Dogs in Sunglasses

How cute and tolerant are these dogs?

I had a delivery of six new laying hens recently. As I led the man with the chooks past my toilet features in the herb garden while wearing my heart shaped sunglasses he couldn't help himself. "You are a crack up" he says. I forget that my glasses are funky. I bought them some time ago to embarrass the teens (they failed to do the job) and so had to make use of them. They are now my farm glasses and I throw them on without further thought. I sometimes wonder why, when people see me down at the mailbox or arrive at our place, they smile so enthusiastically and almost seem to laugh. I am not weird, really. I might like to photograph my dogs wearing my glasses, I have photographed the flies on a cow pat, I am highly amused when I race the geese flapping my arms to match their flapping wings but really, I am not weird. Strange and quirky maybe but not weird.

Paddock Treasures

Took the camera walkies in the paddock one day, some photos you will appreciate, some maybe not so.

Australia Day 2011

These are my Australia biccies both in drought and after the rains when the grass greens up and the wildflowers bloom - oh yeah Australia Day - it's all about national pride and tackiness, the more daggy/tacky the better baby!


One of our party is gluten free and dairy free so I made these almond meal biccies and called them Feral Camel Dung Biscuits, very Australian.


We celebrated Australia Day with friends in the bush for a barbecue breakfast. Beautiful.



The Lovely Husband in my very tacky and very cheap Australia Day Umbrella Hat. So cool!

The Australian Pavlova, our famous dessert. Decorated by yours truly. Eaten by so few because as is typical we all brought more food than can be consumed in just a few short hours.



We had excellent bush poetry by one of our party. We dealt with the mosquitoes and the heat without complaint, ate till we were chock full and I am sure we all went home to have a nana nap afterwards. HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY!

Optimism in the Greyhound

This is not an unusual sight at our place. Layla Greyhound banned from the kitchen during the preparation of food. This is as close to that food as she can get without actually incurring the penalty of a harsh word. She can maintain that stance for quite some time but eventually will lie down just next to the door and continue the vigil horizontally.

Koala (lack of) Romance

I heard the screaming of the female and grunting of the male and jogged down to see this couple in a disagreement about whether the mood was right or not. The female seems to be at the end of her branch with her business end out of reach of the big boofy male. If it's not on, it's not on mate! He looks fairly patient though.

Brain Injured not Brain Dead

Brain Injury - Deal With It.

I have to admit that sometimes the issues I am left with from my brain injury five and a half years ago can still be hard to accept. More often than not the pros out way the cons but when it is the other way around I can be a little impatient. At the moment I am still struggling with increased fatigue and have not played tennis or gone to the gym for some months. I have cut back on the amount of teenage taxi driving I will do and have decreased my working hours by one-third but the onset of the summer heat and humidity have always been a challenge to my energy levels (not unlike most other people I suppose). Patience! Again! I have started exercising gently at home again to try and build up my stamina, which is how I became fit when I began this regime last year.

Don't get me wrong, I do not feel sorry for myself, far from it. I know I am very lucky but my impatience and frustration can surface at times like this.

Allow me to have a whinge:

When people do not appreciate what I have to deal with every day and expect me to "get over it" I tend to ignore it. Annoying but you have to accept ignorance. The number of supportive people in my life out way the ignorants by far.

BUT...I cannot stand people who accept my limitations but try to add to it by treating me like a village idiot. I avoid them like the plague. A work colleague, who luckily I see little of, always makes a big deal of my leaving time (lunch time) and makes a fuss, a kind of celebration if you will. I prefer to say goodbye like any other worker leaving for the day. I try hard to avoid seeing him at home time.

The worst by far is the woman in a local kitchen shop who knows well my history. Every time I go in there there are questions on whether I am doing OK, can I manage, all with that high pitched girly voice and sorrowful eyes. Please! She blew me out of the water one day when I was shopping for a garlic crusher. I have trouble squeezing the two arms of your standard garlic crusher together like many people not muscle bound and so I wanted a good one with some power to it. When I explained my predicament the first thing she says to me is "Oh you poor thing". Again with the sorrowful eyes and high pitched voice. My lack of prowess with a garlic crusher has nothing to do with my brain woman!

I actually really like the products in this kitchen shop and will continue to shop there but will no longer seek advice from that particular shop assistant and will avoid eye contact as best I can.

My friends and family still tease me and still borrow my short term memory issues when it suits them. My Soul Sister calls it brain injury by osmosis. I love it. If we didn't face life's challenges with a smile on our face life would be very dull and at times quite hard. I am not always a Little Miss Sunshine as could be confirmed by my Lovely Husband and teenagers but I try. My sometimes Lovely Husband agrees, I am very trying! (Son of a motherless goat!)

My Beautiful Bicycle

Check this out! I know you are thinking it is a thing of beauty. It is a treasure to be treasured, a prize to be prized (?). This is my $5 dump bike. I know right? What a classic.

I picked up this gem probably two years ago now at the local recycle shop at our dump. $5 bucks baby. What a bargain. It cost me another $60 to have it fitted with new tyres and have it working again but it is worth it. A Malvern Star (childhood memories of my repainted lime green number) that has like FOUR gears man! All it needs is a wicker basket on the front and I am ecstatic. Sure, it has surface rust, a broken peddle and the bike shop bloke said that once the gears die they will not be replaceable because the technology is quite old. Who cares? I don't use them anyway. The bike shop bloke was a little shocked when we presented my treasure for servicing and asked quite simply "Why?". Fool has no vision obviously.

I took my classic along to a free bike workshop late last year. What an education. There were bikes there worth $1400, rims on bikes there worth over a $1000 and then there was my $5 dump bike. I wasn't sure I was in the right group. They were obviously all ripped off and their bikes all looked the same, shiny, a lot more than FOUR gears and not a speck of rust anywhere.

When the talk began with clothing such as padded bike pants, gloves and helmets less than 15 years old I was again wondering about my presence there. I had on a loose t-shirt (apparently a no-no), loose 3/4 pants (another no-no) and my Dunlop Volleys with flowers painted all over them. I was beginning to think these people took bicycling a little too seriously. But it was all good in the end. Someone put the chain back on my bike, there are a lot of cogs on bikes with FOUR gears isn't there? My helmet was deemed unsuitable and ill-fitting so I borrowed another for our ride around the kiddies' parkland. What a thrill!

I have since purchased a new helmet and new bike peddles. The peddles don't happen to be fitted yet but it is on the to-do list. Apparently my bike chain desperately needs cleaning but I like the clogged up, black look it projects and so am sticking with the neglected, dump bike look.

Spider Webs

Dewy morning, camera hog, beautiful webs. It's all there. I know it's been done before, just not by me.

Wonky Egg Number Whatever

We have not seen one for a while but here it is, another shell-less egg with umbilical cord.

The plastic egg that has the chew hole in the end eventually became plastic dust amongst the litter in the chook shed along with the two other plastic eggs. We use the plastic eggs to encourage the hens to use a variety of nests. The real eggs were not touched by the rats, nor was the rat poison placed in receptacles in the sheds. A bit weird you say? Damn right! When the plastic eggs became no more the rats started in on the rat poison.




I have been told by someone in the know that plastic contains some ingredient that gives the rats a pleasurable feeling.

Ooh rats on a trip or on a high.

I have been supplying a substance of addiction to the rodents of our chook pen. No more though, it is rat poison from now on sorry.

Rain, Rain and more Rain

I know I have no right to complain about the incessant rain, the greasy/slimy cement, the bog that is our driveway and the swamp that is our paddock. The chooks are developing webbed feet, the horses are rotting up to their knees and the washing has to get done even though we only have limited under cover line space.

I can't, in all conscience, complain when in Queensland the destruction from the excess rainfall is unprecedented. According to the news 75% of the state is in crisis. Whole villages destroyed, 10 people so far reported dead and 65 missing. This is unheard of in Australia. Yes we have floods but never before has it been this devastating. Toowoomba is in the mountains and had a 'tsunami' roar down their main street catching people by surprise and taking cars and detritus with it. Houses in the valleys either side of the mountain range have been swept away and businesses and crops destroyed. So many of Brisbane's suburbs are effected and the flood level has yet to peak.

I have to say that I would hate the stress of relying on the weather for my income. We have had years of devastating drought in some areas of Australia, followed by locust plagues and now some are experiencing severe flooding.

When I was very small we lived in the flood zone of our town and during the floods our beds and furniture were propped up on bricks, blocks, anything that would help. Our house and the others in the area were up on stilts. No-one kept carpet on their floors and the smell when the flood recedes is of rancid mud and garbage. Lovely.

I know that many of us have been staring at the news with slack jaw shock and find it very hard to comprehend what the victims are going through. It will be a long and hard way back for many, many people.

Wet Weather = Mozzies +++

Those mozzies (mosquitoes) have had a very successful season with all this rain but I had never thought of a frog being bitten by them. Check out the photo of what was a very noisy frog on my herb garden toilet feature. If you enlarge the picture you will clearly see a mosquito on the lower back attached to its skin. I was unaware of it until I saw the photo on my computer screen.

Christmas Presence

Aah yes another Christmas season over. Another season of over-indulgence and this time, too much rain. It rained before, during and after Christmas. We had a nice day though. The Lovely Husband worked long hours on Christmas eve and had to work again on Boxing Day so the 25th was a quiet and relaxing day.

Now to the important things, my presents. The Young Negotiator bought me this lovely solar light - the snail. Its pattern at night is beautiful.




The Dynamic Daughter bought me the Michael Jackson DVD "This Is It". Absolutely love it.



The Lovely Husband bought me this little Buddhist boy for the garden. I adore him. I joked about calling him Kevin but he will not need a name. The undies on his head belong to the Dynamic Daughter. They will not be in the garden on his head.



For a household with no small children Santa was very generous. He brought all four of us something. We all got the usual undies supply. The Dynamic Daughter received the book "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". The original story with zombie action added. Apparently quite funny. The Young Negotiator received the book "Scar Tissue" by Anthony Kiedis (lead singer of Red Hot Chili Peppers). I am reading it at the moment and it is a hard slog. It has pretty heavy sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll and I am a bit unsure of Santa's choice but it apparently has a good ending. Not exactly uplifting at the moment.




The most important gift from Santa to us all are the water pistols. The little water pistols, which look suspiciously like the ones from our shed, were given to the teens. The big, macho looking water cannons were given to the adults of the house - as is proper. The reaction on the faces of the teens was priceless and brought great joy to the parents and recipients of the water blasters. Oh happiness. Good ol' Santa.

Being a very wet day the traditional yet epic Christmas Water Fight did not occur. The Dynamic Daughter and I had a semi-epic water fight in the rain on the cement that was slippery from so much wet weather and I went down like a sack of potatoes. I bruised my left hip/buttock which made my body more symmetric since I had a matching bruise on my right hip/buttock from my fainting spell before Christmas. And so the semi-epic water fight was over with the Dynamic Daughter the victor.

The symmetry of the hip/buttock bruises did present me with a unique problem for a few days following the semi-epic water fight. When alighting the delicate toosh onto the throne of bodily functions it was hard to know which side was best for support on the seat of power as pressure on either side caused significant discomfort and the legs are too lazy for the squat of common sense.

I Don't Faint, really

It's true. I am not a fainter. Never in my life have I fainted. I have felt faint, I have been dizzy and I have been knocked in the head a couple of times; one with loss of consciousness, but I never faint. Until now. I fainted the week leading up to Christmas. Whoa it was weird.

I woke in the middle of the night, just to go to the loo and next minute I am feeling mighty unwell. I decide to go to the kitchen for a suitable receptacle for my stomach contents and the next thing I remember is the Lovely Husband calling my name. He heard the crash bang of my demise and was naturally alarmed. Strangely I was on the kitchen floor not the bathroom floor. I don't remember the dance down the hall and into the kitchen and cannot explain it. The Lovely Husband started to pick me up off the pristine and polished kitchen floor (sarcasm at its most sarcastic) and the first thing to come out of my mouth is "I don't feel very well". Hearing the obvious the Lovely Husband replies "No kidding!".

I spent the rest of the night feeling bloody awful and was taken to the doctor when they opened in the morning. After extensive questioning and examination I am deemed to have a virus with fever. I do happen to have low blood pressure and it must have plummeted which in turn caused me to meet with that pristine and polished floor.

I don't care to repeat the experience and was a little nervous when getting out of bed for a couple of days afterwards. If I get up too fast from crouching or lying down I can get a bit wobbly but that is normal for me and my low blood pressure.

I am obviously into trying out new experiences; good, bad or indifferent and I would definitely class this one as bad.