Poppalina

Resting Up

Not often you catch me with nothing to say,

But there it is.

I'm waiting on a call that involves two drives to Brisbane, but the floods have it all on hold.

Meanwhile, I've been nursing a sick kid back to health (check), catching up on my yoga practice (ow....check), stocking the freezer with food that kids can heat and eat without burning the house down (yay!.....check) and letting my dog jump in the river and turn himself an ugly shade of sopping grey because he thinks it such a hoot, (sigh.....check).

Not terribly interesting, is it?

So here's another drawing to keep youse going until I get my act together.

 

Golden Rules of The Road, Part #1

Weareth not thy thong underwear for long haul drives.

 

What seems sleek and sexy on commencement will,

at the end of 30 hours, feel like a red hot poker up the jexie, 

and have you walking like a cowboy.

I am seriously going to enjoy living here.

Shula then discovers that the cafes in her new neighbourhood have wireless internet access.

Which they will give you access to for the price of a cup of rather excellent coffee.

Even MORE conveniently, one of my favourite cafes is connected to (bastardsmaytheyburninhell) Optus,

So I can even download my email straight to my laptop, instead of having to poop around with webmail.

How civilized is that?

God. I can't tell you how good it feels to be heading back to the Land of the Living.

Our house, is a very very very fine house

 

It is, indeed, a very fine house.

So fine, that I still can't believe we're going to be living there in just a few short weeks.

 

 

Anyone familiar with Melbourne's current rental crisis will understand that scoring decent housing amidst the clamour of hundreds of applicants prepared to offer first-born children and large financial gratuities in exchange for the keys, makes the acquisition of a warm, airy and clean little house, in a truly fabulous location, complete with excellent backyard, fruit trees, vegetable garden and shed, so utterly miraculous, that I still can't believe my luck.

 

So relieved and grateful was I that I promptly went out and acquired a long-coveted Ganesh on the nevernever to celebrate, and don't even care about how I'm going to pay him off. I might let Ganpati himself field that one, obstacles being, after all, his forte.

Dudes, we are so out of here.

Something in the Air

Possums,

I must leave you temporarily.

My computer has completely shat itself.

Completely. I can't even get into it.

All it does is unrecognisable things with blue screens, which strikes me as tragic.

With any luck, it will be fixable. But I confess that I fear it will be Something Much More Dreadful.

In which case, I may be Gone Some Time, being in no position to replace an entire system, not right now, anyway.

See you when.

Shula

ps. That makes one sewing machine completely burnt out, another sewing machine definitively jammed and requiring professional intervention, one industrial sewing machine requiring late-night interstate diagnosis and a spare parts replacement, and one computer most probably cactus beyond repair.

In one week.

What are the odds on that, do you reckon?

pps. I'll be checking in on my emails when I visit friends. Forgive me if I'm tardy in responding.

And the fun just keeps coming

Can't talk.

Very Sick Kid.

Flowering gum in homage to Mary. Her nature photos have been inspiring me.

Little dog is alive, but still in hospital.

More later.

Taking the Cure

I swear, I can just FEEL the love.

Sometimes I forget that people actually read this blog. A heartfelt thankyou for all your emails and comments. They helped me to reconnect. I forget things when I'm sick, like the fact that I'm not the only person in the universe.

One of the things that happens when you're perfectly convinced that you're going to die, and then you don't, is that you are obliged to re-examine your life and your priorities.

I've come to the conclusion that this business of Not Crafting has to stop. Crafting makes me feel alive and worthwhile, like I'm contributing something to the world, rather than just leaving a big, fat, environmentally-degraded footprint on it. It also makes me happy, something I need to pay more attention to.

This means that the time I spend noodling around on the computer will necessarily diminish, so I will be posting less, I think. The good news is that I am more likely to have something to offer when I do post, albeit yet another picture of a work in progress. And maybe the odd breakfast, just to drive Bec nuts.

That's the plan, anyway. Poppalina is turning back into a Craft Blog.

I also made an appointment with my specialist. High time I did that, too. The radioactive iodine treatment that he recommended 4 years ago and that I responded to with a polite, but firm, Over my dead, fucking body, is suddenly looking attractive.

I've had enough of living like a demented bag lady, that's for sure.

Viral Ingredient

I have a virus on my computer.

I'll be offline until it's fixed.

Not happy. Not one little bit.

Greek Sleeping Sickness

So named after a holiday in Greece, many years ago, that I managed to sleep my way through completely.

I suppose I'm an insomniac, in that I don't sleep much at night, but daytime sleeping is no problem at all. I sleep just fine, providing the sun is up. There are several reasons for this, one of which is that I am a vampire.

But it seems that Greek Sleeping Sickness is upon me again. Daytime, night time, doesn't matter. If I stop moving, I fall asleep. I can sleep 15 hours straight, potter around for a few hours, feed people and dogs, go to yoga, and it's back to bed for another 12 hours of there's-not-an-alarm-clock-in-the-Universe-that-could-wake-me sleep.

Makes for some pretty boring blogging, I know. But what can you do? I expect it'll pass soon enough.

If anyone has a Handsome Prince handy, one that doesn't mind kissing snoring women over, say, 40, do send him my way.

Well, HEY, it worked for Sleeping Beauty, didn't it?

This is....what scares me

This.

Random, meaningless, mindless, hideous violence.

It makes me weep. For Zhonjun Cao. For his family.

It frightens me.

It makes me dangerously angry.

It shakes my faith in humanity.

It makes me sick to my stomach.

It makes me afraid to let my daughter leave the house, alone.

And if anyone's curious to know how the story ended.......

He died.

And the fuckers who killed him are still loose.