A lot can happen in two months, it just doesn't usually...
Since my last blog...
* On the 8th April my brother told me he proposed to his g/f, they'll be married before the year ends. (I managed to offer my congrats rather than condolences!)
* On the 17th April I became an Aunty (again) to a gorgeous little girl! (So I made a cake)
* On the 27th April I found out I would be an Aunty yet again before year end! (I didn't scream in horror... nor delight but it's good)
* Sis is still living here and we still haven't had a fight! (But i have snapped at her a few times pfftt 18yr olds)
(Those first four points are each about a different sibling)
* Have put off having a particular conversation for the last 4weeks in a row (will do it this week!)
* Said G'bye to my Dad and step-mother who made the huge move to the middle of the country/desert after more than 20yrs living where they were. (My next plane trip already in the works)
* Spent a few days with Mum before she and her partner began their travels of the east coast states and then head back to Tassie. (Still don't miss her, she never feels far away)
* Had mice try to drive me insane... but I came out the winner! (I had even started to dream about the little fuckers!)
* Negotiated an arrangement with Little Boy for his first real regular pocket money. (This week only, we'll see how long it lasts) For now he's flying high...
I stole this from DWaFM. A movie quote meme. Not sure if these are my favourites as such but they're up there...
Here are the rules I must follow:
* Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
* Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie.
* Post them on your blog for everyone to guess.
* Fill in the film title once it’s been guessed.
These are your rules:
* Leave your guesses in the comments.
* No Googling or using IMDB search functions. Don’t cheat!
* Know-it-alls, limit your guesses to three movies. Save some for others!
1. "That's good. A little anger. It's a bit late, but it's nice to see."
2. "A condom is the glass slipper for our generation. You slip one on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night, and then you throw it away. The condom, I mean, not the stranger."
3. "Misdirection. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes."(Swordfish guessed by Seth)
4. "You want a Rolls-Royce, you don't come here, no no. You go to England, or wherever the fuck they make it. If you want champagne, you go see the French. If you need money, you find a Jew. But, if you want dirt, or scum buried under a rock somewhere, or some secret nobody wants anybody to know about, there's only one place to go: right here, Hell's Kitchen. It is the lost and found of shit. They lose it and we find it. Forget about it, man." (Sleepers guessed by Seth)
5. "If our Lord wasn't testing us, how would you account for the proliferation, these days, of this obscene rock and roll music, with its gospel of easy sexuality and relaxed morality? "
6. "Me? I'm scared of everything. I'm scared of what I saw, I'm scared of what I did, of who I am, and most of all I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you."
7. "Uh, well... sometimes only half of the little pieces find their way through. If you had to choose only one half of your son, which one would it be?"
8. "Once again, the L.A.P.D. is asking Los Angelenos not to fire their guns at the visitor spacecraft. You may inadvertently trigger an interstellar war." (Independence Day guessed by Phil)
9. "He says the sun came out last night. He says it sang to him." (Close Encounters of the Third Kind guessed by Tex)
10. "I've just decided to switch our Friday schedule to Monday, which means that the test we take each Friday on what we learned during the week will now take place on Monday before we've learned it. But since today is Tuesday, it doesn't matter in the slightest. Pencils ready!" (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory guessed by Seth)
11. "It's a decision a girl's gotta make early in life, if she's gonna be a nice girl or a cunt."
12. "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure." (The Matrix guessed by Tex)
13. "Now listen here, you mullet. Why don't you just light your tampon, blow your box apart? Because it's the only bang you're ever gonna get, sweetheart!"
14. "Do not touch the glass. Do not approach the glass. You pass him nothing but soft paper - no pencils or pens. No staples or paperclips in his paper. Use the sliding food carrier, no exceptions. If he attempts to pass you anything, do not accept it. Do you understand me?" (Silence of the Lambs guessed by Phil)
15. "Hiya kids. Here is an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don't buy drugs. Become a pop star, and they give you them for free." (Love Actually guessed by Tex)
Yep, I'm bored and while I have plenty to say I can't be bothered...
My littlest sister moved in with us yesterday, she's staying for the next few months. Little Boy turned 10 today! The following conversation took place this evening.
Me: Okay, I'm getting stuck in to cooking dinner now, it'll be late.
Sis: Do you need a hand?
Me: Nope keep playing the game with Drew 'cause it'll keep you both out of my way.
Sis: Good, I'm beat anyway and can't be bothered.
Me: Join the club!
Drew: I'm not joining the club for a few years yet!
I look after Little Miss G five days a week now. I just put her down for her morning snooze which she has been a little fickle about lately. She fell asleep as usual with my stereo on, not too loud but loud enough, and I put her on the lounge and covered her. The next ten or so minutes involved me walking in and out of the room several times as well as sitting down at the computer not 3 feet away from her for a few minutes and typing on, what seemed to me to be, the noisiest keyboard in the history of the universe. She snored away on the lounge and I thought to myself that this is the day she sleeps like a baby girl should.
Then I had a craving for the chocolate I'd bought yesterday and forgotten about. So I happily marched off to the kitchen and opened the cupboard (the one way up high and with hinges that don't even squeak, which I use for anything I may need to stash away for my own little desires). I pulled down the chocolate bar and tore the foil wrapper slowly down the centre, anticipating the chocolatey goodness I was about to enjoy. Well I may as well have called in a troupe of tap dancing elephants and borrowed the neighbours annoying drum kit to play in the middle of my lounge room. Little Miss G's eyes popped open and up she got for the sole purpose of trying to persuade me (with her big brown eyes and not quite intelligible but very cute and rather effective language skills) to share with her.
I have lightning quick reflexes when I need them and I managed to get the treat back into hiding before her purpose was realised! Pfftt no way I was dealing with the sugar rush she would have while I'd had to halve the hit I wanted for myself. So yep it has been confirmed, PMS makes me an even bigger bitch!
I've been home for a bit over 24hrs now and about the only thing I've really managed to accomplish is getting all of my (hundreds of) photos on to my computer. I had a lot of fun with my camera so expect a few photos in entries to come.
Little Boy and I had a ball in Tassie and managed to see a fair amount of it. While it is the Little Island of this homeland of ours in order to see it all (good bits anyway) takes a lot of driving on some not so flash roads. You can drive from one end to the other in not too many hours but if you don't pull off to the side you'll miss a lot of the history (and photo ops). We were a little off the beaten track and boiling the billy for most of our stay...
There were a few definite highlights of the trip and a couple of lows too (pirates even). My sis has spent a week in hospital up here while I was away so there was a lot of phone calls back and forth checking up on her and my soon to be nephew/niece. She's home again now and better than she was and bub is all good.
Hopefully I'll get a few Tassie entries written in the next couple of days before the chaos of normality and school resumes.
It's 1am, I should be sleeping and failing that I should be packing our bags to leave tomorrow (today if you want to be pedantic). We're off to see my Mum this time round and in the past that meant heading a coupla hours north along the coast. When she moved from there it meant a 5min walk down the road a bit but now it means jumping on a plane and hopping across to the little island. I'm not good with planes, I'm not even good with the thought of planes at least not when the thought includes me too. I've only flown once before just a couple of years ago with my friend who, while being very supportive of my irrational fears, had a good chuckle at my expense. This time around I'm not supposed to be allowed to freak out, I'm not supposed to snap "I can't talk right now!"... This time around I'm in "Mum" mode and have to be all grown up and brave so as not to freak the boy out...
In reality most of my freaking out is done internally anyway so i just have to ensure it is ALL done that way this time round. I'm sure my darling Little Boy with manage to get a chuckle at my expense too!
On the up side... I am really looking forward to getting off the plane in Tasmania and exploring a little, especially with my camera.
Miss you guys, will catch you when I get back!
P.S where's Dani gone people?? When I got back the other day I noticed she'd blogged at some point but now it's all gone... You out there Dani?
This entry will no doubt be long and boring for you lot but I'm writing it for my own benefit so too bad hehe I need to get back to writing something, anything and here's as good a place as any to force myself to do it. Besides I need to get some little bits down just as little memory joggers. I was always going to write the "camouflagation" entry but didn't get around to it so I'm making the point of doing this one now...
I'm home, for a few days at least. I'm enjoying this summer break even with all the comings and goings. The two weeks of xmas and New Year were rather hectic but for the most part in good ways. Drew was away for most of that time and when he came home on the first it was only for the night and we both left for my Dad's the following day.
I enjoy taking friends with me when I go to my dad's, especially their first time down there. It is a voyeuristic pleasure I get from seeing them experience the "culture shock", for want of a better phrase. No electricity, no mobile phone service, no computer or internet access but inevitably the biggest shock for most is no flush dunny.
This time around it was my friend-landlord-p/t employer D (really must think of appropriate title for her) and her 2yr old daughter who made the trip down with us. D had been looking forward to the get-away for weeks and was happy to be on the way. The drive down the coast was pleasant enough, if you take out the couple of times we had to pullover on short notice for my darling boy to spill his guts. We made it into "The Bay" and I stood in Maccas for 20min amid the lunchtime rush of tourists squashed on top of each other in some form of a queue (as it turned out the fryer had fucked up at the beginning of the lunch rush which explained why the "fast" food giant was crawling along on it's belly). After watching people order mountains of shit and walk away with multiple trays it came to my turn and I ordered just one thing, a Big Mac. You know why I stood in line for 20 min for one bloody burger that I personally think tastes like rubbish? Because my father has a very strong and unhealthy desire for said burger on any possible opportunity and our next stop was his workplace 25min down the road in "town" (Moruya), which happens to be one of the few innocent places as yet untouched by any of the evil fast food giants. And so, we made it to town and I introduced D to my Dad at work and handed over the still warm burger... ok maybe I just wanted to be the favourite daughter for just one day.
We left Dad at work, dropped in to Woollies and grabbed a few essentials and headed "up river" to my second home. I've not always had the opportunity to see my friends reaction blow by blow as they make their way up river especially during daylight hours. Half the time it is dark by the time we get there and on other occasions friends have made it down on their own and I've been there waiting for them. I must say D proved to be the most entertaining so far. On sighting the upcoming dirt road she emitted squeals of delight and trepidation amongst "oh my god", "I'm scared", "I love this" and various other very short sentences. The squeals and short sentences did not stop and neither did my laughter. I was ordered to take photos (like the one above) so that D could show her husband what he was missing out on. D's mobile managed to stay in range long enough for her to receive a phone call from her teenage daughter (who was staying with her father for a few days) asking when she would be home and uttering her disbelief that we hadn't even got to our destination yet. After about five relatively slow kilometres* of dirt road D asked "are we almost there now?"... She really hadn't understood the "27km out a dirt road" part I'd repeatedly told her.
D professes to "love camping", she goes annually with a friend and their combined families to a camping ground in a coastal town an hour or so south of home. But she's also petrified of spiders and anything that crawls with six or more legs. I was a little worried about her freaking out camping at my Dad's if she happened to see a spider or some such (there was a pretty damn good chance of it). I also worried that snakes may have an even bigger reaction from her and being summer and in the middle of nowhere I also thought there was a good chance she'd see at least one. I had voiced this concern a week or two beforehand and was surprised by the reaction. D actually wanted to see a snake, out of pure curiosity as she'd never seen one "in the wild" before. Apparently the image of snakes on TV or seeing them in a zoo don't make her squeamish and she wondered if she'd be scared. Mind you, her husband on the other hand had forbidden D to camp with their daughter while away with me because he was scared Little Miss would get "eaten by a snake".
So as we continued up the dirt road D's awe continued, she handled the actual driving well and continued to amuse me with her joy and excitement of just being there. Distracted with the camera to my face trying to get the photo's D requested, her hard braking took me by surprise, though not as much as her sudden elevation in excited squeals and screams this time with the word "snake" thrown in there. The snake had slithered off the road by the time I knew which direction to even look but it took several minutes for D to settle down enough for me to ask her what her first impression of seeing a "real live snake in the wild" was... It scared her, even with the safety of the car between it and her.
We made it up river and D met my stepmother, Curly, as well as the friends who were also camping. Within just a couple of hours of being there D's husband had called the house, since he discovered the mobile wouldn't work, several times checking up on her and his daughter. D loved the house which Curly had built almost 30yrs ago (with the intention of living there alone) and as nine of us sat around the table finishing off dinner at 10 that night the phone rang again. We were all absolutely convinced it would again be D's husband and as such my Dad chose to answer it with a gruff; "This better be fucking good ringing me at this hour!" which after a short silence on his part was followed by a feeble "Oh hello J", my sister clearly heard our laughter from her end of the phone...
D only stayed a few days but she provided a shitload of laughs in that time simply because she speaks whatever it is that comes into her head. She camped close to the house, just behind the pile of Hakea which none of us felt the need to tell her was the one most likely home for a reptile close by. She spent a little time looking for the "flusher" on her first trip over to the dunny, even yelling out to make sure she wasn't missing it. My sister and I wondered just how deep she thought that hole in the ground was... On her first morning she asked where the toaster and the kettle were to get herself a cuppa and Little Miss some breakfast, she looked a little bewildered when she was answered only with laughter, the wood stove hadn't yet been lit... She enjoyed the river and the surrounds as well as my sister's growing array of "farm" animals. I enjoyed giving her that experience almost as much as I enjoyed poking fun at her.
