaced normal. A new normal has been born.

PS my 17 year old daughter calls me Eileen (which happens to be my middle name) after I have had my clonazepam because it makes me lean off to the right all the time and I sort of fall over sideways. She gets a real kick out of it. Little bitch. I'm glad someone else is having fun.

Hermitically sealed

2008-04-19T22:47:00.007+12:00

I have succeeded in creating for myself a new cave. Well, I'm in the process of it; I found a corner computer desk and repainted it dark green; I've bought dark red paint for one wall in the lounge upstairs; I've bought copious quantities of white paint for the rest of the walls and cabinets in the upstairs lounge; lifted the carpet in there and presently have it all nicely set up relax and bathe in the moonlight whilst bombed on clonazepam and caffeine, all washed down with Lion Red and cheese crackers with peanut butter on them and a hot wheat sack.

I thought the peanut butter was a bit OTT too, actually.

But up there, in the dark and the quiet with the stereo pumping through the floor beneath one's feet, one can feel quite paleolithic; I always was partial to furs and hitting things with lumps of wood. But now I have this strange urge to create a painted circular hobbit-front-door type of arrangement on the outside of the double doors at the top of the stairs...

Shhh... was that another marble dropping? Or maybe just the wind ruffling the feathers of a red Norwegian flag, currently growing some 20 foot off the ground in my bamboo...

I wish this fucking clonazepam would stop the spasm in my left leg, I'm so over it all.

Off to horspiddle again

2008-04-16T16:23:00.007+12:00

I have an appointment just arrived for my next lot of tests over the hill at Waikato. This lot are visual evoked potentials, where they do some shit with mirrors and revolting doors and measure where stuff is going in the brain and which neural pathways are out to lunch.

I think it's the last time I have to travel for tests, all that's left are a new set of MRI films and I'm pretty sure they will do those at the hospital here.

Eliminate the negative

2008-04-04T07:35:00.002+13:00

Pastor's sons jailed for 'vigilante' attack

Three sons of a Murupara church minister have been jailed for a "vigilante" attack on a man they wrongly accused of raping their sister.

Vincent, 29, Blaize, 27, and Trinity Akuhata, 20, appeared in Rotorua District Court yesterday for sentencing on charges of injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm to Delmar Coates on June 10 last year.

The three had pleaded guilty and were each jailed for three years. They are sons of Murupara Elim Church pastor Te Ta'ahe Akuhata.

Outside the court, Pastor Akuhata said the family were extremely sorry for the actions of his sons.

Attempts had been made to meet Mr Coates, a distant nephew, for a restorative justice meeting but he had refused.

"We have been hoping and praying for reconciliation from the victim to meet us but he does not want to."

Pastor Akuhata said the family did not support what had happened.

"At the end of the day it is the families of the men who will suffer."

He said he would continue to pray for his sons while they were in prison.

The court was told the three men had been to a party and the next morning were told by their sister that she had been raped.

They went back to the address of the party and were told Mr Coates was the person involved.

The three men forced their way into Mr Coates' house in Murupara and beat him around the head and body with a baseball bat, in front of his partner and 18-month-old son.

Mr Coates' partner was hit on the arm when she went to grab her son, who walked in on the beating.

They later found out Mr Coates was innocent of the claim.

All three men took full responsibility for the attack despite Trinity being the only one of the group to hit Mr Coates with the bat.

Mr Coates was in hospital for two days with a broken nose, rib fractures and bruised kidney.

Lawyers Mo Dorset, for Blaize Akuhata, and Jonathon Briscoe, for Vincent and Trinity Akuhata, gave oral and written submissions for home detention.

The maximum sentence for the offence is 10 years' imprisonment.

In sentencing, Judge Jocelyn Munro said the three men had realised their mistake soon after the attack and were remorseful.

They were all employed fulltime, had families and had no previous convictions.

However, Judge Munro said the men were intoxicated and had "made a compulsive decision blinded by rage to hurt Mr Coates".

"It was a vigilante-type attack where the men took the law into their own hands for revenge."

The attack was premeditated, and "completely and utterly unprovoked", she said, and those aggravating factors meant home detention could not be considered.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4463261a11.html

Speechless...

English humour

2008-04-03T22:59:00.002+13:00

Blame Tigger for this link. It's a ripper...

which of course leads to

and winds up with

and

and of course

Don't say I never have anything entertaining to look at here.

On Silent Wings

2008-04-02T23:13:00.007+13:00

Autumn is here - Autumn of the Soul. The days are shorter, darker, colder.

I feel blah. I'm sleeping; I'm sore; I'm tired and I'm fed up and just don't know what the Hell I want. Except to turn the master bedroom upstairs into a cave and move in. It's a shame the Oldies tooK Rudolph with them; he would have fitted right in with my design thoughts.

But I was cheered up a lot by plugging in my sister's external hard drive tonight and retrieving the rip she did from my Tina Turner in Amsterdam VHS tape - I couldn't find the DVD anywhere and I've been sat here for ages remembering why I'd looked so long for it. Because it's a ripper.

Then I recorded the live version of my favourite Tina song - Silent Wings.

Me and my wheatsack can go to bed happy now, something small but precious has been restored to me.

Maybe any day above ground IS a good day...

Spitting guinea pigs

2008-04-01T23:45:00.003+13:00

I had an interesting call from a lady representing a research group investigating MS yesterday. It was to follow up to a questionnaire sent out that I never got around to filling in and returning, mainly because of the irrelevance to me of so many of the questions; the small size of the type; the difficulty in following the document and sheer can't be bothered. I'm becoming somewhat apathetic, you understand *nod*.

After we had chatted for a bit and basically done my questionnaire over the phone, she asked me if I would participate in another research project - to collect a saliva sample from 2,000 Kiwi MS people, to be added to another 8,000 other samples taken internationally for the purpose of DNA testing looking for features of commonality where ethnicity, environment etc are concerned.

So i said sure, send me the jar and I'll spit in it for ya.

Then I told her about the research project I took part in a few years ago involving a thesis and testing for cognitive changes and lapses in PWMS. She thought she might follow up that researcher's conclusions for inclusion in her own doctoral submission.

I could have a new job as a research guinea pig. Shame the pay is lousy, but the drugs might be good.

Happy April Fools day - I will post the BOP Times annual pisstake later, if it's any good.

Of Rime and Reason

2008-03-31T21:48:00.004+13:00

My sister took this pic last weekend, somewhere between The harbour and the Mayor.

It's a juvenile albatross. It spent some time not far from the boat and some good photo opportunities.

Oh to be that beautiful creature - the places he will go, Goddess willing.

And speaking of beautiful.... in my next life, I want to drive one of these.

Thanks for passing that on, Flattie, one more thing I can't do in the here and now lol

Got to prep

2008-03-30T02:21:00.003+13:00

I had a rough day yesterday. I know, situation normal. But I was tired enough and sore enough and had enough by 9pm so I took my pills and wandered off to Lala Land, followed shortly by bed and sleep. A nice, early night.

At half-past-God-knows-what-time, someone woke me up to tell me he was "going to bed and Blazing Saddles is on TV". Now it's 2.30am, the pills are not doing what they need to and me and the dog are still awake. She is such a noisy bitch, I can't win.

I didn't win Powerball, either. It's just not my night, is it? Oh well, next week is 18 Million. Someone might just get lucky. Maybe I should make use of these wakeful hours to make up my Powerball shopping list. Just to prove I'm ready and able to take on the task of taking guardianship of so much wealth.

Well it simply wouldn't do for it all to go to someone unprepared, now, would it?

Calling Pam

2008-03-29T00:20:00.003+13:00

Clonazepam apparently has a long half life and is 20 times as powerful as diazepam. Because of the addictive nature of it I'm only allowed 2 x 0.5mg a day. Two isn't cutting the mustard, stopping the backache, de-spasming the spasm. In short, I still fucking hurt. But if I take the slow release codeine, I get weird and woozy and not fit to function, or cook, or drive. But I'm sleepy anyway when I take them and people keep waking me up. It's annoying.

So, take the painkillers and the antispasmodic and be trashed all the time, or put up with the pain from the spasm and just take extra pain relief. All I want to do is sleep, and I can't lie down without it hurting.

Mind you, I can't play the piano, either, and that pains me too.

I also nearly killed Nushie yesterday by treating an abscess with Tea Tree Oil, something I have used on her many times in the past. This time her whole face swelled up and became hot and solid and she was very distressed. 4 minutes of googling showed that I had 2 safe remedies already in the house and now she is a little swollen still but appears to be feeling much better and ate a big tea. I won't be putting that on her again.

It pains me that I caused her such pain. She loves me anyway.

(This post has been edited 17 times, those clonazepam are a typo-bitch)

Ad nauseum

2008-03-28T00:12:00.000+13:00

I've been naughty and neglected you again, haven't I?

I am bored; I am boring; I am a boring dumbarse blogger.

Apparently.

I don't care - a blog fulfills something lacking from other avenues of my life. Probably the basics.

On being unburdened

2008-03-22T00:02:00.001+13:00

I have been thinking since I had the lumbar puncture. I had plenty of time while that fluid dripped out to set in locomotion a far reaching train of thought.

Just how far will I go to fight MS, and at whose cost?

So far, it's cost my sister in terms of $$, my father in terms of supplying a car at short notice, the kids in terms of resources when I'm running off to visit neurologists in other cities, Wonderboy in terms of time and support trotting me to appointments out of town (on top of what he has done to my section, all in the name of friendship) and incur the dog (and the house account) pain when she gets run over looking for me on my travels to see other neurologists.

That's a lot of burden, eh, all so that I can have a future full of "fillers". I get to be sick, every one else gets to pay for it.

But I also get to have the frozen marshmallow Easter Eggs :0)

Nailed it

2008-03-21T22:50:00.002+13:00

Jesus walked into a motel, slapped 3 nails on the counter and said "Can you put me up for the night?".

OK, it's old. And not incredibly amusing. But worst of all, it had no chocolate in it.

Today I had chocolate and chocolate hot cross buns. And beer, pills and a busy day attempting top organise shit.

Happy Jesus on a Stick Day.

Montage

2008-03-12T22:17:00.007+13:00

So, not only do I piss off and leave you for a few days while getting oldies moving house sorted, but when I return it's to bring you video links.

This one is relevant to the most recent silence - moving the baby grand piano from upstairs

and this one is the most breathtaking piece of artistry I've seen in a long while

glumbert - Women in Film (with bloody advertising embedded)

Today I finally got over feeling abandoned. It was about new beginnings, new objectives and new boundaries. And pretending that they aren't sticking a needle in my spine next Tuesday. Oh, and I've upped my new meds twice - they weren't working very well. I can't go much higher without risk of addiction, and being addicted to smoking is addiction enough, thanks.

I'm too pooped to post properly.