This Old House

Whilst it looks fairly normal from the outside, on the inside it's a mixture of scary and sometimes plain silly.

I have three doors in the loo, 2 doors to my bedroom, 8 power points in the lounge room but only 1 in the kitchen. Outdoor pavers in the laundry and bathroom - brown.
There were some lovely coat hooks in the wall by the front door - brass fleur de lis. Pity someone hung them upside down so they didn't hold very much at all.
The air conditioner is probably older than me. It was installed in the wall, when it is supposed to be fitted into a low window and all the lovely chilled air floats straight to the ceiling.

I suspect the skirting boards are not that at all, I think the previous owner (tightwad) just nailed random pieces of timber along the floor in the extension. Speaking of the floor, I'm pretty sure the carpet in there comes from an old Government building because it's that old pea green I remember from the days of visiting my father at work when he was with the Defence Force.

The bathroom. Oh my wordy-lordy-yes The Bathroom. I truly believe it is the ugliest, saddest one in the universe. Imagine the brick like brown pavers, combined with beige and brown swirls in the tiles, glossy beige paint and a BLUE bath.
The real estate agent described it as 'retro' and frankly that's an insult to retro but I give her a B for effort.

In any case, I bought the place because 1) it was in my price range 2) it has a converted garage I wanted for my office 3) it has a massive double garage to store big old pieces of furniture and 4) I quite like weird old places. I knew what I was buying, but for months I found funny little 'optional extras' - like more power points embedded in the steps....

Anyway, I DO love it, cos it's mine.

So far I have fixed the roof leaks that happened as soon as I cleared the leaves off. Obviously they were plugging some holes in the tin roof. I got tired of waiting for Scorpio and his motley crew who promised they would fix it. They were appropriately shamed when my sister (4 months pregnant) and I climbed up and fired up the angle grinder ourselves. It's a great way to meet new neighbours by the way.

I've ripped up the carpet in the main rooms, painted the faux timber panelling Antique White so it looks like actual timber and repainted the living room - but for the first time in my life I got the colours wrong so now it's all patchwork with other test colours...I've lost my mojo on the paintwork so I'll come back to that later, but at least it looks like a work in progress.

Scorpio channels a policeman

So there's lots in the media about the dangers of texting whilst driving right now. Fair enough too.

There was quite a graphic report on 60 minutes tonight - I don't usually watch it because of the craptacular interview skills of the tick tick tick team but I couldn't find the remote.

Example

-Distraught mother of teen killed in car "I really feel if there were no phones my daughter would be alive right now" *sobs
-Idiot reporter "so what you're saying is that if there were no phones your daughter would be alive right now?"

Nuff said.

I haven't had experience with this myself, I can't even comprehend it. I have enough trouble concentrating on the road whilst Cyclone and Betty Boo do their usual slapfight & howl, or on a good day a hearty rendition of Heads Shoulders Wees and Poos.

Add texting to that and I wouldn't make it past the letterbox.

Aquaman had a phone related car accident recently, resulting in $15,000 damage to his machine and $4500 damage to the the car he ran up the backside of. His defence was that his new phone doesn't tell him (over the handsfree speaker setup) who is calling. He looked down for a second and WHAMMO. No one was hurt thank goodness. It only took a second.

However Aquaman is in logistics, is on the road all the time and well....needs his phone on the road. He takes calls all day long whilst driving from place to place. How on earth did people run fleets of trucks before mobile phones were invented?

I dwelt on that often, mildly crapping my pants since Aquaman borrowed my station wagon for the 6 weeks it took to repair his wheels.

Anyhoo Scorpio got back the other night telling me how he was nearly run off the road by some twit merrily chatting away on her mobile, nearly swerving into him several times.
He pulled up next to her at the lights and glares at her. She ignores him and continues her animated conversation.
Scorp gets annoyed, beeps the horn until she looks over again. He reaches into his top pocket, pulls out his wallet and waves it at her. That worked immediately. She literally throws the phone onto the passenger side floor, frantically mouths apologies and when the lights turn green takes off at a snails pace thanking her lucky stars that the nice policeman let her off.

Yeah - the heavily tattooed 'undercover policeman' driving a Kia Carnival.

Twit.

So have a go, next time you see some fool on their mobile phone whilst driving, look stern and wave your wallet around a bit. I don't think it would work with a girly purse though.

Yours in bewilderment of the everlasting stupidity of some people.....

Scorpio got arrested this morning.....

Oh yeah.

It's Fathers Day tomorrow so Scorpio is staying over so the kids can jump on his head at 7am screaming Happy Fathers Day and forcing him to eat soggy toast (hey if I have to cop it for Mothers Day he can suffer too - we share the load).
It worked out well because I wanted to go out for lunch for my dads birthday, nephews birthday and fathers day conveniently rolled into one and I didn't want to drag the entire tribe out to be bored at a swanky cafe.

Unfortunately Scorp could feel a migraine coming on so dashed down to the shops before I left for some decent pain killers. He didn't come back. His phone went to voicemail, I needed to leave. I sent text messages calling him seven types of bastard, left Teen Queen in charge and headed off to pick up dad.

No, I didn't start calling hospitals or get worried cos this is what Scorpio DOES. Loses track of time, sees a friend and chats for an hour, drops in to see a mate etc etc etc. His 5 minutes is 2 hours earth time and it drives everyone nuts.

I called from the cafe and he still wasn't home after another hour. Hmmmm.
He calls another hour after that and luckily I didn't read the riot act immediately because he tells me he was at the police station all this time.

Arrested for assault.

He got to the pharmacy but the migraine hit out of nowhere as he parked the car. He felt his head splitting open and managed to get the car door open in time to hurl. His phone fell out of the car and shattered and a lovely old lady picked up the pieces for him and checked he was ok before going on her way.

He was sitting in the car with the door open and his head back and a bunch of ratbags walk past and start calling him names - drunk, druggo... The poor bugger hurls again so they come back and really pump it up. They start throwing things at him. Scorpio gets pretty angry, lets rip back at them and stands up like he is about to kick their butts - so they hastily retreat with one of them tripping and falling over before taking off.

Scorp sags back down next to the car and proceeds to be sick again. Five minutes later a police car appears, tells him there has been a report of an assault and to get in the car to go back to the station. Scorpio tells them to get lost, he's not going anywhere so they arrest him for assault. He tells me later that he completely objected to the way one of the policeman spoke to him - like he was a drunk druggo. So in the car he goes.

It turns out this bunch of little *insert expletive here* went straight to the police station and told them they were assaulted (yep the group were assaulted by one sick 'drunk' ), they had evidence you see. The one that fell over landed on broken glass and cut his hand open badly.

Back at the station he was put in a room with a bucket. He is still very sick and I can't understand why they thought he was capable of hurting anyone. The police went through his wallet and found a card from a Detective Snr Constable Plod and says "oh you've already had a run in with Plod here, looks like you're a bit of trouble". Scorpio says, no Plod is a family friend - why don't you call him. So they did.

Plod is a great guy, he came straight down and into the room where the "victims" were giving their statement. Slams down a huge file folder on the table and proceeds to tell them that they have just crossed one of the most scary ass criminals in the area and they better start telling the truth before they make it worse for themselves.
The smart little buggers say "isn't it your job to protect us"? Plod says - I'm not going to babysit you and sit at the foot of your bed every night, especially if you bring it on yourself".

So they tell the truth, retract their bullshit statement, admit they acted like a bunch of arses and apologise.

HA.

Poor old Scorpio - he attracts trouble like a magnet, but at least it makes for good blog entries *snigger

P.S In the interest of public health and safety (and Scorpios rep), I would like to make it clear he wasn't blowing chunks all over the place. It's a reaction to the migraine to dry retch...ick.

Well that worked. Pending no more!

WOW, that was quick. I received notification that my business name is accepted today - Hooray!

I celebrated with a cup of tea underneath my falling down gazebo, and all of a sudden noticed my stunning Japanese Maple is green again. The Magnolia is blooming, the french lavender is as purple as its ever going to get and surrounded by the white blooms of the cascading shrub whose name escapes me right now.

Isn't it funny how much you miss when you are cranky about things not going your way? How you develop tunnel vision and only see what's wrong? Don't think I'm going to give you something profound along the lines of 'smelling the roses' - I've just pruned the bejaysus outta mine so they look like crap - for a few weeks anyway...

My Bach Flowers will be ready to go in a week or so. I'll have to liberally apply vodka to my darling techie friend to ease the pain of my web cluelessness - you have no idea how many phone calls it took to get THIS thing going, so the website is going to be a barrel of fun for the poor darling.

Hmmm, I wonder if I apply too much vodka will the website take an off-centre slant?

Told you I was clueless.

Love

Pending Pending Pending

EVERYTHING is pending right now and I'm beginning to resent that word more than parking fines.
I have everything ready - although the postman has gone AWOL with some equipment, I have my entire Bach Flower remedy stock, dosage bottles, pipettes and a zen place to practice all ready to go. Except for this PENDING issue.

Applied for my business name, but that's PENDING so therefore my domain name is PENDING and I can't open for business without a website. It's driving me batty - especially because everywhere I look I see friends I can help, I'm prescribing in my dreams for Pete's sake!

I also need to get some $$$ coming in. Apart from the kitchen issue, the bathroom from hell and six mouths to feed - lack of $$$ is booooring. Constantly clocking numbers in my head, panicking when Betty Boo breaks 2 pairs of glasses in 2 weeks and feeling slightly guilty for buying a bottle of bubbles to celebrate Thursday is booorrrriing.

I nicked out to the shops tonight, it's been raining and since there were no minors in the car I felt an overwhelming urge to jump on the accelerator and hang the station wagon sideways through the intersection just like the good old days. But nooooo, I might get pulled over and get a ticket (for freaking awesome driving) and I can't afford it. Booorrring.

So - my one follower (oh I LOVE you and I'm all excited!), between you and me if we meditate hard and send Piss off Pending vibes to the universe at 10pm est I'd really appreciate it.

Love

Emo Pets

Ok, pretty sure my cat has iss-ewes. Could he be a feline EMO?

Clues -

After Cat takes 15 minutes to decide if he should walk through the door I am holding open for him, he sits there looking hurt after I yell at him to get his act together.

When Teen Queen lets him in to sleep on her bed, he wakes to stare daggers at her. Can't pat him cos he gets angry. Then goes back to sleep, then does it again on and off all day. Then he spends all night jumping on her because he desperately needs attention - even though he rejected it all day.

Cat would rather spend all night sitting forlornly on Teen Queens doorstep IN THE RAIN than come inside the main house.

Diagnosis - EMO cat.

We have a fish. He is different alright. He is black and doesn't frolic in the bubbles like his other colourful brothers. No, he floats at the bottom staring at the corner all day.

Diagnosis - EMO fish

Fluffy mutt, spends most days trying to take on Rottweilers behind the safety of the fence. If she is out on a walk, likes to take on Alsatians just out of reach of their leads (and flabbergasted owners).
Periodically escapes the backyard.......to lie in the middle of the road.

Diagnosis - NOT emo, clearly not a deep enough thinker.....

Beautiful beautiful day...

The weather today has been spectacular. After a few weeks of chilly temps, heaps of rain (yay!) and gale force winds, I was greeted this morning by sun and a warm breeze. Excellent, especially since I had to bath the fluffy mutt.

Dog bathed, Scorpio dropped by and decided to take Betty Boo to his place for the night which means I only had the Cyclone at home with me. Awesome - it's great to spend some one on one time with the kids, you can actually have a conversation with one without the another interrupting with desperately important news (I need to do poooos, where are my socks, I have a detention etc) or faking a mortal injury.

The weather was so fabulous I took the Cyclone for a walk. Hey that's big news - I hate 'going for a walk' - actually I hate the thought of it, but once I'm out I enjoy peeking into the neighbours gardens and barking back at the big dogs that like to scare the bejaysus outta me by trying to break through their fences to eat me.

The air smelled so GOOD today, Spring all over - Jasmine, Daphne, all the jonquils showing off their trumpets. I didn't even mind pushing the Cyclones bicycle up the killer hill whilst holding the dog lead.

Our mission was to get tonights dessert from the local mini-supermarket. Whilst we were cruising the aisles Duran Duran was piped through the speakers - well you just can't help but dance when you hear Girls on Film, and the best thing about the Cyclone is he is up for anything, so we had a fantastic boogie in the biscuit section, but then Cher came on and wrecked our disco.
Nevermind. I'm pleased to see my boys lip curl to the sounds of Do You Believe.....bleuurgh.

Dessert found (lamington roll), we head to the liquor section. Now - I do like a drink, it's in my blood BUT the children don't often see mummy partake because they are tucked up in bed on a Friday night. So it's pretty embarrassing when the Cyclone says - "oh mummy don't drink, you will get DRUNK" at the top of his big voice. Awesome.

I don't know where he gets it from (really, I don't!) - the first time he did that to me was when I popped in to the bottle o to grab something for my step dad who was coming for lunch. Cyclone would have been about 2 and a half, never been to a bottle shop before but was familiar with beer I suppose because he screamed at the top of his lungs "Oh mummy, not MORE BEER?"

More awesome. No matter that I wasn't even drinking back then as I was still breastfeeding his little sister. I made some fumbling explanation whilst pointing to my boobs, but I'm sure that just make me look worse.

*sigh