Poppalina

Dirty Dogs

This was the park last week. (Funny looking sheep, don't you think?)

No, it's not meant to be wetlands; that area is intended for playing games, lazing about and flying kites on.

Ruby, who was staying with us, ran around in circles at high speed through all the water, which she thought was hilarious.

It doesn't show in this shot, but she's black with mud underneath.

And the Pea, who normally eschews any water like it's something unspeakably nasty (she doesn't even like walking on dewy grass), found something to roll in.

It was baths all round when we got home.

This stunning flower we found on a walk a couple of months ago; it was the size of my hand. Too pretty not to share.

I'm a dog, yes I am

It's not just the passing resemblance this little chap has to my own dog that made me love this ...

It's what it's saying about how she feels at different times. The Pea would, however, have a sweet, high singing voice, I'd imagine. I'm not sure what song she'd have chosen for herself.

She has always encouraged me to play a spot of Howlin' Wolf on the stereo, but I suspect that's just because she always thinks it's going to be something else.

I am, however, usually happy to oblige.

Living legend, live

A Kapinny post

Apart from this sentence, this post should be a duck-free zone. I think.

One of the benefits of living in or near to Melbourne, is that you can go and see this man appear live, quite frequently. I reckon when I lived there I would have averaged at least three or four times a year, for decades. Last night he performed at one of his very rare Sydney gigs, and I realised how much I'd been missing it, living here.



Chris Wilson is a legendary blues singer, songwriter and harp player, who is dearly loved by those of us in the know. His gorgeous voice is huge enough to plaster you to the back wall, and his harp playing is simply awesome. I've never understood why he's not massively world famous, like some of the blues greats in the US, but there you go. He doesn't tour there, because he has a family and a life in Australia, and he's not the world's best self-promoter; something to which Shula could testify. (She has been known to share the stage with him from time to time. They also share his fabulous wife, but not in a weird way.)

Last night, among several other outrageously talented musicians in the band, was the lovely Sweet Felicia, who was celebrating her birthday. She plays a mean bass and belts out a song like nobody's business. Happy Birthday Sweet Felicia!

I've always said there's no such thing as a bad Chris Wilson gig, and I've never been proved wrong. But last night I decided that if you were forced at gunpoint to rank one gig as better or worse than another, the only thing that would make a difference (other than personal song choice preferences) would be how inspired, or not, his between-song-patter was. Last night, his dry, laconic style of humour was in fine form: the hecklers-who'd-had-a-little-too-much-to-drink were loving it. And copping it.

Funnily enough, I am related to both Chris and Sweet Felicia by dog.

Thanks, Chris, for a top night out!

 

 

 

Guerrilla-edited by Shula. Some OS readers may not familiar with our National Treasure,

and we wouldn't want them missing out....

Enjoy.

Rocket Wars

 

By Shula

Dear God, give me strength.....

Rocket, parsley and Love in a Mist, squashed all but out of existence by the weight of an exceedingly heavy object.

Hail?

A meteor, perhaps?

You can't tell from the photo...

but the flattened area is suspicously, perfectly, dog-shaped.

Now, the trouble with shepherds is that they imprint (in their minds, not just in rocket). Once they've done something once, they're almost certain to do it again, an attribute that renders them simultaneously excellent for training and utterly shitful at unlearning bad behaviour.

Clearly, my dog has decided that an elevated position and cool, spicy ambience gives the rocket bed a perfect aspect from which to survey his dominion.

It puts my rocket supply in Extreme Danger,

Or my dog on the resale market.

I'm still deciding.

Meanwhile, the dog figures that as long as he doesn't make eye contact, nothing can be proven.
 

Babies love colour

A Kapinny post

It's nowhere near as impressive as the wedding jacket Shula made for a baby Mymlet, but here's one I made for a friend's new baby girl.

I adapted it from a much plainer pattern:

 

It has a picot edge (because I love them so), a dear little floral band and comes complete with complimentary dog hair, as do all my offerings.

 

I'm not a fan of pastel pink or blue on babies, not unless it comes with lots of other gorgeous colours. Babies have personalities too, you know.

When my sister Sophie was a bub, she looked stunning in navy blue. Now she's in her 20s, she pretty much looks stunning in anything. But that's another story.

In which the dog proves himself to be a kangaroo short of a paddock.

So, I'm sure every one is aware by now that Melbourne is in the grip of an Historic Heatwave. Hottest in 100 years. And dry to break your heart. Dry is actually the Heart of the Matter. I don't want to talk about the daphne. Or the fruit trees.....

Yes.

It's very, very, very, very hot.

But life goes on. I still had to get children across town so they could see one another. And a remarkably cheerful job of it I did, thanks to the fact that the air-conditioning in my car beat the temperature of my house hands down. It was probably the most comfortable I'd been all day. Pity you have to get out again at the other end. That was ugly.

Meanwhile, the dog was obliged to stay at home. Which he, despite his semi-comatose and apparently indifferent state, appears to have objected to.

Because he did not stay lying safely and comfortably on the kitchen floor, with assorted electrical cooling fixtures operating for his personal comfort. Instead, he saw fit to go and lock himself in my uncooled-and-facing-hard-west-definitely-not-a-good room-to-be in-at four-o'clock-in the-afternoon-with-the-window-shut yoga room, getting ultimately into such a frantic and over-heated state that he.....well, let's not go there. The damage that can be wrought by a medically distressed, 50kg dog in a small white room has to be seen to be believed. He almost took the fucking door off (which would have been okay, actually, and at least solved the problem).

EVERYTHING in that room now has to be washed. Floors, walls, doors, blankets, mats. With bleach. He spared me the ceiling, but only just.

sigh... I do try to keep things clean and nice. Really I do. But it's like I carry a curse on my head.

And that curse is dog-shaped.

I had to hose him down twice before he made any sense at all. And even then he sounded like Hunter S. Thompson nine days into a crank bender. God only knows what he was trying to say, but my reassuring and repeated response of "yes, darling, I know. It must have been just awful", seemed to work well for him.

Big Stupid.

Dogs are Human, Too.

Dogs born intelligent enough to understand the concept of presents

ought really to be blessed with thumbs... 

 

But we'll soldier on without.

Meanwhile, the nose is working just fine. Is that one of those all day schmackos?

 

Excuse me while I go somewhere private and eat this in 60 seconds flat.

 

(short interlude music plays....)

Now, then. Where were we?

 

Ah, yes. The prehensile thingy. There has to be a way to negotiate this...

...

 

Oh, fuck it. Time to think outside the square.

 

Better.

 

WOOHOO!  Dude!  It's a SQUEAKY BUNNY!

 

My favourite.

Packing Up Is Hard To Do

Actually, it looks to me like I haven't done anything at all. This would easily pass for Regular Mess.

 

The dog is feeling much less meditative than he looks here.

He expresses his discomfiture by following me into each room,

then standing in the doorway, completely obstructing it and looking mournful as I go to walk out again.

I am trying hard not to kill him.

Meanwhile packing, the studio in particular, is painstaking and laborious,

 

But slowly coming together.

Because I could tell that you were all just dying to know.

At least, I think it was the weather...

Despite the fact that today comes under the heading of Completely Off The Wall, incorporating a number of Seriously Disturbing Occurrences, like me accidentally running a woman off the road and onto a nature strip (though with no actual collision and no damage to cars as far as I could tell), and her irate husband being gratuitously abusive towards me in the kind of language that I, personally, would reserve for the killing of a first-born child, and that only minutes before that I had almost run over one of my best friends because, while she was definitely acting like she was already in the car, she unfortunately was not, and later on another friend of mine, who I was supposed to be having dinner with, went all pear-shaped on me when we'd only just started eating and went and threw up, instead, and then had to go home immediately, and we left all our food behind, and my yoga intensive this evening was all weird and discordant, and all in all I had a day that left me

JUST PLAIN BEWILDERED...

the truth is, I don't really care...

Because the Creative Genius's Favourite School In The Whole World Ever rang today, to tell me that she'd been accepted.

 

The look of relief and joy on her face, when she heard, made up for Every. Single. Shitful. Event.

And I drove home at the end of the day (without incident), singing.

And as for that Bastard Evil Demon Succubus that was whooping it up in the electrical storm today, that tried it's level best to wipe me off the planet, and still has me zapping everything I touch...

It can kiss my Sweet-Good-Karma-Ass,

and fuck off back to whence it came.

A Most Expensive Manicure

A torn nail.

A longitudinally torn nail, I am told.

One that threatens the welfare of the foot, if left unattended.

Or so I am led to believe.

A nail whose removal is so exquisitely painful, that surgery is all but impossible to perform with the subject conscious.

Particularly in the case of an exceedingly large dog who acquires homicidal tendencies in the presence of a vet.

A procedure involving enough pre-meds, drips, anaesthetics, anti-inflammatories, antibiotics and sedatives to open a hospital,

 

And will have him Tripping the Light Fantastic for Some Time, instead of taking his bandages off.

 

Because, as we have recently discovered, a buster collar (which, to be fair, was nearly 3 feet across)

turns my poor, silly, spatially-challenged dog

into a prime candidate for a gig as Charlie Chaplin's even funnier sidekick.

And so disappear the nascent beginnings of our Escape Fund,

along with half the household budget for the next two weeks.

...

Big Stupid.