4 November 2011
I went to Ikea today. I got none of the things I particularly went to get (linen curtains, a particular type of storage box) and instead ended up with Christmas decorations and a silicone cake tin. Although it’s silicon, so it’s not really a tin, is it? Cake pan. Cake holder. Whatever, you know what I mean. I’ve just looked it up on their website (it’s the SOCKERKAKA which clearly needs to be in caps, and also said aloud with JAZZ HANDS) and apparently it’s a cake mould. And because there are two of them I’m supposed to make TWO cakes and put one on top of the other. I did not realise this. This sounds good. I will do that tomorrow. It is supposed to be 30 degrees tomorrow, to which I say: OUR TURN FOR SUMMER, NORTHERN HEMISPHERE. It has been cold and dark and dark and cold here and I have been doing a LOT of sleeping. Not your ideal cake baking weather, true, but if I do it I will have a lovely sunny day and also cake. This is win-win.
I went to find another photo to add to this post and could only find the one below, which is the first photo I took with this new camera. Oh, I dropped my old camera in wet sand at the dog beach. Don’t do that, by the way; your camera won’t like it. I did try to get all the sand out with a little paintbrush but it ground its little gears at me and still refuses to turn on. I live in hope. Anyway, I got a new one (thank god little cameras are cheap these days), charged the battery, sat on the floor, turned around and took a photo of the nearest thing to me, which was my ginger cat in the dog’s bed. Apparently the flash was on. He wasn’t impressed.
I AM NOT IMPRESSED
ALSO THIS DOG BED IS COVERED IN DOG HAIR, THIS IS GOING ON MY ONLINE REVIEW
3 November 2011
HIIIIIIII.
Hey, apparently it’s that thing where you post every day for a month! Considering that I am currently having trouble posting ANY day for a month, this might be too big an ask. I couldn’t even remembererer how to log into my own site. Couldn’t even find the link on my favourites. Sad. Possibly sadder for me than for you, but I am going to assume that you also are sad.
OK so let’s not overload this thing and choke it up. Start small. How is the little dog? The little frog is fine. (Yes, we call dogs frogs. This can be confusing to outsiders, when for example I mention taking the frog to the beach. What, don’t you take your frogs places? YOU ARE REPTILE-IST. Are frogs reptiles? Hmm I am off-track already. Things are returning to normal!) Actually and in fact I am lying. The little frog is not little, but in fact weight 63 kgs, which makes him quite large in the frog stakes.
I AM A BIG FROG
What a big nose you have. And you (probably) can’t tell, but he is standing very still and burping at me. It didn’t smell good. That was taken at his first birthday party and he had just eaten some sort of disgusting meat-based cake. He liked the cream cheese icing though. Not so much the cake part. Because he is a spoiled frog.
And returning to my original point, which was when I was lying when I said he was a) a little frog and also b) fine; he got a hotspot on the top of his head. If you don’t know what a hotspot is in relation to dogs, for god’s sake DON’T GOOGLE IT as you will be traumatised. Basically it’s a big weepy sore thing, usually on long-haired dogs where a little injury or flea bite or whatever stays all hot and damp under that fur and gets infected. Anyway, it’s gross and they get very big and very nasty, very quickly (like within hours). Then you need antibiotics and creams and stuff and it is all kinds of horrible. Anyway, at least it came up on the top of his head so he couldn’t lick at it and worry it. So we took him to the vet. Who shaved off the hair, and then kept shaving until the edges of the infection/rash… if it had been left overnight the sore would have spread to the edges of the rash and then STILL KEPT GOING. So gross. And so we were left with a frog who was totally ready for Halloween.
I AM HIDEOUS
Aaaaand there goes my pretty dog. Not quite so much fun taking him down to the dog beach now, I have to admit. It looks like we have done amateur brain surgery on him. We have taken to calling him Igor.
So there you go! An update on the little frog. More updates to follow. BETTER updates. [Waggles eyebrows tantalisingly]
9 July 2011
Apparently I took photos once. These are from February and I just found them on my camera now. Stop judging me! It burns! Anyway, in February we paved the side courtyard. It’s fully enclosed for some reason, including mesh over the sides and top, so we call it the cat courtyard as it’s handy for locking them inside while still leaving them some outside. Previous to this paving it was completely overgrown with grass, weeds and the decapitated corpses of tiny mice. My cats are horrible and do not deserve a nice paved courtyard.
The truck arrives to bring sand. Apparently you need a lot of sand for paving. Also pavers, but we already had those. Luckily for you I am sparing all other equipment photos. Who do you think I am, pioneer woman?
HE BRINGS ME PRESENTS
YOU LEFT IT UNGUARDED
(Please ignore our ghetto cyclone mesh fencing and gravel driveway. I know the industrial look is in style, but I don’t think this is quite what they meant. Fencing quotes are on the list. It’s a long list.)
What? It’s mine now. It was unguarded. Also, apparently, delicious.
Paving complete. Sort of. Oh, so the sand goes into all those cracks? Gotcha.
Yes, we understand some sort of noisy activity is going on in our courtyard. We don’t care.
Fine. THANK YOU. Can we go back to sleep now?
28 June 2011
I drove home tonight through an incredibly thick sea fog. It was quite impressive, really. What sort of fog rolls in at 5pm? Don’t fogs usually come early in the morning or late at night? I think it must be a Portent. Of Doom, of course. I don’t think there are any other kinds of Portents. Perhaps next there will be a plague of frogs. Or boils. Or frogs with boils. Although I may not see them, due to the fog. Am I going around in circles? It’s the fog. I was lucky to make it home at all.
And here at home, shrouded in foggy gloom, there was a Little Dog. Actually he’s quite a Big Little Dog now. He weights 58kg, which makes him the Biggest Little Dog we’ve ever grown. And he’s doing it in fits and starts, like a teenage boy who suddenly grows out of all his clothes and eats all the Weetbix. Would you like to see him?
Well, he’s somewhere in there. Actually, he’s #5 in line. Did you guess him? And can you see why we still call him a Little Dog? This is at his breeders’ house, where we leave him to gallivant around the city/country/globe. In the lineup, his mother is #1 and his sister is next to him at #4. That puppy is no relation, but is Super Cute and when we came to pick up our dog, we almost took her home instead. Because: SUPER CUTE. But has a lot of attitude, as you might expect from one so little who can hold her own in that crowd.
What else? I woke up the other morning distressed about an eBay purchase gone wrong, and lay there fretting about what I was going to say in a sternly worded email and whether it was worth reversing the Paypal or just letting the money go. Then I woke up a little bit more and realised I had dreamt the whole thing. In my view, it was as bad as dreaming about work, then having to get up and go and do the work you were dreaming about (which has also happened, clearly). For the record, all of my eBay purchases are going swimmingly, thanks for asking.
The cats are fine and because it is colder than a witch’s tit here in Melbourne, they have taken to sleeping on the bed. With us. And because they are cats, they don’t know how to share. In fact I can probably blame my stressful eBay dream on them, because when I woke up from that I was distorted into a kind of pretzel shape due to cats pressed against me in uncomfortable positions. In addition, I was freezing because most of my top half was out from under the duvet; somehow when one of my cats curls up on the bed, he magically locks all of the bedding around him in place. There is no way you are dragging any part of that duvet out from under that cat; you’d just better hope you had enough before he got there. And you NEVER DO.
3 May 2011
Guess what? It’s May. MAY. I don’t know where the hell this year is going. Anyway, I’ve been in New Zealand for the past three weeks, which explains my complete lack of internet-ness. The previous weeks… well, I’ve got nothing. Disappearing! It’s what we do! Anyway, now I’m back and I have some sort of hideous throat infection which has become an horrific sinus cold thing. Why am I always getting sick lately? I remember when I was never sick. Never! I took the train by god and no germs could touch me! Now, however, I have been coughing weakly and staring with great suspicion at anything which looks like food. Which is to say, anything. This has only been compounded by the smell of my kitchen, which I have not walked into for a week. You think I am joking but I am not. We came back from holiday to find the power had gone off and tripped a fuse, which meant everything had been off. Including the fridge and freezer. For a week. A WEEK. Thank god Mr T dealt with all of that because in my sickened state I couldn’t even face it. We have three fridges and two freezers and all of them were mouldy. Currently they are filled with nothing but giant mounds of baking soda and, funnily enough, ground coffee. The coffee is really doing the trick. There’s a tip for you, should you ever need to throw out $500 worth of spoiled meat. And I sincerely hope you don’t.
Little dog is back, and is… pretty big now actually. He went to his breeder’s house and played 23 hours a day with his sister and three other dogs. He’s exhausted. Also skinny, as he walks away from his bowl (an only dog, obviously) and the other four fling themselves towards the unattended food like homing missiles. Three weeks and he never learned that if he turned his back on dinner, it was NEVER THERE when he came back. The cats, on the other hand, are fat and glossy. I have no idea what they were feeding them but they are in far better condition than when we dropped them off. Sushi? Avocado oil? I should find out, they look like a shampoo ad.
28 January 2011
WHY didn’t this post? Goddamit. I’m retrospectively dating this so that it appears on Friday. BECAUSE I CAN.
You may recall Victoria had a locust plague, which barely reached Melbourne. Here is our contribution. Mr T trapped this in a vase because “I thought you might want to see it”. I didn’t, really. But now you have to see it as well.
GIVE ME THE LOCUST I WILL EAT HIM.
27 January 2011
I startled him, I think. That is quite the teenage glare he’s got going on there.
To reward his bratty behaviour, Mr T made him a new bench. This is supposed to keep him from standing up on the new couch. Time will tell.
I don’t think he MEANT to eat the sand, but he certainly ingested a fair amount.
26 January 2011
Happy Australia Day!
Wednesday is a very strange day to have a public holiday. NOT that I’m complaining.
Here is a caterpillar. I know, right? Is it not big? Is it not brown? Does it not have big pretend-yellow eyes on its bum? I don’t know whether it’s poisonous to touch, but I still feel all righserq3409tulr
25 January 2011
Confusion reigns! We currently have one (1) dog. Our friends also have one (1) dog, specifically a puppy. We imported it from New Zealand for them. It’s just the sort of people we are.
This is the puppy. She is deceptively still in this photo, and is chewing nothing. This happens seldom. Let’s just say my puppy has been a low-maintenance joy in comparison. She’s lovely though. Lucky for her.
We swim together!
The water looks terrible here; it’s filled with silt from the recent storms and rain flooding into the bay.
I climb rocks!
This is a very different beach, down past Lakes Entrance in Victoria; we camped here for New Years. Well, not JUST here. A little bit further inland, funnily enough.
24 January 2011
OK let’s just post some photos, slowly easing back in. Gentle, now. Eeeeasy does it. Don’t startle the WordPress.
I am a big dog now.
I got neutered. See?
This is like one of those optical illusion photos – you have to squint and sort of cross your eyes to see what’s going on. Unless you are familiar with how dogs sleep, then it will make perfect sense to you.
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phantasmagoriaReading:
Stephen King, "Everything's Eventual". I found this abandoned in a suitcase.
Listening:
The snores of the Little Dog, who sadly seems just as loud and snorty at night as the Brown Dog.
Watching:
Endless episodes of UFC, which is some sort of fighting... thing. Do not want.
Eating:
I'm having a bit of an avocado binge. The Little Dog likes them too.
Liking:
Renovations! Apart from the cost of said renovations. Let's not think about that part.
Pondering:
If there is dirty washing in the basket, the cats ignore it... but if it is CLEAN, one of them has made a nest in there within 10 minutes. Five minutes, if it's black clothes.
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