The next stop is...Medicare

Being, as I am, philosophically opposed to private health cover, I am happy to pay for those specialist services boy genius requires that the government doesn’t provide and graciously accept the Medicare rebate they offer.
Collecting this rebate means a visit to the local (though these days there are so few of them they might well be called regional) Medicare office. It’s been quite a while since I made the pilgrimage so this morning I girded my loins (ie, put on comfy shoes and grabbed a book) and hauled myself in to Southland.
As I said, it’s been quite a while, and things have changed since I was there last.
The Medicare office now has the welcoming ambience of a railway station waiting room. Sure a nice railway station with carpet and upholstered seats but a railway station waiting room nonetheless, complete with old newspapers left on seats and a gumball type vending machine. (The trap door of which pierces the entire room with a sharp crash every time it is dropped. This is every few seconds because once a child sees it they can’t help themselves and have to lift that damned flap.)
Instead of the single queue they now have a ticketing system very similar to the one at the deli, you know, where you take a number then wait until you’re called. Every few minutes a mechanical voice (that sounds very much like the woman who announces the stops on the Frankston line-adding to the station atmosphere) calls out a ticket number and a window number. I had to repress the urge to yell BINGO! when my number finally came up.
I suspect the changes are meant to make the system somehow more efficient or the Medicare experience more pleasant, perhaps both. A pointless waist of public funds since a bureaucracy is a bureaucracy and it is not in its nature to run efficiently and with the possible exception of a few retired station masters railway waiting rooms aren’t considered particularly aesthetic.
But I do have an idea that could make the Medicare offices a more pleasant place for everyone, staff and clients alike-
Get rid of that bloody annoying gumball machine.

For Decorative Purposes Only?

Four pregnancies in as many years may have put an end to my svelte girlish figure but my more ample proportions don’t maintain themselves. This requires the regular consumption of chocolate. Though admittedly alcohol also plays a part. However, that is mainly medicinal-without the fortifying drink motherhood would drive me mad. Excess calories are merely a side effect.
Mother’s day has well come and gone again. The annual offerings of chocolate have been made, accepted and consumed. My selfless children once again sacrificed themselves and ate the ones I didn’t like. As if such a thing exists (okay there is that tasteless white filth but they know better than to call that chocolate within my hearing). We all know that there is no chocolate I don’t like, just like I don’t actually prefer the burnt bit of anything, this is just a pretence that allows them to eat the gifts they gave me. You know what I’m talking about, all mothers play the game with their young.
Anyway, presentation is everything, so naturally my chocolates came in the prettiest cup the St Louis mother’s day gift stall had to offer. Fine imported porcelain covered in pink and purple unicorns and fairies. I exclaimed my delight and rushed to the sink to wash off the made in China sticker from the bottom of the cup.
That’s when things turned weird.
Underneath the sticker were the words For Decorative Purposes Only, Not Intended for the Serving of Foods or Beverages.
It’s a cup. If it can’t be used for the serving of food or beverages what’s the point of it. In fact, if it can’t be slung in the dishwasher it has no business being in my kitchen.
That aside, it has left me with a picture of somebody somewhere with rooms full of display cases holding similar overly feminised cups that have never know the glory of serving food of beverages.
I feel a little sorry for them.
The cups that is.
And maybe the person too.

Cubed Carrots?

I barely dare say it but I think the tag team vomit-a-thon that has been my life this past three weeks might finally be over.
A warning to the squemish, the following could make you sick...
Isn't it amazing how your mind can focus on the smallest of things in order not to think too much about what it is actually dealing with. As I was mopping vomit and emptying buckets and washing towels I was distracted by the presence of cubed carrot.
I have never taken the time to cube a carrot in my life and yet here it was, in all its regurgitated glory, bright orange and beautifully diced. And it's always present. Where does all this cubed carrot come from?
I have a theory. I suggest the appendix, hitherto believed to be purposeless, is actually a carrot processing and storage organ. Any carrot consumed, in any form, during your lifetime, is taken in by the appendix where it is compacted, cubed and stored. Reverse peristalsis triggers the release of this cubed carrot ensuring all vomit contains this essential element.
In case you get the wrong idea, it hasn't been all spew, all the time. It just seemed that way. Particularly when the cat decided to join the general heave fest, coughing up a few early morning hair balls for me to start the day.
There has been lots of Other Stuff going on here as well, which I hope to update you on over the next couple of weeks.
Stay tuned

Are we having fun yet?

I suppose that depends on whether or not your definition of fun centres around cleaning up vomit.
And in spite of what everyone here seems to think (to paraphrase: hey, you were a nurse for all those years vomit mopping must be your area of expertise), mine does not.

What did the Romans ever do for us?

The Edithvale wetlands can be a truly lovely place, particularly on mornings when a light mist hugs the ground and sun spotlights the treetops. I was walking along basking in the wonder of it all when my commune with nature was interrupted by a long column of school children.
There were hundreds of them, stretching out as far as the eye could see. Further, I discovered as I rounded the corner at the golf course and beheld a never ending stream of them crossing the bridge. It would seem the entire student body of a local primary school was heading out for the day.
For some reason they reminded me of a Roman army on the march. I think that is exactly what a Roman legion would have looked like. If Romans had been about four foot tall, worn navy blue uniforms and carried water bottles instead of weapons. And had recently been defeated in battle and so were staggering about a bit out of formation. And were not in the least unhappy about their defeat and were laughing and joking with one another and ignoring their centurion’s commands to stay to the left.
Okay, so maybe they weren’t anything like a Roman army on a forced march. But when I saw them that was the first image that sprang to mind.
How impressive were the Romans? It’s been over two millennia since the Empire was at the height of its powers and they are still alive in the mind of a middle aged woman living on the other side of the world in a country they never even imagined existed.
Just goes to show what a mastery of Latin can do for a culture.

Don't Cut the Wires

It was the maniacal giggling that gave Boy Genius away. There is simply nothing in his bedroom that funny. I braced myself and went to discover the source of such unbound joy.
“Don’t cut the wires,” he said, handing me a fistful of black spaghetti that was, until very recently, the cables connecting the television to the vcr.
When an obsession involves potential electrocution and the costly replacement of household items you tend to discourage it (and install a top of the line electrical trip switch).
You’d think after more than a decade of chanting the mantra Don’t Cut The Wires some understanding would sink in. You would be wrong.
These wires were well and truly cut.
But how? We monitor scissors with a vigilance usually reserved for schedule 4 drugs.
“How did you cut the wires?”
“Clippers.” He opens up his fist to show me his nail clippers. I swear he looks proud.
It’s true, where there’s a will, there’s a way.
I’m torn between being worried and annoyed at his continued cutting of wires and admiring his ingenuity.

No more swinging from the chandeliers

Picture a chandelier.
No, that one’s far too nice.
Make it domestic, circa 1974.
Give it five arms.
Terminate each arm in a clear plastic bowl especially designed to maximize dust collection.
Festoon the entire thing with ropes of clear plastic beads.
Make sure the wire knots holding everything together are clearly visible.
Liberally sprinkle with large faceted plastic teardrops, which look like nothing so much as … well, large faceted plastic teardrops.
Overlay it all with a patina of age.
This was the first thing I saw every morning.
For the last 13 years.
Finally it is gone.
It will not be missed.

In Loving Memory

Thomas Kieren would have been 14 today.

Strange Times Indeed

It is 9 o'clock in the morning and I am roasting a chicken.
Time was I would have considered this a strange thing to be doing at this hour.
Not anymore.
In the past few weeks I've mopped floors at 2 in the morning, scrubbed the shower at 11pm and baked cakes at midnight.
Tell me I'm not alone.
What have you done at atypical times?

Tired of Reality

Reality TV: Fascinating commentary on society, providing insight into the structure of communities and the esoteric workings of cultural subgroups or complete crap-discuss.
I just don’t get ‘reality tv’.
I can see where tv station management are coming from. In these times of economic accountability it’s all about the bottom line, and reality tv, with its incomprehensible cult following, provides maximum return for minimum outlay. No actors, no script writers, minimal scenery and make-up/wardrobe costs, what’s not to love?
But what’s the attraction for viewers?
Maybe the first wave of reality tv offered something new and different but the longer these shows run the less they have to offer. And don’t even get me started on “Fill-In-The-Blank with the Stars” type programmes. Apart from the fact that the definition of Stars as used in the title of such shows is somewhat liberal, who cares?
Sure I could shrug and say if I don’t like reality tv I don’t have to watch it and leave it at that. But its insidious presence leaks out of its allocated timeslot and into that of the few programmes I can be bothered with.
And it is this that annoys the hell out of me.
What is so compelling about these shows that they must run overtime by up to twenty minutes? From the inane rubbish I’ve been exposed to while waiting for something half-way decent to start, I can’t tell.
Really, if you’re a fan explain it to me, I’d love to understand the attraction.