A wee rant

Performance…. NOT

pre-formance !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Pre-formance makes me want to smack someone HARD…

Consider yourself warned 🙂 (Rachel Hunter on New Zealand’s Got Talent)

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Oh crap!

Pardon the language, but … REALLY!

I’ve been feeling pretty ordinary for quite a while. Tired, weepy, misery-gutsy…

I put it down to our two friends deaths, our dear friend’s cancer diagnosis, assorted other crap that happens in every life…

I’ve even been questioning my diet – craving sugar again, having another half-glass of wine – when really I don’t want it…

I take all sorts of vitamin supplements…

Red Seal Executive Strength Vitamin B – one a day, for months…

I suspect it’ll take a while to undo the damage.

 

 

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At LAST!

WordPress has FINALLY decided to let me into my own blog! I keep getting a ‘we don’t know you or your password’ message… Then I get a ‘have you forgotten your password?’ message [well NO, I haven’t, but since THEY HAVE – I opt to reset my password]… WHEREUPON, I get another message – ‘check your email to reset your password’  – which I do… and the cycle continues….

Today – I get the ‘check your email’ bit  – BUT IN THE MEANTIME – OFF YOU GO, LOG IN ANYWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s enough to make a saint spit… And I ain’t no saint baby!

SO, while I’ve been fuming, I’ve also been doing stuff, so I’ve got a lot to show you 🙂

I’m still doing the Primal thing – I’m in it for life – it really has made me feel so much better. But, to be honest – when we had the two shock deaths of friends recently, my wheels fell off a bit. You know how I’ve been trying to kick the sugar addiction? Well, I confess I made and ate an entire plate of chocolate fudge… two and a half cups of sugar… on my own… over just two days…

I stopped taking my supplements. One of which was recommended to me by the lovely lady in the health-food store, to help me with sugar cravings…

Apparently, this stuff is lacking in New Zealand (food, soils… I’m not sure). Anyway, IT WORKS!

It takes just a couple of days for the effects to kick in – but it really does work. I find, when I take one of these a day, that I don’t even THINK about anything sweet.

This is a huge breakthrough for a junkie like me.

I stopped taking it when the boys died, and the cravings came back. The fudge tasted like sand… sweet sand sure, but still… sand. It was awful, but I ate it anyway…sigh.

Back on the straight and narrow now… but, I’m curious… Am I the only one, who in times of crisis, does stuff they know is not good for them… or stops doing stuff they know works??

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Murderer

because this summer has been more like spring…

ie – wet, windy and cool…

birdies have been doing the wild thing… pretty much constantly actually…

SO… there have been baby sparrows in the roof above my chair… I hear the parent birds wittering all the time.

Then there was a HUGE commotion … I shot out to investigate… so did Percy…

suffice to say, Perc got there first. A baby (nearly fully fledged) had fallen out of the nest. Percy took it under the deck and tortured it for at least two hours… BASTARD

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Me – I’d RUN!

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Note to Self

Earlier this year I re-organised my spice cupboard… labeling every jar, but one…

… the one at the bottom, on the right-hand side… This afternoon I was looking for the Five-Spice jar… now, I knew this wasn’t it – but, what was it???

Opened it, sniffed it… ACK!

Note to self: Write a label for the jar of Asafoetida…

Asafoetida (Ferula assafoetida), alternative spelling asafetida,( /æsəˈfɛtɨdə/)^[1] (also known as devil’s dung, stinking gum, asant, food of the gods, giant fennel, hing and ting) is the dried latex (gumoleoresin) exuded from the living underground rhizome or tap root of several species of Ferula, which is aperennial herb (1 to 1.5 m high). The species is native to India^[2]. Asafoetida has a pungent, unpleasant smell when raw, but in cooked dishes, it delivers a smooth flavor, reminiscent of leeks. (thanks to Wikipedia)

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Birdies

There is a flock of green-finch in our neighbourhood at the moment. They seem to be feeding on little bugs and seeds they find in the lawn.

The cats are in heaven.

Yoshi killed TWO yesterday and is now under the covers, sleeping the sleep of the innocent…

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Guy Fawkes

This is NOT my favourite time of year.

Because I love my cats… and my cats – especially Yoshi, are very afraid of fireworks, I HATE the bloody things.

We have two student flats in the street behind us, and the student ghettos are a block over. The students seem to have lots of money (fireworks are expensive). They have lots of fireworks.

The first were let off at 2am last Saturday – before fireworks were legally on sale.

Since Nov 2nd, we have had fireworks every day – at around 1pm (!), and each night from as soon as it gets a little bit dark – till the last at 3am.

Percy has taken to sleeping on the end of our bed – normally he is forbidden – our bed being Yoshi’s ‘safe place’.

Yoshi sleeps under the blankets – tucked into my arm-pit. Every time I go to sleep, he puts his little foot on my chin to wake me… seeking reassurance, I guess.

I’m tired. And when I get tired, I get grumpy.

ALSO – the Comment Monster has been eating my comments on your blogs lately. When I try to submit a comment, everything either disappears – or I get a message that says I don’t have permission to comment (!!!)

Anyway – I just left a comment for Ina – and it worked, so hopefully that particular problem is over with 🙂

On the positive side – work is going great, I’m really enjoying it; and tomorrow is my birthday and I’m going to spend it at a Ruth Pretty cooking class in Te Horo. I’ll take some photos to share 🙂

 

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FAILED!

In case you have ever wondered…. HAVE you ever wondered??? – what your computer hard-drive looks like…

THIS is what it looks like.

You don’t actually ever want to see this. Because if you do – it means your hard-drive has failed… FAILED… melted into a do-nothing heap of junk. And, unless you have been good and backed up all your files… you have lost everything.

I was not good. I knew better, but I still didn’t do it. So I have lost everything. .. including – or rather, ESPECIALLY – my photos.

Thank God I posted about Bella the other day, because they are now the only photos I have of her. And I have nothing of Percy’s first two years with us. And almost nothing of Yoshi. Nothing of the changes we have made to our home over the last two years. But it is the photos of my darlings that hurt the most.

So, since the day isn’t wasted if you learn something – learn from my mistakes.

BACK UP YOUR STUFF. Do it now.

Kyoko, if you are still reading my blog, would you please email me? Maybe you will have some photos you can send me??? Thank you.

I’ve also lost all my email addresses… and phone numbers… and list of favourite blogs…

One day, if we ever win lotto, I will spend the money I would have spent in visiting you, on forensic examination of the hard-drive, in the hope that my photos can be recovered. Don’t waste the day.

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Lumps

After dinner, Yoshi comes and curls up on my knee. He stays there until he decides it’s bed-time. Stroking him last night, I found a lump. And immediately began to worry.

Worrying is what I do best. I have some experience of cats with lumps.

Bella had a lump on her elbow. They amputated her arm, having assured us it was the only lump they could find. She recovered really well.

Then the lumps came back.

Six months after the first lump appeared, she died – riddled with cancer.

 She was the sweetest little girl, and I can’t bear the idea of the same thing happening to Yoshi.

I took him to the vet this morning…. and we couldn’t find the lump!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He has to go back to the vet next week to get his teeth cleaned – that’ll teach him to worry the mama!

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