Hot, hot, hot! I'm hot hot HOT!!!

And that is not the "yeah, baby!" sort of hotness, either.

Why is it that Tuesdays are always hot lately? Last week the temperature was over 40 degrees centigrade, it was horrible yesterday and is going to be the same today. Well, it is summer I guess.... But today it is not dry heat so much, but kind of muggy because there is a big cyclone up north. Hopefully it will come down the coast a bit and we will get some lovely lovely lovely lovely lovely lovely RAIN!!!!!!!!

It's Swimming Carnival day today too for poor Coconut Head. That means I am going to be more mental than usual about sun protection. "OH why can't I have parents who don't care?" she was wailing this morning just because I was forcing her to take a hat with a decent BRIM and not the cap she usually sneaks into her bag and wears, and not the Gilligan's Island-type bucket hat that is about as good as wearing an icecream container on your head!

So, of course, we were late AGAIN for school.

They do these pink slip things there if you are late, and they are especially designed to stress already over-stressed mothers out even more. You have to go the office, avoid the principal, fill in a form stating your reason for being late, avoid the principal, get a pink slip, avoid eye contact with the person who is standing in the doorway of the staff room, and take your child up to their classroom. While avoiding the principal.

I tend to make sarcastic comments under 'Reason for being late'. Like today, my tardiness was due to "constraints of the space/time continuum".
Tomorrow it will be "car not equipped with warp factor".

It's called MUM-RAGE.

Going mental! Going mental!
I am so stinking tired, can't sleep, feel sick all the time, anxiety like you would not believe - I even think my hair is falling out (aaaaaaaaaaaaghghghgharrrahgh!!!)
The stuff is going around and around my brain continually. How's this for a bit of light weekend reading "Lodging a caveat, a guide to preparing the documents, by the Department of Land Administration, Government of Western Australia."

Now, I'm no dum-dum, and I do have over seventeen years of formal education (the useless arty kind, unfortunately) and I do understand it (after a session with dictionaries) but you kind of get the impression with these types of things that "they" actually do not WANT people to understand.

Excuse me while I take a break to nervously twitch.
..." ..... # .. . .# .........*# + + # . ....
OK, back now.

Forgot to wash a whole lot of clothes. Forgot to get the food we need to eat this week at the shops today. The garden is beginning to shrivel. The tooth fairy is extremely late and Coconut Head's molar is still sitting in a cup of salt water. Oh, and I sent Spider-Bat-Boy to his little class on Friday with odd socks and
a BROW EXTENSION OF TOMATO SAUCE ON HIS FACE!!! ( alright the feral family has arrived ......) (well, they probably think that already because of my tie-dyed T shirts..)

Ever noticed how a lot of legal terms remind you of food? You know, encumbrance (nice in a salad), caveat (and champagne, anyone?), and my personal favourite fieri facias (but only after too much curry!)

Oh dear, these things are sent to try us, my Mum would say.

Nothing to do with Bridget Jones! Not trying to be like her (v.v. happy with my weight, thanks) not related to her (or Hugh Grant ...shudder) never read the book, haven't seen the movie ....... not going to read the book, not going to see the movie...

Oh, speaking of Hugh ("oh..um..er..sorry")Grant, isn't it amazing how he has made a career virtually playing the same character in movie after movie? Hmmmm. And Jennifer Anniston is kind of like the female Hugh Grant isn't she? Done the same thing.

What they need to do is an ugly movie each. Whack on the ol' prosthetic nose, pop in the interestingly-arranged false teeth, and spit a lot when they speak their lines. Now THAT'S how you earn validity in Hollywood!

Now in Bollywood it's the complete opposite isn't it? No whining to be "taken seriously as an artist" by the glitterati there. (Wow! Just had a thought - how long would an Indian 'movie marathon' go for?!) And they are pretty prolific, apparently, churning out way more movies a year than the Americans. There is an Australian game show hostess cum actress who has made it very big in Bollywood. Maybe Hugh and Jen should look her up!

Ahh fame. Why is our culture so obsessed with it? 15 minutes of fame. Famous in your own lunch time. Etc Etc. And is notoriety as good as fame? ( Don't think you necessarily get paid as well. ) Is it because of the American obsession with being 'successful/popular and not a 'loser'? (That ticks me off, it's rampant through the schools here now.) I dunno. But it is insidious. I don't like it. It's not good. It's twisting society. It's shallow. Wrong, I say,wrong.

But somehow........... some how ..... .....................


I STILL WANNA FAN-CLUB !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh no, Instant Jim is back on Atkins again. It's either all or nothing .

On Sunday he was busy making himself sandwiches filled with chips (an English delicacy called a chip 'butty') and chuckling about being on FATKINS, and on Monday he's telling me at tea time that we can't put carrots in the stir-fry because they have too many carbs!

Get out the Ajax- the slime breakfasts have started again, too! Greasy egg/cheese/bacon combos spattered ALL OVER the kitchen (how does it get on top of the rangehood?). And then there are the kitchen experiments to make the lowest carb simulated-biscuit possible. ( Carb-nazi.)

Of course, no conversation will be complete without discussing the total carbohydrate percentage in lard and dripping- and which artificial sweetener is less likely to cause tumours in lab rats?(We'll have that one, thanks!)

Worst thing though, is the surreptitious way I have to go about eating chocolate. Stealth and subterfuge, and a lot of forward planning - that's what it takes! Also a certain amount of skill and natural sneakiness. Pretty well perfected it now : the sleight of hand involved trying to manoeuvre said choccy from behind the cushion (behind me) to my mouth while making it look like I am just taking another sip of tea ...

Who'd win in an Atkins versus Pritikin grudge match?
Answer: neither .....THEY'RE BOTH DEAD!!!!!!!

There has got to be a lesson in that somewhere.

anonymous jones, that's me. A lonely little petunia in the blogging onion patch . Thought I might try and tizz up this page today - though I know I will probably FAIL MISERABLY. It's all about appearances isn't it? Well it seems to be. And being an artist I should appreciate that. But, being an artist, I want to do the complete opposite. So, for now, stuff the fancy template.

We're all anonymous really. Either you strive for anonymity because of universal paranoia or you are reduced to it like binary code.

I text (texted?) Instant Jim a wedding anniversary message this year in binary code. How romantic can one get? Maybe next year I'll get a bit more personal and give him one of those cards with a computer signature.

Poor Teddy, what have I done to you?!

Spider-Bat-Boy entrusted me to fix up his rather darkened with drool and dirt teddy bear and I have gone and totally STUFFED IT UP. Though, considering what I have done, stuffing would have been a lot easier to deal with! As it is I had the job of sewing up the holes in the bear where his wheat grains (it is one of those heat 'em up microwave teddies) were falling out.

Yeah, well I did that BUT THEN decided he needed a wash.
Now I know what you are thinking and yes, in retrospect I am thinking that too BUT at the time I seemed to remember someone telling me I could do it because the wheat had been especially treated etc etc blah blah. Oh, and I decided he should soak in the washing machine for a couple of hours too!!!! Luckily, I did not spin him dry because of the dodgy stitching so he is still intact, but he did come out of the machine with a considerably wider girth, all bloated and swollen which has tested his repairs anyway!

So how do I get him dry? He has been in the dryer SIX TIMES for ninety minutes each time on HOT, I've done the towel thing, I've done the microwave thing (made him damper) and now he's just lying there on a rack in the lounge room. Interesting aroma.

Anyone who walks in kind of sniffs the air. Not that his owner minds, but he's a boy and so smells are a plus to him. The girls do that look with the raised eyebrows at me. Currently Teddy is smelling like wet socks crossed with a wet dog and a tray of rather delicious hot scones in the oven. Instant Jime came home from work last night and said Ted smelt like "old person" and then went on to elaborate in a most age-ist way, "old person, in a raincoat, inside a bus in summer, on a vinyl seat".

"What are you going to do for an encore?" he said, " ...Clean your bass with a brillo pad?"

Oh you may mock and scoff now, my dear, but just wait until I come up with the most scathingly brilliant solution which will yet again demonstrate my genius! You know, I didn't go to university for nothing (I done grajitated). Just hope I can think of something before Teddy starts to sprout from his crotch and armpits.

No idea what I am doing here. So here I go, the complete and original techno-peasant trying to figure out what all these buttons do without telling the world my PIN number. Where are all those nifty boxes and stuff on other people's blogs? I dunno. No, better not press that. um.........ok - for want of fancy nick nacks on my blog I will just do THE NAKED BLOG because I am completely inept which means don't expect any pictures any time soon! So bare text is all you're going to get. However, I can guarantee pretty good spelling and grammar (including correct use of semi colons).

Google Search words that could land you here: artist, electric bass, kids, Western Australia, home maker, hermit crabs, irish setters, chocolate, mums, vermin, the Silver Surfer, Mongolian throat singing, mess.

Hmm, that was a successful use of the italics button. Probably made a good profile too.

Well, what next? How about What I did today (so far anyway) (it's only just gone lunch time).

It's week three of a new school year and so I just had to take the three little pigs to their schools. But the event of note happened when dropping off my eldest daughter, aka "Sniffy". We had a wild life encounter which will make me take the warning road signs seriously now! Two kangaroos, a mum and her joey, came out of the bush behind and raced round and around the school oval and then disappeared again. Don't think the gardener on the lawn mower even noticed them. So I am glad I drive the vehicle with the roo bar in this family!!!

Ok, that'll do. What do I press now...publish post, I guess ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;