Oi!

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

Chapter 7 - The Daily Tissue.

RatFinks and Rad Cars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Programming heroes

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?