i have no title yet ...

 ... very similar to those comedy talk fests on the ABC or SBS in that way ... I may choose a title by the end of the post ... perhaps ... maybe ...

I have a new laptop.

I have internet.

I am struggling to type due to the arthritis in my fingers which is making me a little cross.

Funnily enough crossing my fingers is something I can no longer do.  I still casually mention crossing my fingers and then fail to carry through.  So not really gotten used to it yet.

Typing used to be my preferred mode of communication.  It whooshed more smoothly than speech. I also do not yet have a mouse and separate keyboard.  I am a bit crap with the little pad one fingers like a figure skater and have only managed right hand mouse clicking by luck with my eyes shut and a hopeful frame of mind. Not that I have ever fingered a figure skater. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Although I probably wouldn't be very dexterous if it cropped up in my near future.  sorry.

I have bought a hippo lamp and a brown sofa and I have fully intended to finish moving furniture about for about a month so that I can walk around my flat without having to turn the light on and concentrate hard.  I fully meant to do some of that today.

I did not do that.

Tomorrow is a new day but.  I may yet do that.  All hope is not yet lost.

... sigh .... 2020

 Really, this is an unspeakable  year.   

My father passed away.  My other sister has cancer and is doing chemo ( thou ovarian cancer caught early, which is actually awesome, because you don't normally get to catch it early - so actually probablly great)

There have been other gastly things which I've obviously blocked from my memory cause I can't remember them off the top of my head.

One of my musician crushes passed away a few days ago and I only found out this afternoon. 

He once passed unnecessarily closely to my chair at a gig in Brisbane and I got to leer at his rear from an inch away, and then proceded to say sexually inappropriate things on line *smacks wrist bad sammy*.  One of a handful of people whom my occasionally unruly hormones and enthusiasms inspired me to fly for to see.  I even went out in Townsville, where I never feel particularly safe to be inebriated on my own.

RIP Mike Noga

Ps. Could all the other people I adore please take very good care of themselves for at least the next six months.  I'm usually pretty resilient,  but this year is testing me.

Busy busy busy bee

I wish i was in quarantine!
I've wanted a couple of weeks off for years.
8 years to be exact.
Ever since i started working casual.
I have no self control.
Havent managed to save up enough to have two weeks off.
Sigh.
Probably i could if i would, but i cant so i dont.

I've books and boxes wot need sorting and clothes to be bagged, curtains to wash and gardens to dig.

I am quite jealous of the older patients who are mostly self isolating who are telling me about all the gardening they are doing.
Bastards!

Self isolating is my normal state of being except for going out for breakfast.

I sent a picture of my attempt at making my own breakfast to my favourite closed local cafe and they laughed and laughed.

I know when i must be looking particularly frazzled at work, because some very nice person, who has been very patient, will quietly wait for a momentary pause between phone calls, which are few, to tell me something nice or uplifting, like ... "you're doing a very good job", or giving us a random box of chocolates. People are very nice.

A large number of people are now ending conversations or phone calls with "stay safe".

We ran out of face masks for the receptionists at work a couple of weeks ago, but Townsville doesn't really have many cases and the risks are low, so I'm not worried.

I await with interest to see how long the hand sanitiser lasts.  If it keeps on like it is we may make it too the mid or end of April.  I think the next delivery is May.

However, we are doing lots more phone consults now so maybe it will all even out in the end.

I am somewhat more stressed about peoples inability to read signs.

We have red tape.
We have wet floor signs.
We have additional signs taped to the wet floor signs.
We have signs taped to the counter.
We have signs taped to the doors.
We have a large whiteboard in the middle of the doorway with signs as people come in and signs on the walls.
We have lots of signs everywhere, and social media might even count as signs in the air?

We are a plague strewn version of Dr Seuss, but ... we still cannot stop people from leaning on the counter to get in close to talk to us about how they don't want to have to wait because its not safe to linger long inside medical centres with all the sick people.

Easter weekend and i have two days off in a row and hoping to trick myself into being a domestic goddess by talking about all the things i plan to accomplish ...  as if the only thing stopping me being tidy is circumstances and not some illogical mental kink, or maybe a more plain and simple explanation such as lazy lack of interest.

I moved my bed into the longeroom and only rise to go to kichen or bathroom.  The cats love it.  Much snuggling and cuddling, but i really must clean the front rooms and move the bed back into the bedroom, even if it is just for the exercise the five or more steps would achieve, and the sitting up in a chair to watch television which would probably be gooderer for my digestion.

Your feeble domestic intentions are no match
for the dark side.  Leave the bed where it is.
Go on about your business. 

Farewell 2019 Greetings 2020

Fare thee well year ...
With all your foolish virtual self harming thoughts
Punishing maybes
And
Possibilities

I hear the echos of fucks
That resound from blocks away
Both joyous
And
Not

A new year

A year that was not anything
A year that passed in a heart beat
A year in which the heart seemed to beat too much
Too fast
And sometimes not at all

It all evened out in the end
And counted for nothing

I am not sure the year counted at all
It cetainly didn't really feel like it happened

Some things are more 'more' than they were
But some are less?

Some closer to death
But i feel more distant

Mum had a stroke
Dad has Alzheimers
The house a street away sounds like a jolly domestic
Which is all very confusing

I think i feel more positive?
Determined
Less plastic

Mums is mostly herself
Just tires easily
Dad is sedated

Turning eleven of the clock
and only three or four houses are loud now
Happy louds
Wa heys and woos
Instead of ings

Its amazing how far an ing carries.

Further than embers

I am on the cooking channel
I am reading a childrens book
I am trying not to think about my life

It almost would be a relief to watch the bushfire news
(Which is a silly selfish thought)
(And both true and untrue at the same time)
(I am not so selfabsorbed as to trump tragedy)
(But selfabsorbed enough to fancy it for awhile)

Which makes me flash back to a scene from Grosse Point Blank
What an awesome film that was
... for a while ...

My new years resolution...
... apart from quitting alcohol,
Eating healthy,
Exercising and loosing weight) ...
Is to watch Grosse Point Blank on a regular basis
And attempt to learn the words off by heart!

I don't expect it to make me a more complete being

Probably I'd have to watch Lady Hawke for that, ay?

Edit:  you know it really drives me nuts when I can't work out what people are saying!  I refuse to put on dark clothing and crawl closer to their house just to hear. Why! Why did I not invest in one of them there cheap directional devices!  This happens every year.

Okay Fuckit!!!
That is my new NEW years resolution!
Directional fucking listening devices!

Fucking drives me nuts!

Ing ing ing ing ing

Edit edit:  and now all the neighbour hoood dogs are taking turns to bark.

And i can hear weird crashing fence noises
Close by ...
... but take reassurence in that they reported arresting the man in my neighbourhood this morning responsibe for a violent home invasion and crime spree, not really, argh!

Did i mention i missed most of 'Dinner for one'?
I love that show
I watch it every year
You should google it

Try and drink along with it, ha ha
Its a challenge!

They have been wooing periodically for hours
I just wish they sounded happier about it.

Twenty minutes to go.

Edit edit edit:  did i tell you already?  One of my first employers clients told my boss i sounded like a dead horse on the phone.  He called me into his office and made me practice sounding more cheerful.  He randomly called into the office over the next few weeks and after I'd answered the call would bark "SOUND MORE CHEERFUL".

This is what i want to tell the house a block away.

Twelve minutes too go

Edit efit editititditargh for heavens sake! Its still five mintes to go and they satarted the countdown to early and mucked it up counting down from ten to five.  Far ou brussel sprout.

Okay now they are wooing again.
They got the time right cause they can hear the fireworks going off in the distance...

... HAPPY NEW YEAR CUNTS     WOOO HOOO!!!!!!  ....

How does one spell tarry? Tary? Tari?

Advance!
Tarry not amidst the discarded clutter and detritus
Cardboard mountains of consumed tv dinners and too many drinks
But go!  Go forth!
Battle overflowing litter trays stinking of piss.

Face the frequently forgotten and affeared
Tray hidden beneath the back stairs
All to oft' left long
And wilfully misremembered when done so.

Oh, if only I could discourse a river such as Hercules
To wash before me this feline faeces

Be brave little cat mother!
(Not so little in form,
But little in resolve)

Suck deep of breathe and hold
And triumphant undefeated, discard
Behold litter all clean and new
To be promptly christened with urine and poo.


Ive been watching a midsummers nights dream on dvd. Helen mirren as Queeb Titannia.

Drags feet reluctantly ...

Finally went to a doctor about my malfunctioning wrist.
Haven't seen the report yet, but from the pictures I don't think it's good.

My wrist.

Normal wrist

The picture of my wrist looks like someone has run the smug function over it;
Or it's dissolved;
Or something.

Still ... it makes me feel better about considering it an ouchy.
I always worry that I am just being a sook :)

But ...

... i was only at work for six hours!
Why am i so tired?

After struggling with hunger, since I'd only snacked a bit since waking, I struggled to organise sustenance after work finished.  I was too hungry to buy food.  The decision was too hard.  I tried to tell myself that maybe I should just drink lots of water instead. (Or perhaps wine? Or a combination thereof!)

Luckily I  played Augie March the other day and had left over tadzike sittting languishing in the fridge.

It inspired me to get on my bike (scooter) and buy some eye fillet and rice.  (After I'd played Pennywhistle a couple of times.  Probably it should be mandatory listening in psych wards or something.  Prosac for the ears)

Have since consumed something particularly nice based around sauteed garlic in beef juices, wine, tadzeeke (howsoever it is actually spelt) and also fresh tadzeeke.

By golly, Augie March truly are the breath of life, yes?

One of the new doctors at work is both awesome, like the dragon warrior, and beautiful.

 She couldn't bring herself too leave before I , the lowly lackey, whose lot it is to clean up after all others.

The irony is fi-er-ce since I am one of the messiest persons in existence .

One day you will be watching a programme where they are cleaning out a cluttered messy dirty crammed unbelievably unlivable house like wot you see on those special programs they create to make OCD people feel better about themselves, and be able to say "I KNOW THAT PERSON", and yet ... I am the one swearing about people who cannot be bothered to put the donated magazines back on the table they are presumably sitting next to, since tbey have dumped the unclosed magazine UNDER THE TABLE OR THE CHAIR NEXT TO IT!!!!!!

I'm pretty sure its okay to use multiple exclamation marks in this instance.
And capital letters.
I'm pretty sure I'm not insane yet?
Although, I don't hold proof in writing.

I think people deliberately placing free magazines for their convenience under the table they are supposed to reside on is, like, some kind of war crime.
Or mental torture.
Or something.

I really, cannot belueve how cross it makes me.

I leave the cellophane wrapper off my microwave meal on the rug next to my bedroom chair until Tuesday night, when I ruffle tbrough my flat gathering all the rubbish for bin night.

I'm not fussy.

It used to just give me a pleasant glow of superiority , but I'm past that now.
I've been a receptionist too long.

My world view has narrowed down to the specific wavelength of 'have they bothered to actually close the magazine or are they just abandoning it on their vacant chair crunched back on the unfinished crossword puzzle they were half heartedly attempting out of stultifying boredom even though they don't like crossword puzzles".

I spend time trying to convince myself that it is worth the effort to actally close the magazine properly and make a neatish possibly inviting pile for the next person.

I very nealy just took them all away last weekend.
I wanted to put the in the cleaning cupboard where no one could mess them up.





Maybe I should go play some more Augie March?
Something soothing like Vineyard or Heartbeat and Sails?

The cracks are starting to show ...

... first time of mothers visit i called on a sober driver for the evening.  I am not coping with the continued explosure to parental presence.

Mother was in the kitchen sobbing over imagined slights by my eldest sister. Mother has been here since 6 January, but eldest is apparently still supposed to make a fuss of greeting her each time they meet even though they don't get on.

Maybe because they don't get on.
Sigh.

Plus we then played a game she was not participating in and she can't stand not being the centre of attention.

She seemed pretty cranky about watching a video featuring her grand-daughter, probably because she wasn't in it.  We were boring her apparently.   She is such an unnatural grandmother.

Some minor sledging earlier in the evening that I was cruel like my (eldest) sister because I crowed a little over being able to open the jar of garlic with my arthrtic joints when healthy people couldn't. 

My (diseased) sister thinks things are going okay this visit, but thats cause mum is savaging people when she ain't around.

Tipsy mother is now advising me I am the go to person after my (diseased) sister is gone. (She really does not want to be at my mercy. I have none left for her.)

She was weird last night too, like she was tipping me off that others would be elsewhere this morning if I wanted to spend some alone time with my (diseased) sister.  I think shes forgotten I live here?

I can see her Chop anytime I want.

Its not like she is dying in the next three days.
She isn't dying at all.
Barring unforseen complications.

Things are just going to be rather unpleasant for the next six/twelve months or so, with the possibility of recurrents down the track.

My spellcheck has disappeared.

I may have just indicated a repeat attack of dehydrated grapes.
I'm pretty sure I can take out a few wisened grapes if they get stropy.
I've already killed a grapevine without even trying.
I sup the juice of the grape like it be water.
I have got the grapes totally covered, be they wrathful or not.

Just not up to coping with my mother.

Don't know when she is going home.
She may be waiting for Choppys next set of tests.
PETscan and CT scan of brain, just to make sure is primary and not secondary.
Hopefully they happen next week.

Please let her go home soon.
Please!

Edit:  funnily she never counts her boy children. If I had to chose someone other then Choppy, I'd chose my not so little, little brother.  He is handsome, sucessful, thoughtful, organised and considerate.  Mum only obsesses about the girls.  Maybe, in her mind, the boys don't belong to her. Maybe she thinks of them as belonging to dad?  But really, she has always been very dismissive of males in general.

Her loss, ay?

My non-diseased sister's ...

... earring.

My not so-little little brother who flew up to surprise my diseased sister.

My nephew who is looking a bit elvish.

Photos ..

Peacock wot hangs out at my sisters house.

He is losing his old tail and growing another.
We search the yard for feathers/treasure whene'er we come over.

And pictures of gum leaves I took yesterday, after noticing the catapillars.

... and also,

... mother has only been here for a day and a half, and its all been fine, but for some reason my eye tick wot i used to get in Sydney  when I was working long hours has started all ready.

I am spending all Monday  (my birthday) with her to expatriate  (sp?) my guilt for forgetting to call on her birthday. So far the plan is to spend all day driving around all the new suburbs I've yet to see.

What if I die before I hear the new album?
I may die of boredom.
Or kill my self.

Or kill my mother.

What was I thinking?

I was thinking i am a bad daughter who is counting down the years left based on when my grandmother's died.

Considering the effusive language being used by my parent in recent phone calls, so is she.

I am going to be very nice to my mother this year.
I am going to be very nice to my  mother this year.
I am going etc.

I am chanting to myself
A positive affirmation.

I can totaly do this.
Only it is so  much easier to do drunk than sober.
I can be quite chaty when tipsy.

My eye is still twitching.

WARNING - Sad post alert - Last saturday ...

... my beautiful Pease Blossom ...
  (a boy, just to clarify)
((my main cat, just to be more clarifcific)) ...
passed away, convulsing in my arms.
He had renal failure and was not robust in his illnesss. Many times choosing not to eat.

If i were rich he would have spent weeks on drips and bi-weekly blood tests and over $100 monthly pills.

Such was not possible.

He would hide if a car pulled up in front of a neighbours house.
When at the vets he would need to be force fed unless i could visit, for he would not eat or defect if i were not present.

He always slept on my hip, or back or stomach.
He would be on my lap if i were still.
Or on my back if i so much as leant slightly forward.
He liked back-surfing.
I would take him on trips around the house like so.

He waged a war with the Tablet, where he won if he sat closer to my face than the screen.

I had to work last Saturday.
I work every Saturday now because no one else wants to work saturdays, even though they know i would like to have two days off in a row at least once a month. Even though i cover all their shifts whenever they don't want to work them.

The manager was on leave, so i didn't feel able to not work.

Blossom waited until i came home.

I rinsed his mouth out under the tap and bundled him in a blanket, stroking his poor head.

He seemed to give me a purr, though that could well have been my overstrained imagination.

I cradled his corpse for far longer than was probably necessary because i couldn't differentiate between the blood pulsing in my ears and a heartbeat.

He is currently in my freezer pending a decision on burial.

Its been raining alot.
The irony is fierce.
It rarely rains here.
We have been on level three water restrictions for months.
The radio station personalities are calling Townsville "the Dome".

My yard is underwater, so burial with commerative garden is unfeasible at present.

I am very sad.
He was a very nice cat.
He was only nine.

What is this looming thing?

It is cyclone Debbie.

Soooo not an intimidating name. Why couldn't they at least rename her Deborah when they decided she might be more than cat 3?

How embarrassing would it be to have all ones earthly goods destroyed by Debbie?

Probably i am being insulting to Debbies.
Probably they are a devastating force of nature too, when they want to be, hey?

I just wish work was closed like the schools.

I predict I shall arrive at a surgery with few doctors and spend all morning cancelling appointments (to much abuse, because that is a receptionists lot in life), until such time as i have to drive home in unsafe conditions and be unable to buy any last minute necessities i may require, because sensible businesses closed at midday, so that employees were left with plenty of time to make their homes safe with all the things one does not do till the last minute, like bringing the bins into the house, etc.

In my case, my bins into my kitchen and my scooter into the laundry.

I plan to spend most of tuesday drunk.
(If i can get to a bottle shop in time with the meagre pickings left of my pay after ordering a skip so I  could clean up the block).
Yasi was an all night affair.
Debbie does daytime

Hopefully, Debbie does not blow Townsville ... away.

My poor brother in Mackay will probably have it much worse, though I have great faith in his partner Dianne to have done all sensible insurancy things.  She is much more organised then I  am.  I wish I had a Dianne.

Dianne could totally take Debbie.

Pre-cyclone picture, all blushing pink and orange fire.

Toss ya for it?

A new year ...

I am feeling unreasonably sad.

Can only put it down to the stress of so much family time.
I am used to a lot more alone time than I am getting.

Bad thoughts tend to drift through my mind when I am scootering at the best of times, but have been crying by the time I've reached work every day this week.

Probably a good thing it was a short week for me, hey?

Was nearly starting to feel human again with the new medication and forced healthy living (not supposed to drink on methotrexate) but my willpower has erroded over the month in the face of daily offers of drinks, even though I  asked them not to.  I can only say no so many times, before it changes to 'just the one', to 'Hell YES! Liqour me up'.  Do you think they'll  stop offering me drinks when i turn yellow with liver/kidney failure? No it would be my fault for not saying no.

It will be very good when the parent goes and I only see my family for an hour or so or less once a week, sigh.

Good news is there is a definate date now.
8 January.

Concerned 2017 is going to be as 'not good' as 2016 and 2015.
What if mother going home is the highlight of the year?

No.
I vow to do/have/experience something better than just the absence of my mother this year!

I will plant at least one garden bed- if it ever rains and takes us off level 3 (soon to be level 4) water restrictions, damnit.

I will look for a new job!

I will tidy up and organise my home so that it is actually comfortable and not just spend all my spare time in bed feeling a bit crap.

Of course, if I win lotto this week it would make all this a great deal easier and I wouldn't  have to look for work at all, which would be very nice, at least for a while.

Cheers *clinks wine glass*


Edit: taint all doom and gloom. Beat my stepfather at backgammon four times in a row today with some crazy multiple throws of doubles. Five in a row!

December curse has kicked in early ...

Rheumatologist visit lovely and will start methotrexate Monday.

Came home to bill from Centrelink from 2010, as they are auditing database s and the group certificate for that job appears to be based on dates payslips processed rather than dates worked however, finally got back into old email and still have the payslips so just need to get in and appeal the decision. Unsure how long or easy that will be.

Newish scooter wot turns one year old January has suddenly ceased to function half way home.

Rental inspection two weeks away and I am working six days a week in lead up too when I would usually take time off.

Left hand is swollen and don't work so good and new medication will take a month or so to kick in.

Mother is arriving early this year and will be here 2nd December.

I am having a very last large drink and battling the urge to just kick the sh*t out of the scooter and set it on fire.

Burn Baby, burn ... like my Christmas.

Bah

I soooo wanted to tell her to pull her head in and stop behaving like a pork chop, but you cant really. Besides, ive never had an authoritive voice.

We added her to the wait list, even though we had stopped taking patients due to the very long waits due to only having one doctor working tonight, and advised her there was only one doctor and it was likely to be an hour or so wait; because she sobbed and said it was urgent.

Then she proceeded to rant and rave about having to wait, and how unprofessional we were, and apparently were 'treating her like a dog'. She wrote out a complaint and generally wailed and nashed teeth.

It was only half an hour and she didnt have an appointment and she got her script ahead of other people who had been waiting longer.

Her young children sat outside in the car the whole time.
I envied them.

Tomorrow I shall have to defend my actions which consisted of assuring her she would be seen as soon as the doctor finished with the person he was with and offering her a glass of water.

It hangs like a wren with its neck rung ...

It is entirely my own fault ...
It seemed like such a good idea at the time ...

I decided to get a sofa bed.

But i wake in the night pillowless.
Headboards are really undervalued in daily life.
Who invented headboards?
And the foot of beds?
Feckin' geniusesesessesssss thats who!

I may over compensate in my next nightly incarnation (incarceration?) with a day bed. Bound on three sides, though i must admit I rather fancy something I could raise a fourth side on ... cot-like though it would be.

All-in-all I do still yearn for an early in life idea of converting a double papazan (sp?) into a nest for myself, but cannot help thinking I would lose out to the cats, as they would have ample opportunity to barr their spot whilst I am at work.

Shoulds are on my mind

Mary-cat and Blossom are both trying to fit on the chair behind me.
I appreciate their dedication and effort, even though it means I cant lean back.

Its not a very good chair at the moment anyway. The cushions had an unfortunate encounter with an incontinent Bubba-cat (may he rest in peace). I keep meaning to measure things up and get myself some new ones, but I never quite get round to it.

I shouldnt be sitting around anyway.

I'm thinking Flowers ...

I am working on my next melbourne cup day work outfit.

I went very lowkey last year with just a necklace, and in consequence, missed the entire race restraining a potentially violent, not in the best place, patient who was taken away by the police.

This year I plan to be excessive, so that even if I feel I should, I won't be dressed to be of use.  It was the first melbourne cup I've missed since Just-a-dash.

I am contemplating my hairdo/hat situation ...

Eureka

Oh by golly, by lad! There is a second season of Blandings, which I need to lay my grubby paws on before Christmas.

I was struggling for mother friendly entertainment - besides which I LOVED the first series.  What little treasures some english persons are, and I must admit to a deep and, so far, unshakable crush on Tiomothy Spall since seeing series one.

Sigh.

There is talk of a third series this year.

Perhaps god loves me afterall ( even though I ticked no religion on the census ).