And it’s baa-aack!
I have done something to my back ARRGH! I can hardly move. The worst part is that it’s in a totally new place, one where I haven’t had severe pain before. DAGNABBIT! Off to the chiro tomorrow (I missed my usual Monday appointment because I was too sick to go.)
In happier news: remember all the hassles we had getting our solar panels and solar hot water installed? Well, they’re starting to pay off. For the same time last year our electricity bill was around $350. This year? FORTY EIGHT DOLLARS. Holey moley shoot the pony, what a difference! Mostly down to getting rid of the old electric hot water heater (which we now know would have made heating water by burning currency look cheap); but the almost $80 rebate from power our solar panels put back into the grid was lovely too.
And the gas bottle saga continues: When Origin came and filled the bottle, they discovered that it was too close to the solar panel inverter box. *sigh* (Why the various officials who signed off on the solar didn’t know this I don’t know, but I am MAD AT THEM!) So we have to pay for a plumber to cut the gas line and move the (now filled) bottle to comply with the regulations, and reconnect the gas. Good news: we picked a plumber and phoned them on Friday- they offered to come round and do a quote – and they did! And he called before he arrived! And he’s coming back tomorrow to do the job! So if it turns out well, I’ll let you know who it is, in case any Toowoomba readers need a plumber… the rest of you can just grit your teeth and weep in envy.
Art tomorrow.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash…
We ran out of bottled gas on Saturday, just as we were trying to cook tea. See, we only use it for the cooktop – everything else (including the oven) is electric, so we just don’t use that much gas.
We didn’t realise just how little we used until we were able to connect with the gas company today:
(After climbing the ^!(#&^!* menu tree and the requisite wait:)
“Do you have your customer number?” the Gas Company man asked.
“Um, no, sorry, I can’t find our last bill” I said.
(Then we go through the rigmarole of me proving who I am so I can buy something- gah!)
“Now, if the company comes out and there is gas on site, you will be charged an $88 fee.”
“Believe me, THERE’S NO GAS!!”
“Right, I’ll just see when your last fill wa…. oh. Your last fill was in October 2007, that’s over 2 years ago! Obviously we’ll get someone out there today and we’ll be making sure we schedule more regular deliveries.”
That’s us, the McFrugals.
Next!
Phew! Next!
Happy Christmas to those who celebrated. I managed to avoid saying that AT ALL yesterday (although Mr Beloved did utter it once, to my parents in The Christmas Phone Call.)
We had a Very Geeky Christmas: our internet provider had a quota free day and I was able to snag an abso-bloody-lutely GINORMOUS set of digital scrapbooking stuff – well over a gig. Took about 7 hours.
Not something I would have been able to do at all, usually – and what’s more, I had a coupon (from joining Tangie’s Art Journal Caravan) so it didn’t cost me financially, either! WOOOT! 9 kits of different colours, some repeats, but – what a resource! Now I just need to find a way (that works with Linux) of organising/tagging my digital scrapbooking stuff - there’s too much to just try and remember what was in which kit.
Any suggestions?
Mr Beloved was very patient and late in the day he was able to download a rare Brain Eno and Robert Fripp live recording, so he was happy too.
[start whinge here] Our internet usage is a constant source of angst: every month, we run out of quota, but because we’re on a grandfathered plan we get Such A Deal. And given that our internet access is via ancient copper with dirty old corroded lead joins, which tends to be unreliable at best and non existent if we get enough rain, there’s not a lot of point in trying to buy more bandwidth. Grrrr. The exchange is “Scheduled to be enabled for ADSL2″ by our ISP but they’ve been saying that for a couple of years now. (And of course, that won’t fix our phone line…) I am so envious of US friends and other people who have unlimited access! [end whinge]
I’m seriously looking at investing in that Bind It All machine… it would be super cool to have journals the size I want with the papers I want and with a coil binding – I COULD make sewn journals, yes, but I really want to make loose pages of various papers into a book to use. Many books, actually. But I can’t buy it from the (possibly cheaper, local megacraftstore place) S***Shite, because what if I need warranty service or help? They’d be bloody useless.
Anyone got one and have advice to offer?
And in sad news: The Sacred Hot Water Bottle of Happiness perished. Long Live the Sacred Hot Water Bottle of Happiness. *sigh* For now I am making do with a coke bottle filled with hot water, wrapped in a sock (!) but it’s nowhere near as effective, of course. On Monday we shall hold the coronation of the new Sacred Hot Water Bottle of Happiness, with due pomp and ceremony. These things are important.
Housekeeping; 2 and a half journal pages.
Well, BLOG housekeeping – you didn’t think I’d suddenly developed a passion for actual housekeeping, did you? I mean, in our house the dust buffaloes have NAMES and GRANDCHILDREN.
You might notice (if you’re reading the actual blog, rather than an RSS feed) that I’ve finally got around to adding some things back in over there ———————————> in the right hand column. My Yahoo avatar (did you know Toowoomba has several croquet clubs? Steaming towards the 19th century, we are, oh my!) and my long neglected Shelfari list have been updated. And some links.
Speaking of links – without sounding toooo gushing, there are some bloggers who are so awesome that I had difficulty deciding how to label the group. “Who I wanna be When I Grow Up”? Not quite right. “I am a Total FanGirl of these Bloggers” is accurate but a bit long…
Anyway, on to other matters.
It’s been quiet on the home front, with only increased security rounds of the commercial premises across the road and some newly boarded up windows to show for Monday night’s excitement. But it’s truly the silly season and I expect we’ll have some hoon related drama before too long…
Speaking of Christmas, I am SO OVER IT! As an atheist household, we don’t really do Christmas… but as this is the first year we’ve really been “out” as atheists, we’re still adjusting. I’m happy that other people want to celebrate, fine, send Christmas cards, do whatever – but I am sick unto DEATH of Christmas music. And crowds. *shudder* I don’t like crowds at the best of times, but add in carpark rage, congested shops full of people desperately buying tat that will go in the rubbish by the end of next week… Ugh.
[clicky for biggy]
I had another “oops,I slept all day” day today. (wow, that’s awkward, with those three “days” in there!) And I’m still tired. Ridiculous!
Here’s another art journal page, this one only just started:
[click.big. yada yada.]
Miss Constance J Woodle’s eye problem seems to be mostly cleared up after a week of eye ointment (ick!) but she is back in the hated elizabethan collar because she’s chewed the pad of her right from paw to bloodiness. ARRRGH!! I’ve been putting anti-fungal ointment on it but if it’s not cleared up by Monday she’ll be back at the vet. Again. (yes, I’ve checked thoroughly that there wasn’t a grass seed or something similar stuck in her paw to cause the irritation – I think it’s just one of the joys of having a furry hound, and let’s not even go into the eyelashes problems that poodles can get…)
[clicky]
I’ll probably put more colour over the white dots yet…
And you? What are all of Y’all up to, hmmm?
Just another night in the suburbs…and some pages
So where have I been? Around. Just not doing much. This time of year is always a downer – the CROWDS, the relentless Christmas music… as I was driving back from my chiropractic appointment yesterday I had the local commercial radio station playing in the car. They played Weezer’s version of “O Come All Ye Faithful” – immediately followed by Bloodhound Gang’s “you and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery channel.”
Uh – right. Am I the only one to notice that’s a bit of a WTF moment?
Last night (well, early this morning, since this all started at about 1:30 am with a cascade of barking dogs as the youths in question ambled down the street) we heard breaking glass, lots of thumps… Mr Beloved reported the suspicious behaviour of the three kids, turns out so did a neighbour, also alerted by the dogs… and this is something of a miracle in itself, since usually the neighbourhood dogs bark unheeded for hours…
Young thieves, stolen Christmas presents including a block of very big new knives, and break and enter of commercial premises. Yikes. 4 police cars at one stage. Policeman with very powerful flashlights.
And next to no sleep.
Here’s Mr Beloved’s (much better and more coherent) version:
The dogs tell me first. The right sequence of barks, from Scruffy at the top of the street, down through Hamlet the Dane, Gillis the Dobermann, Psycho Bitch, Ugly Dog, Fat Staffy, Old Black Lab, and now my poodle… I can almost plot the intruders coming down the street.
Forewarned is forearmed. I was almost asleep when Scruffy started barking, a few hundred metres away. That was not just a bark: it was a serious let-me-at-’em, and Scruffy’s not normally a gung-ho kind of dog.
We’d gotten to bed late anyway. My partner’s reading light was turned aside to let me doze off. I wave my hand sideways with a cut-off motion, and now it’s dark.
I move as quietly as I can, given the old, creaky, wood floor I’m trying to cross . Damn it, I’m getting a bit old and creaky myself. Still, the instinct and reflexes haven’t let me down: I’m in time to see three kids go by, crouched forward and moving like Guilt itself was after them.
Two are about fifteen by appearance, not tall. One carries a box that looks like a carton of canned beer. Another has a light-coloured, almost cube-like carton: I make the assumption that is is a six-pack of premixed bourbon and cola.
The third kid is smaller, perhaps twelve, or a girl who doesn’t curve a lot. There’s a bundle in his/her hands. Moonlight makes spotting detail at even twenty feet a difficult job, but it looks like one of those eco-friendly shopping bags.
They’re headed for the park at the end of the street.
So, a spot of underage drinking is nothing to worry about? I dismiss the idea of letting it go: if they’re going to spew, make loud noises and leave broken glass, I’d rather it was somewhere else.
A quick phone call to Plod, and I wander down to the backyard. Across the fences, I can see a small white light in the bushes by the creek.
I relax. Even if the kids have night vision as good as mine, the LCD of that mobile means I’m as good as invisible, and I have them pinpointed.
Back to the house, and a follow-up call to the police operator. When that crew arrives, they now have an exact spot to shine those blinding lights. That will be demoralising for the kids in the bushes, provided a crew gets there on time.
Time is always crucial.
I’m ready when the first car arrives, about five minutes later. Plod doesn’t have the home advantage, so I shine a large torch into the area where the kids were.
Past tense is the thing. Even as the second patrol car arrives, thuds and breaking glass can be heard from a business across the road.
One of the police and I talk briefly, I give him some details of how many, approximate appearance, what they were carrying. Attention shifts to the source of the noises.
There are four cars, each with a couple of officers. From the look of the torch beams, they are inside the business premises, which means that the private security guys are on-site.
They’re taking this very seriously: individual cops are patrolling on foot in a number of areas on two blocks. I stay out of the way for over an hour and let them get on with their work.
My partner has stayed well out of the way. The dog knows her job: she’s looking after her Mum, staying quiet and looking for any hand signals to bark, search or whatever.
Eventually I leave the house and speak with the constables who are re-examining the area where I saw the kids hiding. I direct them to the exact point, and one cop exclaims, “Look! There’s a bit of gear here.”
There is. It’s most of a chef’s knife kit, new, in an aluminium-finish case. So there’s my assumption about a pack of bourbon tinnies shot down. Or stabbed.
Oh joy, there are some knives missing.
By now, it’s about 3:30 AM. I’m so heavily into hypervigilant mode, I can hear individual birds moving about restlessly as the humans invade their dark scrubland.
I give my name and details to one of the police and go back inside. As the police leave, I wait. So often the departure of Plod is the beginning of “Give it ten minutes and we’ll leave.”
This time the kids have all departed. It starts raining. I wait as dawn breaks, and have a walk around the block. There is a window broken at one end of the warehouse, but from my outside-the-fence viewpoint, I can’t tell if it was pushed in or out. That thumping and glass-breaking may have been the eastern side, and invisible from the road.
It may have been indoors. Forensic police spent a considerable time at the business premises later in the morning.
With the benefit of full sunlight and two hours’ sleep, I went back to the scrub at the end of the park. There were a few items further down the slope, missed in last night’s search.
The kids must have done a quick raid on somebody’s outgoing Xmas presents. There are tags “from Grandma”, a few cheap stocking-stuffer toys (discarded by the little thieves, who are obviously too sophisticated for anything less exciting than a long knife), hand-crocheted doilies, an address book with the crabbed writing of an older person.
I bundle the dew-soaked finds up, for handover to police.
I love the special feelings this time of year brings out in people.
***************************************************
So today: migraine. Yuk. And a heightened feeling of unease and danger. Doors and gates double checked. Triple checked. Rattled as I go past just to check again. I try to sleep away the migraine but mostly I’m restless and over-tired. Another day of feeling like I haven’t been able to achieve anything.
I did make a few (physical) scrapbook pages last week.
[clicky for biggy; paper is hand painted by me (inspired by some I can't get!); mask on photo from Paislee Press; background on photo is paper from Thao Cosgrove's digital kit "Beautiful Life" from scrapgirls.com]
[clicky for biggy; cardstock is Bazzill; paper by Teresa Collins; chipboard by Maya Road; Glimmermist by Tattered Angels.]
Quite enjoying that. Please excuse quick and dirty photos with parallax error. Oh, and did you know you can buy COLOURED staples? Who knew?! Now I just have to find a stapler (it’s somewhere in the house…)
This time of year makes me want to clean out the house. I got rid of an armful (heavy!) of magazine scraps today, ones that I’d already mutilated in my search for faces and alphabet pieces for my art journal. I’m planning to get into the sewing room SOON and move a lot of things OUT -as in, to the op shops etc – they are eating my physical and spiritual space. There’s little point in trying to flog small pieces of quilting fabric on ebay – the only people who make money from that are Australia Post.
Speaking of the art journal, here’s a quick pic: It’s actually too bulky to work in now, after painting and border-collaging the pages.
Most of the pages don’t have their main image or journalling yet but I am quite overwhelmed by the COLOUR and might have to start a new, more spontaneous journal. I haven’t been able to do anything in this one for at least 10 days and I hate feeling this STUCK.
Also, I think I need to go back to a smaller format, that fits in my bag. This A4 size is fun, but cumbersome.
Think it might be another bed day tomorrow.
GRUMPY BUM attempts to redeem herself; Anna Bartlett; fire stuff
Well, wasn’t *I* a grumpy bum last post? Sorry about that, folks. I eventually cancelled my appointments for the day and got back to sleep.
Hey , guess what? I won a little package from the INCREDIBLY WONDERFUL Anna Bartlett of Shiny Happy Art! Just by being on her mailing list!
(photo to be added – camera batteries flat..) – go here to see the very sweet little Tulip Bird Art Tags, she added a peacock art tag to a little pink journal for me, and a wonderful postcard of Toowoomba’s main street!
She’s also the local source for Golden paints (which are out of my price range,*sigh* but one day…) and also writes a cool blog.
Meanwhile, there are fires burning across three states. Now, that might not sound like much, but look at this:
“Disclaimer: This illustration is indicative of areas currently under catastrophic, extreme or severe fire warnings. Please contact your local fire authority for specific warnings for your area.”
Maaan! Since the Black Saturday fires in Victoria in January this year, Australia has a new fire warning system – not to make light of it, but it goes to ELEVEN. ( Spinal Tap, what a classic movie, eh?!) Where we used to see “Extreme” as the highest fire warning on the news, radio, and the roadside signs, now we go further – to “Catastrophic” -
“A fire with a rating of “catastrophic” may be uncontrollable, unpredictable and fast moving. The flames will be higher than roof tops. Many people will be injured and thousands of homes and businesses will be destroyed..
Temperature records are being broken – where my brother lives, in Adelaide, they’ve had over a week of temperatures over 40 C – that’s 104 F. And it’s only November, we’re not even officially into Summer yet. (But don’t get me started on the absurdity of imposing a European concept of Seasons onto a continent which experiences climate in a complete different way…)
Where my parents live (Wagga Wagga, in south west New South Wales) is also in the red part of the map, with similar temperatures. It’s only 34 degrees ( 93 F) in Toowoomba, allegedly. Still hot, but not AWFUL. The fact that the ongoing drought (let’s be real, it’s no longer a drought, it’s climate change) means that water storages are at an all time low (ooh, did anyone else just get a David Bowie earworm?!) doesn’t help …we’ve been under server water restrictions for so long, I doubt we even own a garden hose any more.
Everyone is supposed to have an emergency fire plan ready to activate. Ours is very simple: If time, grab computer towers. If less time, grab pets. Get in car, GO. No staying to defend the indefensible for us, thanks very much. Everything but us and the littles can be replaced.
I was in Canberra during the big fires there in 2003. Since then I have an absolute terror of bushfires. Not a rational, sensible fear, “oh dear, we must prepare to evacuate because the fire is nearing” - just writing about them or watching them on TV can make me panicky. And when I panic I talk a LOT. So if it seems like my blog is fire focused sometimes, you’ll know why.
Ok – time for me to go showe and start collecting my supplies – play group at the scrap book shop tonight from 6:30 to MIDNIGHT – how awesome is THAT?!
INSOMNIA
Grrr. Haven’t slept yet. Not happy. Been awake since – hmmm, got woken up at 5:45 yesterday morning (after 3 hours of sleep) by some IDIOT across the road thinking that because HE was at work, everyone in the suburb should be up and at ‘em too. Slept through to about 9:30, then slept again to about 2 pm… and awake all damn night.
And of course tonight is the ONE night when I actually want to go out (to the local scrapbooking shop for play night)! Oh well.
Hoping the chiro treatment today lets me crash for a few hours. I actually have to go for at least a 10 minute walk after each appointment, so that all the manipulation doesn’t just settle straight back in to the bad places.
Outside there is the lightest of misting rains, so gentle… a grey morning. Broken by the ^&*($$**^ neighbour’s psycho dog (yes, it’s officially a Bad Dog, according to the local Council).
See, I was TRYING to be positive…
*sigh*
I haven’t been taking photos lately. Will try to remedy that. The camera is one of the gazillion things I lug around in my handbag, but I’m not inspired. Bloody depression.
Time for my thyroid pill.
A DigiDare
So I’m stretching myself, trying to make interesting journal pages etc DIGITALLY.. I used Digidare #151 (they give you a topic, colour to include, etc) to kick start this one.
(I’m still working on how to get this to looks ok online – tell me if it’s unreadable, please?)
Hoping to paint some backgrounds later today – we were woken this morning by the koels (still no sign of rain, dammit, stupid birds!) and the incessant barking of the bad neighbour’s @$!%&^#!! dogs. AGAIN. Grrrr.
