Pointless

I don’t know why I fill these things out.  They’re not useful, they serve no purpose, but when someone sends me one I can’t seem to help myself and I feel compelled to complete it.  It could be worse I guess… the compulsion could apply to shitty chain emails as well.  I hate those "Send this to 10 friends and you’ll have good luck… don’t send it on and you will die from a horrible ugly and painful pox within 48 hours" emails.  They’re almost as bad as those sisterhood bonding ones fully of silly animated gifs raving on about how wonderful it is to be a woman and insisting at the end that you should forward it to ten women you admire.  Fuck off.

My favorite age:
27.  Was a good age.  Old enough to know what you want and young enough to still think you might get it.  Also for me it was after the legal nightmare but before the IVF
nightmare.

My best friend/s:
Mr K, Yale, MD, Equinom

My celebrity crush:
Vin Diesel (just keep him talking). Natalie Portman (cute, sassy, smart) . Matt Damon (unexpectedly intelligent),  Nathan Fillion (every one either wants to be Captain Mal or do Captain Mal).

My defining characteristics:
Physically? Short, blonde and busty. Emotionally?  I’d like to say ‘strong, rational, no nonsense and sensible’, but lately who the fuck knows?

My most evil moment:
So socially unacceptable I most certainly will not disclose it here. 

My favorite food:
Fruit Tingles, vegemite and cheese on toast, guacamole dip, mango anything, Allens Snakes (yellow ones), muesli, good fetta cheese, banana and jam sandwiches,  and vanilla gelati.

My grossest injury:
Golden Staph infection of the umbilicus… nasty.   Even nastier was the $1400 worth of out of pocket expenses to be admitted to hospital for three days to get treated for it.

My biggest hatred:
Stupid people. Period.

My most illegal activity:
Speeding.  And I mean speeding at irresponsible velocity and irresponsible frequency.  Like 280kph in 100kph zones… no speed cameras back when. 

My need for justice:
People who neglect or abuse their children, or stand idly by allowing their partners to hurt their children. It rips my heart to pieces to see stories like these in the media.

My most knowledgeable field:
I don’t know… stuff?  Photography, Art, Heraldry, History, Embroidery…. random useless shit in general.

My life’s goal:
I think just like everyone else – I just want to be happy.  The problem is I don’t think any of us really knows what that is.

My mother’s influence:
Work now… rest later.  My father’s influence: If you want something done properly – do it yourself. 

My oldest memory:
I remember our house flooding and my Dad’s boat floating out of the garage.  It was my birthday during the ’74 floods and I was 2.  My uncle Raymond spilled champagne all over the kitchen that night too.

My perfect date:
Dinner out in a quiet out of the way restaurant and then somewhere to talk over a bottle(s) of wine till the wee hours.

My unanswered question:
Why can’t I just accept things the way they are?

My random fact:
I’ve had more general anesthetics than I can count – I have a favourite anesthetist.  I have the metabolism of a particularly dim witted slug.

My stupidest decision:
I should have studied Psychology straight from high school.  I should have slept with Alan M but I was a good little Catholic schoolgirl who didn’t do that sort of thing.

My favorite television show:
Currently? I’m really enjoying Dexter (creeps me out a little that you empathize so readily with a sociopath) and Mad Men (heavy smoking, heavy drinking, chauvanist pigs – I love it!). Favourite shows ever?  West Wing.
Firefly.  Sharpe. 

My style of underwear: 
I’d rather go without.  For men.. boxers over briefs any day.  Something very aesthetically ridiculaous about a man in briefs.

My favorite vegetable: 
Sweet corn – on the cob with a bit of butter and salt.  Mushrooms – stuffed and baked, sauteed with herbs, in soup, in anything.

My weakest trait:
I’m a shameless consumer…. There’s always ‘something I want’.  I’m not overly outgoing with people I don’t know so am often pegged as snobbish or unapproachable.

My X-men power:
Telekinesis and mind control.  But stuff the X-Men… I’ve always wanted to be Samantha from Bewitched 🙂

My strongest yearning:
To be pain free… even just to wake up for one day and feel no pain.

My moment of Zen:
Driving fast at night with the windows down and music blasting… or it was.  I also love to walk in a thunderstorms and turn my face skywards to catch big raindrops on my skin.

I’ll beat it out of him.

Small child:  If you’re going to read, so will I Mum.
Mom:  That’s a great idea.

56.2 seconds of silence ensues

Small Child: What page are you up to Mum?
Mom:  Page 139 Sweetie.
Small Child: I’m only up to page 42. 
Mom: It doesn’t matter how many pages you’ve read so long as you’re enjoying it.

38.7 seconds of silence

Small Child: How many pages are in your book Mum?
Mom: Hmm… 336 pages Babe, this is a pretty short book.
Small Child (frowns): Mine has only 89 pages.

23.4 seconds…

Small Child:  What is the biggest book you ever read?
Mom: Hmm… I’m not sure it’s probably one of these on the book case.
(Pulls down the first hefty tome to hand – Tolstoy’s War and Peace)

Small Child: Wow!  Fourteen Hundred and forty five pages! That’s a big book!  Did you read the whole thing?
Mom:  Yes Bub.  But it doesn’t matter how long it is.  It is a wonderful story of Russian princes playing politics and princesses going to balls and falling in love and dashing army officers rushing gallantly off to battle and…
Small Child (clearly disinterested):  Oh okay. 

15.1 …

Small Child: But you know… I think my book is much better!
…he says brandishing ‘Pokemon #21 – The Chikorita Challenge"
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Oh no! Not the “F” words….

Whoa… ho!  The lists are getting harder.  But still proving worthwhile.  The weekly dose of forcing myself to think of ‘stuff I likes’ is definitely therapeutic – though Lord knows why.

List of 10 Things I Like That Start With “F”….

1.   First Kisses – memories of exciting first kisses can last a lifetime.
2.   Family – will always take you in if you’re in need.
3.   Friends – like family but we get to choose who we let in.
4.   Fruit Tingles – especially the yellow ones, must be the 211.
5.   Foreign films – they have to be exceptional to get a release here.
6.   Facebook – perverting social sensibilities since 2004.
7.   Flashman –  a roué and a coward… but fucking funny.
8.   Frozen Coke – loathe ‘the real thing’, love the frozen juice cola thing.
9.   Flanelette sheets – love the cosy fluffy feeling on my nekkid skin
10. Fahrenheit – by Christian Dior.  I absentmindedly followed a total stranger down the street once after catching the faint smell of Fahrenheit on him at a coffee shop.

flashmanList of 10 Things I Hate or Dislike That Start With “F” List

1.  Frangipannis – they’re boring, they’re trite and they’re everywhere!
2.  Family – once they get you in they never let you leave.
3.  Fox – (Network that is) they kill all the good ones.
4.  Fart jokes – only appeals to the lowest common denominator.
5.  Fine Dining w~ Small Children – fancy restaurants and kids do not mix.
6.  Fortune cookies – they’re always full of shit.
7.  Fundamentalists – shove your moral righteousness up your arse.
8.  Flowers – they’re ridiculously expensive and then they… well, die.
9.  Fingerprints – on things where fingerprints ought not be.
10.  Feminism – rabid feminist types just annoy me.  I’ve never felt ‘less than’ a man so never felt the go on the rampage about it.  But then I do have the benefits of generations having gone before me and the fortune not to be living under some hideously oppressive religious or political regime.

Oh mwy Gawd

Yes I really do sound like that at the moment… ahem-hem!

Bring out your dead!
<clonk>
Bring out your dead!
<clonk>

Dontcha just love onoamatopoetic words?
No?  Oh. Perhaps that’s just me…

I am not actually dead but I am soooo sick of being sick.  I don’t know if it’s the copious amounts of drugs I’m on or if it’s because I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in about 12 months… but I feel like I’ve had one illness after another.  Since we got back from Canberra-Babylon in August I’ve had three.. count ’em… three… separate run ins with various flu type things.

Lately I’ve been doing a rather impressive redition of "The Hideous Barking Snot Monster from Belmont"…  arguably one of my best attempts in recent memoryt.  It’s an aurally and visually stimulating living art installation piece that I’ve been working on for the last three days or so that explores the fragile state that is the necessity to breathe in order to avoid possible mortality .  Translation for those who don’t speak Art Wanker – I’ve installed myself in the living room, am frequenly emitting simply horrid harking cough sounds, have pockets full of used tissues and am working on the whole… not dying thing. 

Oh I know it’s just a headcold and one just has to ride these things out… but the worst bit is what all the coughing does to my back.  Farkinell it stirs it up!  So I’m trying not to do anything that brings on another of those horrible coughing fits.  You know stupid things.  Like having the audacity to laugh at something.  It starts off as a bit of a giggle and before you know you’re coughing with a death rattle that would make a 40-a-day smoker proud and (in my case) ends up with massive pains shooting through my upper body. 

Not my idea of fun people.
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Bztp! Bztp! Bzzztp! How’s the serenity…

The guys out the back who were using high pressure hoses to  wash down the new concrete noise barrier walls seem to have shut off their equipment.  Finally.  Which has offered a blissful moment of what passes for peace and tranquility when you live in close vicinity to a highway.

I could just shut the house up and turn on the air conditioning and I wouldn’t hear a thing, but this is supposed to be Spring… which means moderate weather with sunny days and nice breezes…. and if you saw my electricity bills for last summer you’d think twice about turning the AC on too.  But I tell you what, we’ve been sorely tested these last few months. 

Bulldozers clearing away trees.
Woodchippers to cart it all away.
Reversing beepers sometimes as early as 4am.
Drilling equipment digging holes for steel uprights.
Workmen yelling back and forth at each, esp on smoko.
Cranes with safetly alert beepers moving the prefabbed concrete
And all this on top of the road noise and road construction noise.

The new noise barriers that are being built out the back were scheduled to be completed in October 2007 but as at today – October 16th 2008 – they’re still incomplete.  Which means they were supposed to be completed BEFORE the upgrade to the Gateway was to start but seeing that they weren’t we’ve had the inconvenience of the noise from not just the construction of the noise barriers, but the noise of the road construction and the all too frequent noise of idiot dumb ass drivers hitting the brakes out there because no one wants to stick to the reduced speed limits. The so called professional drivers – truckies – appear to be some of the main offenders.  I know they’re on a schedule and having to slow from 100kmph down to 80kmph or 60kmph is a dreadful in convenience, but hammering on the jake brakes at every opportunity is really fraying my nerves.

Going out on the Gateway at the moment is really taking your life into your own hands.  The trucks are tailgating cars who have the audacity to try and slow down to the posted speed limit.  Cars are weaving in and out of traffic to get around the same slow drivers AND stupidly trying to get infront of the large trucks.  It’s a nightmare.

I swear it happens at least twice a day that I hear the squeal of tyres under extreme braking and find myself bracing for the subsequent sound of impending impact…. which at the moment seems to occur in about one in ten maybe?  At least once a week since the construction started I hear the squeals are smartly followed by the sickening sound of crunching metal (which is doing nothing good for my accident/traffic concerns).  We were jumping up to investigate the accident noises at first… but now I’m just trying to ignore it and telling any interested parties that we just heard another accident and the Gateway will be shot to shit so they might want to take an alternate route.
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