Messages from Beyond?

I returned from my daily pilgrimage to Woolies (bread, milk, peas and corn) to be greeted by the light flashing away on my answering machine.
Typical, thinks I. I'm only gone for fifteen minutes and that's when the world wants me.
I press the play button and wait to hear which of my many devotees desired an audience (mum or one of my kids wanting a lift home). What I hear instead is hold music-a bad synthetic rendition of a lesser know classic. After about ten seconds an unfamiliar male voice cuts the music off with a confused "hello...hello" then the line goes dead.
What's happening here?
Bizzare crossed-line fault or mysterious voice from the other side?
One is more likely but the other far more interesting.

Missing Time

I am not addicted to Bejewelled 3.
I can stop playing anytime I want.
The reason I can't remember Sunday afternoon is because I spent it in a state of deep meditation. It may have looked like zombie-brained game playing to the ignorant and uninitiated but it was, in fact, a kind of zen type contemplation.
Really!

Improbable Assumptions

Today my copy of the Fortean Times arrived in a plain black plastic wrapper.
I do hope the postman, and any neighbours that saw me carrying it inside, think it was some kind of kinky porn mag.
It would be fun to believe, that for just a momnet, I'm not perceived as a staid, middle-aged housewife. Not that anybody around here would notice or care to speculate about the contents of my letter box-even if it was kinky porn packaged in lurid green with "SEXYMART!!!" stamped all over it.
Not that I've ever been to Sexymart or have any idea what colour packaging they use. I really am a staid, middle-aged housewife.

The Ghost of Chistmas Past

The wrapping paper is in the recycling bin, the turkey carcass has been picked clean and the final cracker pulled. Christmas has come and gone again yet somehow I feel like I missed it.
Maybe the magic of the season was tempered by the lack of excitable young children in the house. Teenagers might enjoy the day but they don't have that same breathless wonder they did only a few years ago.
Perhaps over exposure to the commercial aspects of Christmas (the shops here were pimped out in tinsel and Xmas sales from mid October) somehow inoculated me against the charm of the season.
Or could it be that the Christmas cards from far flung relatives still trickling in through the post box have left me with a subconscious sense of not quite reaching the big day yet.
Whatever the cause, Christmas left me completely ambivalent this year.
I do hope it's not an indication of Christmas future.

Bah Humbug!

It just doesn't feel like Christmas.
The tree is up, gifts are wrapped. There's turkey in the fridge and fruit cake on the sideboard. Shops are crowded, television is a never ending parade of Christmas "specials" and carols are being played on the streets.
But the Christmas spirit is yet to move me. Somehow it all feels a bit hollow.
I'm drifting through the season in a dream-like state not quite wanting it all to be over but not anticipating the day either.
What ever happened to the thrill and magic that used to accompany Christmas? When did buying and wrapping gifts stop being fun and start being work? Where did this lethargic attitude to it all come from? Will it pass before the big day arrives?
I'll just keep on going through the motions and see where it all leads.

Size Matters

Apparently it's true what they say, size matters.
At least to men, anyway.
That's the only explanation I can think of. Why else would my hero insist on having the biggest one?
I managed to convince him that something smaller would be better.
And he agreed, eventually.
But only to something slightly smaller. As it was, it only just fit into the car.
I must admit though that I've got used to the size much faster than I thought I would.
Perhaps at heart size matters to us girls more than we like to admit.
Though it may be that after a week of watching the tiny tv the wide screen only looks huge in comparison. On the other hand maybe it is really massive. That's what you get for letting a man choose the TV.

Death By Dusting

During my childhood my family moved house-a lot. I continued my nomadic existance right through to my mid twenties when having children forced me to put down roots. Which is to say, the idea of packing up a household consisting of not only myself, but also my hero and, at that point, two small children, filled me with dred and so through pure terror/laziness we bought our little house in the suburbs. I tell you of my vast number of past abodes so that you know when I say this is the dustiest house I have ever lived in, I've got a good base for comparison.
And this is the dustiest house I have ever lived in.
I'm not talking about a fine layer settling on neglected ornaments here. I'm talking about a quilt of dust as thick as the A-K yellow pages over everything. Now you might think that's to be expected if you haven't dusted in sixteen years but this particularly aggressive dust accumulates within days: certainly less than a week. I've long since surrendered to the inevitablity of the dust. Once every month or so I go into a frenzy then between times I just wipe over the electrical appliances and brush away the spider webs.
As an aside we have particularly diligent spiders here. Once I set up the ironing board, went away to get some water to fill the iron and by the time I got back there was a web string from the ironing board to the window sill. I have a witness. I made my hero come and assure me I wasn't seeing things. It does seem a bit unfair that we should have webs when you consider the size of the huntsmen that make their way in here. But back to the dust...
So yesterday I decided it was time to do some dusting. I wiped and vaccuumed and flittered about with the synthetic feathers (supposedly static to pick dust up not just blow it about). It all looked lovely, and probably will do for a few days.
Then last night I turned on the television. Reception was absolute rubbish-or so I thought. I put up with the flickering for a while then gave up and changed channels. Again with the bad reception. In fact every channel had a shockingly bad picture. And then-POOF! The screen went completley black.
We tried everything in our repetoire (basically unplugging it and plugging it back in) to no avail. Our TV was dead. Dead as a doornail.
I'm not sure what went wrong but I think it was the dust. The machine had probably accustomised itself to operating in a dust rich environment and then I came along and cleaned up. It just couldn't cope.
I'll be much more selective about my dusting in the future, that's for sure.

Gotcha!

My men were watching the V8 Supercars on TV and I came in just as one was leaving the pits (a car that is, not the men). I paused and watched it swing back out onto the track. Then said as deadpan as I could manage, "He didn't give way."
The look of shock and disbelief on my hero's face was priceless, as for just a second he thought my comment was serious.
Oh yeah, gotcha!

The Year That Was

The defining event of the past year has been My Hero's unexpected health issues. Much of the past eight months has been spent in and around hospitals and researching supplementary treatments (mainly dietary) while trying to keep things at home as routine as possible. This has meant downplaying the seriousness of My Hero's condition so as not to worry the children. With the Professor of Pedantics half way through VCE and Master of the Bleeding Obvious about to enter senior school the last thing either needs is to be worried about their father's health. Fortunately it hasn't been too difficult since he has few overt signs of illness.
On a happier note Boy Genius succeeded in getting a place at his first choice adult centre. He now attends Beachlynn Centre. He's settled in well and by all accounts really enjoys the program. Though it would take over an hour to get there via public transport, it's only about half an hour drive from home, so we bought a little car for me to ferry him out and back each day.
The car has also come in handy for the Professor of Pedantics to learn to drive. Yes, she got a learner's permit: and she's keener than she is skilled. At least I've got a year before Master of the Bleeding Obvious can get hers.
So that's the edited hilights of the year that was. It really doesn't sound like much but the time has swept by in a blur. I just keep breathing deeply and telling myself that everything is going to be just fine and so far, it has.

Password Recovered

SURPRISE!!!
For anybody still out there dropping by, you may be wondering why I haven't posted for over a year.
Well, the embarrassing truth is, I forgot my password and have been unable to log in, lo these many months.
So why didn't I use the recover password function? I tried, I really did but I am stupid. Note to self: do not make default email address for recovery password the address which you require the password to access.
Idiots fall down before me, for I am your queen.