go here to see what’s going on!

(And if you need more info after that – go here)

(Mr BandiCoot prefers to dine on Whiskas Older Cat Dry food, or Whiskas Furball Formula Dry Food – yummy yum yum says Bandi!!)

Bolly, mid shower

[clicky for biggy]

You can see Dorian’s grey tail at bottom left of this picture, but he didn’t want to be photographed today.  It was so hot again today (33 with a hot dry wind) that I though the birds might enjoy a spray through the bars of their cage.  Bolly and Dorian used to come into the shower with me but I have been forgetting to do that.  They absolutely love getting wet on a hot day,  turning every which way to make sure every feather gets wet.

Just as well I keep my feathers numbered!

Bolly and Dorian’s boy, Yarrow, had his first ever spray mist – and he loved it too, hanging upside down and twisting to get more spray – and ringing his bell when I stopped, cheeky bugger!

Wet is GOOD!

The dog has enjoyed some more ice cubes and I am sitting with a damp towel across my shoulders again.  Far too hot to be trying to nap, unfortunately, so I’m here when I would rather be horizontal…

Oh NOES! Curse that passionfruit seed!

Oh noes.  Fortunately we are still well stocked with oil of cloves (it’s the only thing that worked to get rid of the mould that came with last year’s rainy season and floods) so I can make a temporary poultice if it starts hurting too much…

The big thing is NOT TO PANIC.  Mr Beloved is helping, reminding me to “Notice… observe….” and I’m doing my best.

Journal page

I’ve been trying to get back into more regular art journal writing and collaging.  Keeps me out of the pubs and picture shows, as my Dad would say…

Happy New Year girl collage

(as always, clicky images for bigger)

(collage uses bits from  Tumblefish Studio, Paula Kesselring, and some magazine I had lying around.)

It’s hot here today, 34 degrees as I write this.  We don’t have aircon but we do have pedestal fans.  Now that we have a ceiling that can support them, we might one day think about ceiling fans… but for now the pedestal fans do the job.  My poor family over in Adelaide sweltered in some much hotter temperatures this week.

I’m very glad I cooked zucchini slice the other night – it’s nice straight out of the fridge, no need to heat up the kitchen! Oh, and as a treat we bought sausages from the butcher, so Mr Beloved will probably cook those on the barbie tonight.  I popped out to the greengrocer earlier, and the sweetcorn has been lovely, so I grabbed a couple of cobs.  I mainly went out to get some more grapes – I’m having a thing for frozen grapes again at the moment, yum.

Also bought some sugar free gum to have on hand as a temporary  fix for the broken filling – I don’t normally do chewing gum because I have TMJ issues, and after watching an episode of Jimmy’s Food Factory where he made his own gum (plastic pellets!  PVA! yuk!) I’m even less inclined to put it in my mouth, but needs must.

Journal page waiting for writing...

(Collage contains more bits from Tumblefish Studio plus others that were lying about…)

The flea saga continues – the cat is speaking to me again (after being bribed with milk) but the poor dog continues to get bitten – we suspect the fleas are in the grass, so every time she goes outside they jump on again.  The new medicine seems to be working, though, because the fleas that bite her DIE (muaaa haa haa) but of course she gets itchy with each new bite, so she’s still unhappy, poor little thing.   I spent HOURS vacuuming the lounge and the lounge room and the bedroom, enough to make my back ache – I’ll have another (less intense) run at that tomorrow, probably.

Tomorrow is the official unveiling of the Toowoomba Flood Monument – and perhaps fittingly, thunderstorms are forecast.  Supposed to be another hot day beforehand.

And even though it’s still hot, and Mr Beloved isn’t feeling up to it, I’m going to take the dog to the park for a quick walk.

Connie (Picture taken last year when we had grass not weeds!)

Poor little Connie dog!  Poor miserable itchy little pink dog!  We noticed she was scratching herself more than usual before Christmas, so we gave her @!&(^ chews which were recommended at the pet shop… but we didn’t know that those (^$*&^ useless chews DON’T KILL ADULT FLEAS.  What’s the point of them then? ARRRGH!  I only bought them because they were touted as being THE thing… and had no idea that they didn’t do the same job as the back-of-the-neck stuff that we’d always used.  So a week later – she’s itchy again.  And this time I noticed little black crawling dots… OH NOES!

I felt like the worst person in the world – poor little dog, miserable and itchy, because I had done the wrong thing.

Luckily as I was looking in the box of the CAT’s back of the neck stuff, I noticed that one of the dog’s doses had been put in there by mistake.  So I used that on Connie. BUT – maybe it was out of date, because this week: MORE FLEAS!!

Result 1: We’re NEVER going back to that Petst0ck store.  EVER.  I have cut up my “loyalty” card with them, I am so angry!

Result 2: A trip to the vet this morning (KerCHING$$$!) was followed by a handful of dried liver bribes, and with me trying to get the dog to eat the supposedly “chewable, beef-flavored tablet”:

“Connie, open.

OPEN.

GODDAMN IT, OPEN YOUR MOUTH YOU STUBBORN LITTLE BEAST.

*sigh*

Okay, Connie, TREAT!  TREAT!

*SHOVE*

Good girl! Now swallow.

*pop, out comes the slightly soggy pill.*

OPEN YOUR MOU… TREAT! *Shove, holds dog’s mouth shut, strokes throat* TREAT!

Gooood girl!  Now eat your chicken necks  – wait – let me put your bowl on the ground and… Holy cow, did you even CHEW that at all?”

Fingers crossed that the new product works as advertised – supposed to help within 30 minutes and kill adult fleas within 4 hours.  We’ve already washed all the bedding in HOT water and now I’m just working up the energy to vacuum everything…

ARRRGH!

Apparently fleas are really bad here at the moment.  I just hope we’re on top of them now…

(And yes, the cat is still annoyed with me for dosing her with back-of-the-neck anti-flea goop.  She’ll forgive me in a couple of days or so…

(“Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister “are both even funnier once you’re no longer working in the Public Service.  While you are entrenched in the PS, they are practically training videos.)

(Again, I digress.)

So what’s been happening? Not much.  The new stove continues to be wonderful – and yes, we have had zucchini slice.  Yum.

I made a birthday cake for a friend:

(it was Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “Chocolate Domingo” cake (from her classic “The Cake Bible”) , lovely and rich, but because the birthday girl had requested “Death by Chocolate” I added chocolate ganache (equal parts of dark chocolate and cream) icing.  And the rose on top is from our poor old unkillable rose bush by the front gate – no idea what variety it is, but despite years of neglect (and the occasional drift of Roundup) it thrives and gives us these lovely loose highly scented roses every year.

Wendy and me

OMFG I AM HUGE!!  Well, we knew that.  Anyway, I’m doing what I can to address that – and in the new year I get to start on a new medication that might help.  Let’s hope so.  The past 2 years have not been good for my health – I’m really hoping to get off the medication that makes me constantly feel HUNGRY  (hence the weight gain – duh!) and on to one that makes me feel FULL.  Fingers crossed.  I already have the script filled but I’m not starting a new med when the psych ward is closed for Christmas and the psychiatrist is unavailable!

There has been much screeching from our birds – especially young Yarrow, our flood baby bird (He’s the best talker but the least tame of any bird we’ve ever had, because he was born right around our flood disaster time: here he is in a lovely baby pic in February:

Yarrow's baby pic, Feb 2011

and here’s a more recent pic:

Yarrow in his bachelor pad

Yarrow LOVES screeching at things – especially at Mr Beloved.  Yarrow also has a funny cockatiel quirk we haven’t come across before – he argues with himself in two different voices.  Hilarious.  ANYWAY, it’s the time of year when we get visits from other birds, both in our bottle-brush tree out the front and in the neighbour’s conifer (I have no idea what sort it is):

Can you see them?

[as always, clicky for biggy]

How about now?!

Yep, the Rainbow Lorikeets are back.  They’re not tame but they’re not scared of humans – I was standing right at our fence taking these photos, and the birds were curious but unafraid.  They’re very noisy, which is why our cockatiels screech back at them, especially when the lories are right outside our front yard where our birds can see them.  Cockatiels have amazing eyesight, they will screech when they see me right at the other end of the block.

And now I must get showered and go face the teeming hordes… Medicare have screwed up a refund payment, leaving us rather shorter of $$ than I had anticipated, and unless I go see them I know it won’t get fixed.  I’m also hoping to find a set of star shaped cookie cutters (I know, I know, I’ve left it waaaaaay too late…) or even a SINGLE star shaped cookie cutter – I have some Christmas cookies to make (since that’s going to be the cheapest (and nicest) way out of some obligatory gift giving.  At the stage I’d settle for a heart shaped cutter even…

Group therapy again tomorrow, my second last session for the year.  It’s exhausting but helpful… 9 til 2 with half an hour for morning tea and the same for lunch.  You just get so much more LEARNING done in a long session, rather than the one hour you get with a regular psychologist appointment.  But I am really wrung out by the end of it.

byeeee for now…

(Note: though we see these around often, this is the first time one has come inside the shed… I don’t think we want to add one to the menagerie!)

I enjoy cooking, but I *love*  baking.  So much.  And I’ve missed being able to cook – I haven’t even wanted to try anything new or look in my cookbooks for ages.

But I recently bought a cookbook I’ve enjoyed reading (even though I have yet to make any of the recipes)

The subtitle is “Nourishment for the Traditionally Built”… Love that!

I loved the TV series of The Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and this cookbook has excerpts from Alexander McCall Smith’s books included with the relevant recipes.

And that’s something it has in common with the very first cookbook I ever owned:

(none of your stupid Disney-fied Pooh here – this is the genuine EH Shepard Pooh!)

And you can tell which recipes are the really good ones by the splatters:

We made pancakes last night (but sadly, not from this recipe, which is indeed the best I have ever used – we had some mix leftover that I’d made from Nigella’s “Express” cookbook, which makes a much thicker, more American style of pancake.  Still yummy with a bit of golden syrup and lemon (we had no caster sugar in the house!) but not as nice as these thinner crepe style pancakes.

The next few images are from Mr Beloved:

This is the old stove, which we covered with a piece of board and some plastic to increase our workspace.

This is the extent of our kitchen bench space.

Awwww!

(Look at the pretty flower and the intensely interested dog!)

Group therapy… was better last week, but still scary.  I go again tomorrow.  It’s completely exhausting.  Last week was much better than the first week, but it’s still very intense  – partly because of just HOW LONG you’re sitting there, and partly because you just don’t know what’s going to come up – and I wasn’t ready to deal with some of the issues that were raised last week. Then on Friday I had another two hours of therapy on top of groups – arrrrrgh!  My brain hurts!

Nigella damascena seedpod

I’m also doing homework  – working through some of the “Infopax” that are available FREE online from the Centre for Clinical Intervention in Western Australia.  I’m currently working through the “What me, Worry?” modules.  Their approach is based in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which is ok – I’ll take what works for me and let what doesn’t work go.   (The group therapy and one-on-one therapy I do is based on Acceptance Commitment Therapy which is a different way of looking at things and one I find works better for me generally.)

The new door curtain

We had a disappointment with the tie dyed shirts – the sizes were WRONG!  (See this post on Mr Beloved’s blog for details - essentially, the store short-changed us in the size by saying the size was the same as last year but making the shirt SMALLER!)

Sometimes I am surprised by just how much joy she brings into our lives. You know you are loved when you are welcomed home by a poodle – the boings and twirly dance of joy are the same whether you’ve been gone 15 minutes of 15 days – she’s just so genuinely DELIGHTED to see you again!   I reckon if I could just get the health fund to buy another poodle, I wouldn’t need so much therapy…

“SNAAAAAAKE!!!”

yelled Mr Beloved.

No questions, I just grabbed Connie and rushed back upstairs.

Sure, it was only a little snake – but even one this size could easily have killed our beloved Connie.  (Or could have made either of us quite sick, given our blood pressure issues. They are NOT TO BE MESSED WITH!)  We phoned the snake man*and Mr Beloved kept a wary distance and watched the hole where the snake had hidden.

Turns out it was a Red Bellied Black Snake – not very common in our area (mainly because they eat frogs and unfortunately they get poisoned by !@^&%&* cane toads – but a biologist friend informs me that those that do survive are increasingly immune to toad poison).

The snake man was THRILLED because it was the first one he’s caught this season. And he really loved his work – while I am not enamoured of snakes it’s always nice to meet someone who is passionate about something, whatever it is.

You can just see the red stripe along the side if you clicky for biggy on this pic.  The more the snake man explained about it, the more I could appreciate that it was a beautiful animal – I am still appropriately scared of the buggers, but I now understand more about this species.  We got to watch the snake urinate and regurgitate (a small skink) – there, who needs to pay for the Discovery Channel, eh?!

It’s not the first snake in our yard and I doubt it will be the last, given our proximity to the local creek.  It was the first we had to pay to get removed – mostly because it was so close to the house and Mr Beloved was 90% sure it was a red bellied black.

Quite enough excitement for one day, thankyouverymuch!

Although the snake man DID get bitten – NOT by a snake, LOL! He had some live food just bought from the pet shop in his vehicle, and the little rotters escaped and he got BIT rounding them up!  Betadine spray applied and live food dealt with…

*For Toowoomba Locals: the link given has the snake man’s phone number; otherwise do a search on the Toowoomba Chronicle for “snake man” and you’ll get the same story.