I have decided to make it my mission to eradicate my household entirely of plastic bags. I wish I could say that I have completely altruistic reasons for doing so but the truth is that I am really starting to hate them for only one reason.
A certain moggie who revels in chewing and ripping apart plastic bags all in an effort to wake me up and do her bidding!
ARGH! I don’t know what it is about that crinkly sound the plastic makes when she’s ripping it apart but it drives me spare. And I think she knows it all too well because as soon as I stop what I’m doing, all of a sudden it’s like “oh cool, you can give me food now, you’re up anyway”. She does the same to cardboard and paper too but for some reason I can happily ignore that because it’s probably just a bill and honestly, who gives a rats about those. 
August 8th, 2008 | Category: Cats | 
Print This Post
| 
Email This Post
| Leave a comment
A while ago, our recliners went to lounge suite heaven in the sky. Whether it was a sign of poor workmanship or overuse, we’re not entirely sure. In any case, considering the fabric pattern wasn’t exactly to my taste, I wasn’t really sorry to send them off to the tip in the back of a borrowed trailer.
Before we got rid of them, my other half and I had a discussion as to what to replace them with. My initial thought was nothing - after all, we still had a perfectly good three seater sofa. But as my other half quite rightly pointed out, I often monopolise the sofa by lying on it. Given Mojo’s tendancy to give the lounge a fair hiding with his claws, we were reluctant to buy a new lounge suite. We have cat scratchers galore around the place which he uses in our presence….however the evidence suggests that he goes to town on the lounge when we’re not home.
My other half suggested the relatively inexpensive option of getting a couple of beanbags instead. They are comfy, easily moved and if/when we get another lounge suite, they could easily be used elsewhere. Of course, I had visions of coming home to polystyrene balls strewn randomly throughout the house. But he was not to be disuaded and so we opted to get the beanbags anyway with the added reassurance that liners were available to contain the beans within the bag in case of any accidents.
We’ve had them for a couple of months now and so far, so good. Mojo hasn’t scratched them and in fact shows little interest in them at all, unless there happens to be a lap to hop on and have a snuggle. Rosie on the other hand is a bean bag demon. She loves them! She will spend hours kneading the bean bag, getting into just that right spot. And once she’s nice and settled, there is absolutely no shifting her - short of a bribe of salmon or rump steak of course.
August 4th, 2008 | Category: Cats | Print This Post
| Email This Post
| Comments (4)
When my other half suggested getting some dwarf fruit trees for our backyard, I have to admit I was more than a little dubious. While I can adequately keep native or drought tolerant plants alive and well, I’ve had little success with growing produce. I thought I would do okay with herbs but despite planting a plethora of them in the rock wall out the front of our house, only the rosemary, oregano and chives have thrived over the years. The rest struggled along for a time and then just turned up their roots and died.
We had similar lack of success with vegetables - except of course the tomatoes that quickly took over the entire veggie plot and then died back themselves. The veggie garden has long been abandoned in favour of a garden bed for more natives. But I think that the fruit trees might just do okay with our style of gardening. We must be doing something right - the bees have shown up and the plant is flowering. So if the powers that be will it, we should have a lovely bunch of lemons, mandarines and stone fruit to show for our troubles next year. Fingers crossed! 
August 3rd, 2008 | Category: 52 Blessings, Home and Lifestyle | Print This Post
| Email This Post
| Comments (1)
It’s funny….this whole year I have blogging away on my laptop about things I am thankful for and never once have I thought how grateful I am for actually having a computer and internet access in the first place. I guess since I have always had one in the house since early primary school, I do take it for granted. The same goes with the internet access - it is just about always there and when it does malfunction for whatever reason, I do get a little bit miffed. So yay for the computer and the internet….and all the crazy stuff that goes along with it. It might drive me nuts occasionally but in the end, I really wouldn’t be without it….would you?
July 27th, 2008 | Category: 52 Blessings, Cats | Print This Post
| Email This Post
| Leave a comment
Sing it with me people! Gotta love James Brown!
No kidding, I actually feel really great today and it’s hard to think of a day in recent times when I have felt this good within myself. I feel like I have more energy, I want to do stuff that I usually loathe doing and I feel like I’m getting the old me back again. Those of you who have read “The Bloggest Loser” page will know that I’ve started on a prescription medication to assist with weight loss. I had never really discussed how I felt about my weight with my GP, even with all the Xenical ads floating around about “lose weight, gain life”. I just felt like there was too much of a stigma attached to it and if I resorted to taking medication, people would just assume I was this lazy person who just ate take-away every night and was looking for a quick fix.
I really wish I had talked to her sooner because so far it is really helping me. And you know, it really makes me wonder about this obesity epidemic we have in Australia. Although I’m a big girl, apart from my weight I am in good health and that is the reason why I wanted to try to lose weight now. While you are still healthy, that is the time to do it. When you get to the stage where you are triple the person you are supposed to be and getting the line from the doctor “you have to lose weight or you will die prematurely”….well it gets that much harder to do anything about it.
I’ve met a lot of people through the course of my work who are at that stage and some of them just can’t be bothered. They have just resigned themselves to the fact that they will die early and there is nothing they can do about it. I just wonder, if they’d talked to their doctor about their weight while they still had a BMI under 40 and able to do at least some exercise….would it have changed their life starting this kind of medication? Could it save a life? Maybe, maybe not. I just think that considering obesity is costing $21 billion a year to treat, then it might be worth GPs being a little more pro-active and discussing weight loss with their patients and offering support in the process. I know it can be a sensitive issue for a lot of obese people but had my doctor not broached the topic first, I’m not sure I would have brought it up myself.
So thank you to my GP, I feel good because of you. 
July 26th, 2008 | Category: Health and Fitness | Print This Post
| Email This Post
| Comments (4)
That’s not to say that I don’t have screw-ups - I do! But this is the first time one has actually coincided with a Tuesday. I knew that things were going way too well before heading to work this afternoon. I found a job that I’m interested in - AND it’s in the local area AND it hasn’t closed already. Then, I actually realised at 1pm that it was time to go in fifteen minutes so I wasn’t running late before I’d even left the house. My commute was smooth as a baby’s bottom - no slow pokes, no accidents and no having to stop for roadworks. Then it culminated with arriving in the car park and driving straight into a space. That virtually never happens after 9am of a weekday. So I was fifteen minutes early and I even had time to have lunch before I clocked on shift. Consequently, I was feeling pretty jolly peppy about the way things were going.
Until someone said to me “did they call you in?” As soon as they said that, I had that sinking feeling right in the pit of my stomach. Have I just driven 65km on my day off?? Yes, indeed I did. I have to say, despite the rising fuel and toll costs associated with getting to work, I took it quite well. I even laughed, but it was that kind of crazy laugh that a person does right before you think they are going to lose it. I high-tailed it out of there before they could say “oh but wait you can do an extra shift” in some completely awful ward so that it isn’t a waste of my time and dollars getting there in the first place.
But do I feel completely stupid - you bet I do. And anyone that had the privilege of stopping next to me at the traffic lights on the way home will realise what a potty mouth I can be.
July 22nd, 2008 | Category: Screw-up Tuesday | Print This Post
| Email This Post
| Comments (4)
