Painting the new front door (inside, because it’s so cold and windy outside it will never dry).
WHY MUST YOU HELP ME?
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Why yes, I have been overseas again. I am turning into quite the cosmopolitan jetset traveller. Not by choice, this time, but due to my work’s conference, which was great. Sitting by the pool, day tripping around the country – what’s not to love. I had a great time, right up until the point where people started falling ill left and right around me. And then I still had a great time, because I (miraculously) did not get sick myself. Apparently the Gastro Event Of Extreme Horror I went through last year may have better equipped me to handle similar things in the future. Which is good, because MY GOD I did not want to get that sick again. So I survive, with just the faintest touch of frailty and digestive upset. Then again, the same thing pretty much happened after our USA trip, so apparently a trifling change of diet is enough to upset me. (Mmmm, trifle.) Sorry, sidetracked. Want to see some elephants?
This was amazing, clearly. Watching this many elephants together (about 40 all up) made it really obvious what a social animal they are. Lots of play-fighting, pushing, poking with trunks, and rolling around in the mud and the water together. There were three small elephants that were totally submerged for most of the time, with just their trunks poking out of the water, as they formed and re-formed a big underwater elephant knot. This is an elephant orphanage, by the way, where they’re raised and then released back into the wild. Which is pretty much the other side of the river, to be honest.
What else? Oh, I took this photo on the plane over; it’s my view between the seats in front of me. Unfortunately my sneak photo-taking skillz need some work, but the lady in front of me had been watching Lord of the Rings and then paused it to take a three-hour nap, with the screen tilted in such a way that I could see it. Sadly for me, she paused it right on a scene where Frodo is passed out and staring blankly out of the screen with those big empty eyes, and I kept catching this disturbing image out of the corner of my own eye. Disconcerting.
Anyway, after my trip I returned home to find my laundry being ripped out. Yay! I have been wanting to do this since we walked through the house when considering buying it. Our kitchen has a little laundry room tacked on the end of it, and the plan has always been to smash out the wall dividing them and make it into one larger space. Now that wall is gone, and also the cupboard that used to be the entire end of the laundry room. LOOK AT THAT WALLPAPER. Just look at it.That had been hidden by the cupboard, by the way, so I had only seem glimpses of its magnificence before this. And it turns out that before this was a laundry cupboard, it was actually a toilet (see the roof cornices dividing it off, plus the louvre windows at the end). I can only think you would do your business and get the HELL OUT as soon as possible. Luckily for us, one of our best mates has a home handyman-type business, so he and Mr. T are destroying the house together. Well, when I say Mr. T is involved, I believe he is in charge of making the coffees and fetching the left-handed screwdrivers. Also keeping the Little Dog out of the way, since he seems to have no sense of self-preservation. He walks into the path of swinging hammers, lies down in grout, sniffs running power tools, and yet is scared of the metal tape measure. Anyway, ripping up the laundry has revealed no less than four different types of tiles/lino under the sub-floor, as well as some rotting floorboards due to water damage, which have been removed to be replaced.
Unfortunately, having holes in the floor makes me morbidly conscious of rats, and having the cats flitting around getting into everything just makes me jumpier. When a sinuous furry thing come slinking out from under cabinets, my first thought is not GET OUT OF THERE CAT but instead a visceral GAAAAAAAH GIANT RAT KICK IT KILL IT KILL IT. My cats are lucky to still be alive, is what I’m saying. I mean, I’ve never seen a giant ginger rat, but there’s a first time for everything.
We are not rats. We are LOVELY.
We went to Gippsland for the Queen’s Birthday three-day weekend. Did you go? Funny, I didn’t see you there. I did see a Big Dog there:
Honest to god, how big is that dog? 42 kilos, to be exact. He is eating like a sumo wrestler, but at least you can see where the food is going. I haven’t had a puppy before and I have been shocked, SHOCKED at how much he eats. When he’s an adult he will eat about half of his current intake; I feel like I’m trying to keep a teenager in Weetbix. Anyway, apart from chewing on bottles, we did a bit of motorbike riding. Hard-core motorbike riding. Wait, that should be in caps: HARD-CORE motorbike riding. Also to be said with that echo boom voice. Oh yes. Exhibit A below:
I’m not sure what my favourite thing about this photo is: the delight of Mr. T in wresting this bike from a six year old, or said forlorn six year old in the background. What goes around comes around, and (unsurprisingly) Mr. T cracked his knee on the handlebars very soon afterwards. Hey, at least he didn’t ride it into the dam. OK, so first of all: Let me get my World Cup gloating out of the way early, before my team dies in the arse. MY TEAM IS TOTALLY BEATING YOUR TEAM. How great are the Kiwis going? Aside from the dubious distinction of sending a team called the All Whites to South Africa (I don’t know HOW many times I have had to explain the reasoning behind the name these past two weeks) (the rugby team is the All Blacks, hence the soccer team is the All Whites, the basketball team are the Tall Blacks &c &c to infinity) (and beyond) we are somehow SURVIVING. And Australia is filled with National Angst at the performance of the Socceroos (clearly I don’t come from a place of strength regarding team names, but SRSLY) and are openly supporting the Kiwis as their second team. I don’t need to tell you that the only time a Kiwi will support the Aussies as their second team would be if the Aussies were playing actual card-carrying terrorists who bite the heads off kittens, or maybe the French, so this sudden spirit of Oceania-love has come as quite a surprise to me. Anyway, we are riding the wave of World Cup love in the office. My boss, who is also a Kiwi, has found whatever extension you dial to turn all the desk phones in the office into loudspeakers (like a mini PA system). Today he turned it on and played the iPhone vuvuzela app down the line for a good minute. I don’t know if you’ve tried to work with a loud horn blaring through your phone speaker, so I’ll save you some time: you can’t. Just relax to the soothing sounds. How’s the serenity. (Movie quote to appease the Australians… please don’t kill me! We’re Oceania, remember!) Speaking of killing me, our work day was also interrupted by a gunman. Yes! Melbourne had a gunman! Now we can truly hold our heads high when compared with other cities around the world. Our gunman absconded into the depths of Richmond, parts of which were duly shut down. Guess which suburb I work in? If it’s not the vuvuzelas, it’s the police helicopters circling maddeningly for a good three hours. Oh, and let’s not forget my boss added to the racket by turning the phone speakers back on and playing iPhone gunshots down the line. Please note the supportive and encouraging environment in which I work. Keeping us on our toes apparently. What I think I’ll do is just post random pictures and tell you about them, rather than trying to do some huge uber-entry. Can I do umlauts in WordPress? I’m not sure. Your uber will have to be served without an umlaut this time round, sorry.
This is in Port Angeles, Washington state. You might know Port Angeles as the home of Twilight (although I guess that is Forks, and I went there too. I digress. You’re probably used to it.) Anyway, Port Angeles. We stopped here at the farmers market and ate a gigantic plate of steamed clams with butter. And directly afterwards we went to a diner-thing and I ate a dungeness crab sandwich for lunch. It was delicious. But my point: to get to the farmers market we had to cross the road. A normal road, with a pedestrian crossing and clear visibility, through a shopping strip. And tulips too, which was nice. But on the poles of this pedestrian crossing were these crosswalk flags, and instructions on how to use them. You were supposed to take a huge, fluoro-orange flag and walk across the road with it. Like a small child. In the middle of a shopping strip. I was amazed. Mr. T was less than impressed. Well, you can probably guess how this went down. “My god! You’re supposed to cross the road with a flag.” So ultimately we dared the traffic (the occasional car was going at about 10 miles per hour) and crossed the road without a flag. Daredevils! And unfortunately on our way back to the car, we were further down the road and crossed at traffic lights, an intersection sadly bereft of flags. Letdown. We didn’t see anyone else cross the road, so I still have no idea if people were truly supposed to take a flag. I imagine there would have been more takers if they promised to ward against werewolves, but this wasn’t mentioned. Wasted opportunity, there.
Look, it’s the internet! HIIII INTERNET. Here I am. Did you miss me? (Great silence) See, that’s what I thought. Fickle internet! Now you’re onto your new sporadic-posting, giant-dog-having blogger of the moment! And I even updated my template (again). For you. FOR YOU, INTERNET. Oh the humanity. Anyway, my most recent absence has been to to my parents visiting Melbourne for my mum’s 60th birthday, which has been fun. It also means my house has been cleaned to the apex of its possible cleanliness. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that my mum, and my sister to an even greater extent, are compulsively tidy people. By that I mean that yes, they clean, but more properly they Neaten. Neither will leave a room if there is a mug or a newspaper or a pair of shoes that should be whisked into their correct place. They will wipe down the bathroom sink before they leave the bathroom. They hang up clothes after they wear them. Me? I am not a Neatener. I am sort of its polar opposite: a Messener. Yes, I’m totally making up words here. You see where I’m going with this. Anyway, it’s not like my mum doesn’t know this, being my mum and all, but she is my houseguest and so if I don’t clean stuff up, she will get up and do it instead, negating the Guest part. So I have been strenuously houseproud for about two weeks now and damn, it does not come naturally. I wish it did, because my house is so much nicer to live in, but it is totally against my slovenly nature. And by that, I mean that I will leave a mug on the side table overnight. For a few days, even. Shoes will build up by the front door (mostly due to Mr. T, who is unfortunately a fellow Messener). The bathroom sink gets hair and toothpaste on it as well as the necklace I wore last week and the glass of water I drank the week before that. Clean washing builds up in a big pile instead of being folded and put away immediately. It’s not a Pit of Filth, but it’s far from the home of a Neatener, if you know what I mean. Anyway, if anyone knows some sort of shock therapy or something to make you enjoy Neatening, please let me know. Or just apply the electrodes directly to my scalp. I love surprises! I have no more photos of the dog, surprisingly, but here is an update: he is either ripping things to bits (sheepskins, soft toys, bones) or fast asleep after having been to dog daycare. Have I told you the dog goes to daycare? It is HILARIOUS. We want to keep him well socialised around other dogs, so he goes to daycare a couple of days a week and romps around with tiny, tiny puppies. They still class him as a puppy so he’s in with dogs about the size of his head. He’s very gentle apparently, so he gets to stay with them rather than moving in with the big dogs. He comes home completely exhausted, staggers into the house, eats his dinner, and falls asleep immediately for about 14 hours. It’s brilliant. They also give you a little sheet telling you all about what he’s done during the day and who his best friend was. ADORABLE. Hey, I guess if you’re paying for daycare, you get the full daycare experience. No webcam unfortunately but possibly that’s for the best. And although I can’t find photos of the dog, I have found more of the trip. This one is from one of the freeways, driving into Seattle. State freeways and highways are numbered, of course, and here in Victoria they’re usually in a shield or a circle or something. Nothing so boring for Washington state, however:
The road numbers were in a Big Head. The big head of, you’ll notice, Washington. Big Head! Of Washington! Awesome, I tell you. Hey, if you have a legitimate reason to include Washington in your signage, I am totally in favour of using his Big Head everywhere you can. Oh look! It’s the tiny cute puppy we have living here. Did you miss him? Did you feed him? No, really, did you? because he is HUGE.
Pssht, you say. He’s only about the size of that cat. That admittedly, fat and fluffy cat. Practically chihuahua-sized, that dog. The cat, by the way, is sitting in a plant pot, being overgrown by the lawn. Well, more of a triffid than a lawn there, I’ll admit. Triffids everywhere around here. Apparently it rained while we were away and the lawn enjoyed it. Anyway, back to the puppy. I don’t think I can call him a puppy any more. He is more like a Little Dog. The perspective of the cat is skewing my data.
Also note the triffid lawn has not been consistent and has left charming dry spots intermingled with muddy spots. Guess who likes the muddy spots. No, guess. He’s the one with the sheepish grin on his face. OK, sorry, I didn’t let you guess. I’ll do better next time.
When you look at him compared to Mr. T, you can start to realise several things: Anyway, in summary, the Little Dog is back with us and all is well. He was staying with his breeder, and her four Brown Dogs, including his mum and his sister. My one concern about boarding him there was that he wouldn’t want to leave. Not unfounded, considering the fun he had. But leave he did, and slept for about three solid days – all that playing, I’m guessing. And even though he has been growing like a WEED, he is only a little bit taller than his sister, and one of his brothers is taller than him; they’re not lying about the giant breed thing, you know. He is a little bit naughtier (he learned it from the other dogs! All the other ones are naughty, not MINE!) and sort of forgot how to sit and drop… but he is just as happy and gentle and smart as he always was. Just, you know, BIGGER. … and then what happened? O HAI. Yes, I disappeared. Sorry about that. Well, not really, because I was on holiday. Yay! Holiday! We went to the USA and Canada. Have I mentioned this trip? I can’t even remember. Anyway, Mr. T had a conference in Dallas and so we used his free flight as an excuse to poke around in the northern hemisphere. As such, I flew into Seattle as his conference finished and he flew up and met me there. Then we went all round Washington and Oregon states, then up to Canada: Vancouver, Whistler, Banff and Jasper. It was great. Well, of course it was; it was a holiday. I have only one camera downloaded so far, which is the Good Camera, so it has all the scenic shots, like so:
I know. I would like to be back there right now. Maligne Lake in Canada. Sigh. Usually it’s bluer and, you know, waterier; but I am from New Zealand and beautiful lakes are everywhere. Beautiful FROZEN lakes, however, are a total novelty to me and I LOVED them. Anyway, I’m back, the house is a bombsite, the cats are back from the cattery and they are freaked THE HELL out. Also they smell like bleach. That’s a good thing, I’m thinking, as the place is clearly scrubbed to within an inch of its life; however I hope they weren’t actually bleaching the cats. I mean, the ginger one could do with a bit more blonde, but that’s a bit extreme. More updates to follow, once I get my A into G and shake this jetlag. How have you been, internet? Take: 1 x floor-to-ceiling bathroom cabinet 1 x curious gangly type puppy 1 x thought to self: Must move all the medicines up a few shelves this weekend 1 x husband who often fails to shut the cabinet door (we know this, hence point above) Mix well for 10 unsupervised minutes. Hilarity ensues!
That is a bottle of Nurofen (ibuprofen) chewed completely flat, with its childproof cap still pristine. Because if you flatten the bottle, the cap pops right off. Did you know this? Now you do. We don’t think the puppy actually swallowed any, but because we couldn’t remember how many were left in the bottle, the vets work on worst-case scenario (bottle of 25 minus 6 pills scattered around the dog, Valley of the Dolls style, leaves a potential dose of 19). So that is how much it costs to make my dog throw up, keep him overnight, give him IV fluids and activated charcoal and do multiple blood tests to make sure his kidneys are fine. He came bouncing home the next day, full of piss and vinegar and with a few shaved patches. His kidneys, needless to say, are tip-top. And he’s headache-free! I don’t begrudge spending the money, especially on something that was entirely our fault, but we have spent the last few days musing on what the dog could have chewed on that would have worked out to be more expensive, and can only come up with a) the good camera, b) all of our furniture, all at once, or c) nothing, there’s NOTHING. Way to teach us a lesson, dog. You win this round. I’m sure it’s only the first of many. It’s so hot here at the moment. And hotter tomorrow, they say. I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but they can fuck right off with their forecasts of 35 degrees plus. I have friends who thrive in the heat, who can lie out in it with expressions of pure contentment. Vampire that I am, I hiss and retreat to the house. Actually it cooled down a bit this afternoon, so we went to the beach.
We met one of Mr T’s coworkers, who has a Saint Bernard. Now I am used to big dogs, but this dog had a head the size of a bucket. I was going to say a pumpkin, but you can get some pretty small pumpkins. Bucket is about right. Maybe a basketball? whatever. It’s too hot.
The dogs played together and at one point, the Saint went out deeper (to lie down and wallow in the water, in the manner of a hippopotamus) and the puppy followed him. It got too deep for him, so he started swimming along as though he’d always done it. OK, so another water dog then. We are going to need some more towels.
In other news, Jane updated her website to WordPress and her husband Paco wrote code to import all her comments. I have read Jane’s blog since Jesus was a cowboy (at least 2003, but you’ll have to check with Jesus) and she amuses me greatly. Anyway, after learning of Paco’s impressive skillz, I (extremely rudely in hindsight) begged for the same service. PANDER TO ME! Surprisingly enough Paco did so, and so all my old comments are now nestled snugly in WordPress. This means nothing to you, I’m sure, but a great deal to me. All hail Paco! Aren’t people nice? I LOVE YOU PACO (in a totally platonic, wordpress-mediated manner). This totally made my February. Thank you Paco and Jane!
Aaaaand… you’ll see by that picture that I actually no longer have a puppy. This little dog has somehow turned up in his place. 20kg of little dog, even wringing wet. Doesn’t he look sad? He is not sad, he is KNACKERED. He collapsed the minute we got back from the beach and has been sleeping ever since. Win win! |
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