i smell great

i went to the health food shop today and got some shampoo, conditioner and body wash that not only smell fantastic, all herby and delicious, but don't contain all those bad things that start with laurel, which in itself doesn't sound that bad. hopefully, not only will i save the planet single handedly and a few dolphins but my skin won't resemble a dried up, mouldy leaf from the garden. yes, i exaggerate slightly but you know what i mean. of course, menopause has nothing to do with it. the products were a tad more expensive that i usually pay from the supermarket but i hope that they will be worth it. ps my computer is making a funny crackling noise.

a website i love

now at first glance this website is everything i hate. it's pretty silly and has that stupid annoying spelling. i don't know any cats who talk like this :) and it's a bit kitchy for my tastes but they have the most adorable cat pics and the captions are so cute they just grow on you. if you can get around the spelling, which i am managing to do surprisingly, have a look if you like and enjoy :)

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

holidays

hello, it's been a little while since my last post. christmas and the weekend were busy, my grandson stayed over saturday night. we always have fun together, he's 11 now. he told me he's starting puberty and he's a young man now. awwww. they had their presents and turkey for lunch. i actually put two presents away because i bought them so much. it's ridiculous, their grandmother buys them lots, their mother buys them lots and i buy them lots. crazy to give them so many toys and the toys are expensive. the baby born doll was nearly $50.00 for heaven's sake. so i have their b/day presents and let's face it they didn't miss a toy each. they were more than pleased with their loot. santa was very generous. i had to take Anthony back to kmart because santa bought him two transformers which were the same. the girl behind the counter was great, she humoured us although i'm sure ants doesn't believe in santa anymore. the kids at school tell them really early these days don't they? kids aren't kids long enough, these days they want to grow up so fast, i'm sure my mother never said the same about me hahaha. i'm not working this week so am pottering around at home. i cleaned out my kitchen drawers yesterday, they weren't as bad as i thought. i've started on my filing system today. omg it's a mess. i've got to chuck stuff out and declutter. funny that word wasn't around a few years ago and now there are websites about decluttering. i'm still planning to put stuff on ebay, i started but need some more photos. it's not a hard process just time consuming. i'll get the hang of it i suppose. how exciting to actually sell something that you no longer need and get some extra money. usually i give everything i don't want to my daughter or the second hand shop so of course, her life/house is cluttered. she's moving back in with her partner in the next few days, luckily she doesn't have far to travel, it's just around the corner. trouble is she's going to have far too much stuff and will take forever to get some sort of order if at all. she's not very organised.

RIP Miss Eartha Kitt

i've just heard the news that Miss Eartha Kitt has passed away and i'm am truly saddened. i've just finished her book Rejuvenate! It's Never Too Late and the biography written a while ago was a very interesting read. she had an amazing life and rose from a childhood of poverty, abuse and being unwanted and unloved. she was an outspoken activist for the rights of blacks and women. she was a true star, one of the old breed that are sadly disappearing. she died at age 81 of colon cancer. RIP dear Miss Kitt

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j1C56dYy4W-IgXZueldUkrEjKMxwD95A1JH80

jewellery and ebay

i've been beading most of the day. i'm fixing some necklaces Liyana got in egypt. they are too long and according to her get lost in her cleavage. i said she's lucky to have cleavage. i realised today, oh ok, i knew this already, that i have millions and millions of beads. if i live to be 202 i couldn't possible use them all. i'm like this with hair products too, sort of a compulsive buying thing. how many hair products can a person use? one at a time would be sensible. my mother use to get a store of things like tea, soap etc. she grew up in the depression and these things were in short supply. she also had, when she died, a lot of stuff with the price tags still attached. she loved books and records (yes, vinyl discs that played music and got scratched very easily). she said to me once, i've just bought the latest book by 'insert author' but i'm going to put it away and not read it yet and save it for later after i've done this, this and this. such a waste imo. i know i've said this before, probably last new year's but i really need to quell my spending on stuff i've already got enough of. i collect Buddha’s, cats, chinese ginger jars, books, cds/dvds and a huge range of stuff. it's staggering. no wonder my life feels cluttered and i haven't even mentioned clothes and handbags. today i decided to remove the digit and sell stuff on ebay. i've got an antique phone on the kitchen table waiting to be photographed. i will do it today. yes i will.

a meal to forget (hopefully)

yuck yuck yuck. i just heated up a lean cuisine for tea. wait for it ... beef sausages and mashed potato. sounds yummy doesn't it? let me tell you i have never had such a disgusting meal in my life. oh, ok, some of my parents in law's dinners were pretty gross. (i loved my parents in law but cooking was not their forte, think grey unrecognisable veggies and meat things ... too gross to mention, they did a nice ((if slightly overcooked)) roast though). before i had my shoulder surgery i cooked lots and put meals in my small freezer. great habit. cook a meal put half in the freezer. come home from work and just heat it up. great. well, the other night in the supermarket i went nuts and bought two lean cuisines. big mistake. they have their place in a single working full time woman's life but they usually leave me hungry and are not super tasty. well, this sausages and mash meal surpassed disgusting and i couldn't eat it, and for me that's something. so i had a banana and some devine italian chocolate hearts with some delish indonesian coffee. now that's better. i'm watching one of my fave shows: food safari on sbs. i love cooking shows/dvds, so relaxing. have a great Christmas day tomorrow everyone.

welcome home Mandy

glad you are back safe and sound

henna

my son put henna in my hair for me yesterday. i like it, it's quite red and it's supposed to intensify within days. the grey is a lighter red than the rest. i like it although it was v. messy to wash out. omg it looked like a couple of buckets of slush were thrown in the shower. it took ages to rinse clean and it does smell ever so slightly. not unpleasant just get a whiff of it occasionally and it's a plantish smell. (i know that's not a word). was fairly easy to put on and i mixed it the night before with vinegar. if you put beetroot juice in the mix it gives it a blue tinge and lemon juice is supposed to be good. i drove home in a shower hat with gladwrap on my head. son gave me a cap to wear going home. i had to leave it in for three hours. was all ok. after we put it on we played on his new wii. wow i love it. i might get one. he got wii fit and we did yoga, bowled, there's a tightrope thingy which is way hard and lots of other stuff.

cats

i found this on another blog recently. amazing story. i love cats

A one-year-old boy has been found living rough on the streets, apparently being kept alive by cats. The boy was discovered by police in Misiones, in Argentina, surrounded by eight wild cats. Doctors believe the animals snuggled up with him during freezing nights which would otherwise have killed him. The boy was seen eating scraps foraged by the animals while they licked him.Policewoman Alicia Lorena Lindgvist discovered the child by a canal in the Christ King district of the city. She said: "I was walking and noticed a gang of cats sitting very close together. It is unusual to see so many like that so I went for a closer look and that's where I saw him. The boy was lying at the bottom of a gutter. There were all these cats on top of him licking him because he was really dirty. "When I walked over they became really protective and spat at me. They were keeping the boy warm while he slept." The officer, who noticed scraps of food near the boy, added: "The cats knew he was fragile and needed protecting." Police have found the boy's father who is homeless and said he had lost the boy several days ago while out collecting cardboard to sell. He told officers cats had always been protective of his son.

interesting isn't it?

clutter

i've mentioned this just recently and i'm drowning in it. discs seem to be one of my main problems. i have thousands of the little suckers. what to do with them is the problem as i've tried most ways to store them. the folders with plastic inserts just got too bulky to close, stacking them didn't work as there's too many. the one storage solution i do like is little boxes. i also have a prob. with boxes, hundreds of them around the house too. i got a label maker. i like tins to store things in too, got lots of those. i'm trying to concentrate on one room at a time as this seems like a logical thing to do. however ... things are not going as smoothly as i'd hoped. i've managed to put away (read hide) things but now the problem remains of going through them, sorting etc etc. too hard.
i made curried sausages today as we had our secret santa breakfast yesterday and had mountains of food left over. i brought some sausages home and cooked them up in a spicey malaysian curry thingy. speaking of malaysian, i went to the market last night after work (no parking problems) as i had to drop off a friend. i couldn't help myself and indulged in some malaysian satays even though i'd been grazing all day. i also had a nice glass of dry white when i got home. i have been home all day today which is a rare luxury for me. an exhausting week just gone i can only hope that next week, being a short one, is much calmer. we close early on christmas eve and then i don't go back to work until the 5th january. yay. as previously stated i plan to clean. that's the plan anyway.

ac/dc

i love acca dacca. i'm watching a special on the teev atm. they've still got it. i'm in a real cleaning mood. it happens occasionally. i feel snowed under by clutter and plan to do something about it when i have some time off over Christmas. i'm also stiff and sore, legs mostly, so feel i must do something about that too namely some exercise. i'm so slack, after my shoulder surgery and months of therapy and exercise i have slacked off and it's really hurting again. it's so unfair. move it or lose it they say and i'm afraid it's true. i'm looking for a yoga class nearby because although i have 3000 instructional dvds on the subject i find it hard to keep up the momentum of doing exercise alone. me and a few thousand others i suspect. well, Mandy will be leaving tomorrow for her well earned hols so happy holidays Mandy, come back safe and have fun. i'm planning to henna my hair sometime soon. i hope i can talk my son into doing it for me. he coloured my hair last time and did a great job. better than my daughter. he was so careful and took his time. he does his partner's and is very good at it. henna is very messy and a long process. you have to leave it on for hours after wrapping your head in plastic wrap. maybe one of the African shops do it. apparently you need to mix it the night before as it take time to develop. well, my kitchen floor must be dry by now so i'm off to put a few more things in order and then bed.

thought for today

“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

dustin update: he's doing well, eating and blowing bubbles. this is normal i think. he's nesting or something

pizza

last night i had pizza and watched the mummy 3 at Liyana's place. pizza was very nice, in fact, i just had a slice for breakfast. we stopped the movie about a third of the way through because it was just BAD. we are both major brendan fans and we couldn't stand it. it was painful. so..... we put mama mia on as i hadn't seen it at the movies and it was great. loved it. L has seen it about six times now. it's out on video. she has a wide screen tv so it was good. we had coffee and double chocolate tim tams for dessert and watched bellydance dvds (she's a bd teacher). that was good too :)
i went to munno para shopping centre yesterday and had a disastrous day with my daughter. it was hideous. she left and i went back to get some presents, when i got to the checkout i discovered i'd left my card in my jeans which were at home. bad day. i'm planning on going to the shops today. wish me luck

scrabble

i went to maz's house last night for dinner. roast lamb, yum, very nice. we played scrabble until the wee small hours and i mostly lost. maz gave me a vibrating pillow for christmas, it's beautiful soft velour. feels lovely. i'm meeting the kids at the shops today and tonight going to see Liyana for pizza and a brendan frasier movie. love brendan.
dustin is ok. i've got to top his water up today and i fed him for the first time last night. he looks so lonely in there all by himself. can't put a pic in this post AGAIN.

pet update

note to self #4212 do not buy blue gravel for the blue siamese fighter fish. big mistake. can hardly see him. live and learn. i hope he survives

i am no longer petless. is that a word?

well i have a pet finally. it's a blue siamese fighter fish. apparently they only live for three years. that can't be right can it? that might be why my last one died, it was old age. :( i got a little tank and some food and some gravel. i can't decide whether to call him zimmerman, after bobby, or, dustin, after dustin nguyen. i'll sleep on it. i also bought myself a present. it's a pink pepper grinder. i've got one already but it's ordinary. i need a garlic crusher but forgot to get one.

fish

my son gave me a voucher last christmas from an aquarium place because i wanted some goldfish for the pond. good son. i'm going tonight after work to get a fish. the voucher runs out on the 15th. leaving it a bit late? yes. why? because the aquarium is on the other side of town. not that far away but i just don't get down that way very often. obviously. i thought i'd get a siamese fighting fish. i've got the bowl already. it's a nicely sized bowl. i hate to see those poor little fish in those tiny bowls. they even had a bloody ipod with a fish (live) in it. really!

a painting

http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=1559326884443&source=jl999

my friend from perth sent me this today. have a look, it's lovely

what the?

i bought this vegetable chopper. it's great for garlic but ...

the dentist

i went to the dentist this morning and he said i've sprained a ligament in my tooth. get out!!!!!!! i do not lie, this is what he said. it could have been the helga's pitta chips i was eating boxes of a month or so ago. they are like rocks. he ground down the tooth below it to give it some room and relieve the pressure. he also took an xray and will ring if there's anything urgent. otherwise he wants to see me in january. you won't believe this, or maybe you will, but the tooth on the other side down the bottom hurts now. ahhhhhhhhhhhh

well that was interesting

i'm attaching pics of the sausages and satays i bbqed. (i got the sausages as a back up plan). very interesting experience. it smoked a lot and i think it wasn't hot enough at the end. maybe i should have waited until the coals got hotter but i don't know how to make that happen. more coals? i wish i knew. anyway, the taste. sausages were ok and satays a little bland. i think it needed more marinating time. they weren't horrible but could have been better. they weren't as good as the ones from the market the other day. oh well, back to the drawing board.

ok, forget the washing machine, i got a bbq

i'll do a scarlett and worry about the washing machine tomorrow. truth: my son is coming over later. but on a lighter note i got a bbq. it's a little weber lookalike. should that be webber? anyway, weber was too expensive. i'm going to fire it up soon. i got charcoal and wood things and paper. it should be good. i hope. i'm not really into bbqing but i'll give it my best. how hard can it be? hahaha. i'm going to make chicken satay. i'll let you know how they turn out. wish me luck :)

i just broke the washing machine

omg. i turned it on and found something that i forgot to put in so i pressed the off button and now nothing. i can't undo the door. nothing works. i've turned it on and off. it's not an electronic model so it shouldn't be stuffed completely. and my washing is inside. helpppppppppppppppp

the zoo

adelaide zoo has changed somewhat since my last visit. get out of town. that was quite a few years ago. i think it may have been my 40th birthday. yes, a year or two ago. we had a great time. very tiring. first of all it was difficult to get a park. we had to park ages away but at least it was free. there seem to be a lot of dead ends within the zoo, and there are constructions going on all over it. also, i noticed that there are less animals in each enclosure, and of course, the enclosures have been changed around big time. i packed sandwiches, snacks and water but decided to go get us a coffee. forty minutes later i asked for my money back because the coffees hadn't arrived. they have a buzzer system. you order, they give you a buzzer with a number and buzz you when it's ready. my buzzer didn't go off and i noticed there were about six coffees waiting for someone in the bit behind the counter. no-one came to get them so they would have been cold by the time they did. i asked the girl if they were mine but alas no. the buzzer system is a good idea, the chemist i go to has one. never mind, i didn't want a bloody coffee anyway. well, you know that's a lie as i am a coffee fiend from way back. i recently found some divine indonesian coffee at the asian grocery that is excellent. i'm about to put the charcoal grill thingy together tomorrow. i found a terracotta flower pot on the side of the road that i've scrubbed. i have a grill to go on top and the whole thing will be on bricks to give it some ventilation. i hope it works. i'll let you know. i went to gaganis brothers thursday night after work but the only bbq which was suitable was madly expensive so i'll give the flower pot a go. i have tiny little basil seeds which are shooting. i put them in cotton wool in a saucer on my benchtop. i'll plant them out tomorrow if i get a chance. i also planted some sunflower seeds and they are up too. the tomatoes are doing well and the chilli still has little chillies on it. i hope they grow. i'm going to veg tonight as i'm absolutely pooped. bb for now. sorry can't put a pic up as blogger won't let me. it's not in the mood. maybe later. :(

swimming

the kids enjoyed waterworld today. it could have been a bit warmer weather wise but not too bad. the sun came out once or twice. we are going to the zoo tomorrow so hope rain stays away whilst we're there. it can bucket down before and after because we really need it. i haven't been to the zoo for ages. http://www.zoossa.com.au/adelaide-zoo

enjoy your weekend :)

i'm feeling just a wee bit proud of myself

because one of my posters was published today and i think it looks good. i've been working on another one for another activity all night and it isn't bad either. i'm pooped. i had to bring it home coz i only have publisher at work and needed something with more oomph. yay, wednesday tomorrow which means the w/end is getting closer. i've got an rdo on friday so am going to the swimming centre for their end of year thingy. should be fun, then on friday night we have our work xmas dinner. i'm taking kim to another xmas dinner tomorrow night for the orchid club. it's getting busy and i haven't finished the cards yet. actually haven't done many at all.

back to work today

after three days off. i was sicky poo on friday.