What's That Smell?

Woolworths didn't have my usual washing powder this week, so  I had to get substitute.
Same brand different fragrance.
This one is supposed to be "lemon fresh".
I opened the box with no great expectations only to have my nostrils assailed by a most peculiar odour. It didn't really smell like lemons, not even some sort of chemically lemon-esque scent. After a few seconds my olfactory memory kicked in. My new soap powder fragrance was highly reminiscent of the surface spray I use around the skirting boards to keep the cockroaches at bay.
(Sadly I am very familiar with that particular scent at the moment-we seem to be under attack from giant mutant cockroaches: EWWW!)
On the plus side our clothes should be free of crawling insects for the foreseeable future.

Too MuchTo Do

Like everyone else at this time of year I find myself drowning in a sea of busy. I am up to my middle with have to, got to and must do and sinking fast. As I lay in bed, my head buzzing with what I haven't managed to finish off today and what I need to do tomorrow, I find myself asking, when did Christmas stop being fun and start being hard work?

Why is it that to do lists always include things like-

• pay bills,
• worm the cat
• find the source of mystery smell in the bathroom,

And never include-

• read trashy novel under shady tree
• drink cocktails at sunset
• lay in bubble bath until skin is all wrinkly and prune-ish.

So right now in this unexpected lull I am going to write myself a fantasy to do list. What would I do if time, money, talent and responsibility were no barrier. Hmm, let's see in addition to the above I would-

• sleep solidly until I woke up naturally
• learn to crochet
• learn to dance
• learn a language
• take up fencing
• create a garden
• sky dive
• run a marathon
• learn to play a musical instrument
• climb a mountain
• see the northern lights
• walk on the great wall of China
• drink Champaign in a hot air balloon
• scuba dive in the tropics
• stand beside an active volcano
• visit exotic destinations (Versailles, Rome, Pompeii, Petra, Egypt, Paris, South America)
• photo safari in Africa 
• finish PhD (start PhD)
• see a glacier up close
• write a book
• laugh heartily and often (I never seem to do it anymore)
• slow down, ease up, let go

Now that's a far more interesting and fun to do list. Merry Christmas.

Shaking Bed

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep my bed started vibrating. (And before you ask, my hero is away and I was sleeping alone).
This isn't the first time my bed has shaken (really you want to go there?) but I have been noticing it happening a lot lately. I don't recall it happening if there is anybody else in bed with me (oh, grow up!). Nor can I remember it occuring with any light on (either the room light, bedside lamp or light coming in from the hallway or ensuite). While last night it hapened as I was falling asleep in the past it has happened when I've been awake and once or twice I have been woken up by it.
It's a difficult thing to describe. If you've ever experienced a mild earth tremor it's sort of like that but not quite. It is definitely the bed moving and not me. It feels like a gentle shaking that increases in intensity but never really gets too vigorous.
I'd love to know what could be causing it or failing that if anybody else has experienced anything similar.

Happy New Year

I can report the year's first confirmed sighting of hot cross buns. In Woolworths at Mordialloc around 10am this morning, January 2nd.
Can anybody beat that?

I Should Never...

Paint my nails whilst drunk.
Enough said.

No Sugar Challenge

I made it. 50 days sugar-free. It's been an interesting challenge. It opened my eyes to just how much sugar was in my, relatively healthy, diet. I will be continuing on with the low sugar life and try to keep my food intake limited to those that contain less than 5% sugar but I won't be as obsessive about it. After all, life calls for some flexibility.

It's not mess, it's art: apparently.

Master of the Bleeding Obvious has a busy weekend as was evidenced by the pile of shoes that had accumulated just inside the back door (the selection included shool shoes, a pair of docs, a set of heels and a few ballet flats-for those who are interested in that sort of thing). By Sunday night I was well and truly tired of tripping over them every time I came inside and suggested she might like to put the mess away or feel my wrath.
This threat was met with a deadpan: "They're not mess, they're an art installation."
Nice comeback.
The shoes were removed nonetheless.

No Sugar Challenge

I come from a long line of type 2 diabetics. (Cheers, forebears) Knowing my age and weight increase my chances of inheriting the family legacy last year I significantly reduced my sugar intake.
Things were going well but lately stress has seen sugar and refined carbs creep back into my diet...in some cases explode back would be a more accurate phrase.
In an attempt to get things back on track I have decided to join 50 days sugar free. It  sounds like a hard slog but my experience was that hunting down the hidden sugar in food was more difficult than the loss of sweetness.
Why not join me and give it a go, check out the details here: Natalie Carter's No Sugar Challenge

Melbourne Eathquake

I think this picture says it all.
Apparently this was the largest quake we've had in 30 years but the couple of quick shakes we felt here were barely noticed. The last quake at least cracked the plaster in our ceiling.
On the plus side at least nobody was hurt and the resulting damage is mainly mess than actual destruction.
In fact I'm a bit embarrassed to call it an eathquake at all, even if it did register 5.3 magnitude.

Wide Awake

Here it is the wee small hours and here I am awake-again. I've always been a bit of an insomniac but these days, or should that be nights, the problem seems to be worse than ever. I used to wile away the hours doing quiet housework but it seems my nocturnal floor mopping and shower scrubbing disturb the rest of the household-who could all, incidentally, sleep through a bomb exploding if it happened at seven on a weekday morning.
At one time I would have indulged in a bit of fiction writing to entertain myself but the muse has left me and I don't know if she'll be back. NaNoWriMo notwithstanding.
I could always read. I have a to-be-read pile that can be seen from the moon. Sadly nothing seems to be able to hold my interest for very long. My reading has been reduced to flipping through knitting patterns in doctors' waiting rooms.
Speaking of knitting I finally finished last year's project (a simple moss stitch cardigan) and I'm rocketing through this year's (a Debbie Bliss Riding Jacket, I love its shape). There's nothing like big needles and thick wool to speed up a project.
And so it goes on.

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.