A trip to Wynnum

Caitlin had a Jobs Daughters 'thing' to attend at Manly on Sunday, and Michael claimed that he had Uni work to do, so it was a Mum's taxi trip to Wynnum.

We dropped Caitlin off at 1 o'clock and then Mim and I treated ourselves to McDonald's for lunch and a quick play in the playground. We then headed off to the park on the beachfront. Mim had a great time running from swings to slides to boats to various other activities. We couldn't raise Meegan so we spent a good three hours at the park! (Learnt later that Owen had attended his first Broncos game - lucky him!)

Mim found some teenage girls to play with. One made the error of helping her onto the spin-around thingy and talking to her - Mim then stalked her all over the playground. I had to bribe her with an ice-cream to let the poor girl escape!

What a mistake! If you ever go to the playground - stay away from Mr Yummy ice-creams! They were disgusting! The soft serve tasted like a frozen skim milk/water mix and melted as quickly as an icecube in the Sahara (I kid you not). Even as I turned to walk away from the truck with the ice-cream, it was streaming down my hands and dripping onto the ground. Mim didn't even finish her ice-cream, she was happy to put most of it in the bin, after it had dripped all over her clothes. Now for Mim to dispose of an ice-cream, you know it has too be bad!

We watched some heavy rain clouds go over the top of us and out to sea, but luckily no rain fell. We went for a walk out on the jetty and down to the mud, looking at the men fishing and the old shells and other items that have made it onto the mudflats. We had a wonderful conversation about the weather and tides and how the moon pulls the water in and out. (Bet that conversation will come back to bite me on the bum!)

Picked Caitlin up at 5pm and drove home via the city - I think Mim finally shut up going over the Story Bridge. I was glad to get home and unleash her onto her father. God knows what was in that ice-cream (or was it the Rotten Ronnies?) because she had yippee beans in her all night.

The Squirrel of Death - an old email

I came across this old email when cleaning out my email folders - it still makes me wet myself laughing!

The Squirrel of Death
(author unknown)

I never dreamed that slowly cruising on my motorcycle through a residential neighborhood could be so incredibly dangerous! Little did I suspect.

I was on Brice Street - a very nice neighborhood with perfect lawns and slow traffic. As I passed an oncoming car, a brown furry missile shot out from under it and tumbled to a stop immediately in front of me.

It was a squirrel, and it must have been trying to run across the road when it encountered the car. I really was not going very fast, but there was no time to brake or avoid it -- it was that close.

I hate to run over animals, and I really hate it on a motorcycle, but a squirrel should pose no danger to me. I barely had time to brace for the impact.

Animal lovers, never fear. Squirrels, I discovered, can take care of themselves!

Inches before impact, the squirrel flipped to his feet. He was standing on his hind legs and facing my oncoming Valkyrie with steadfast resolve in his beady little eyes. His mouth opened, and at the last possible second, he screamed and leapt! I am pretty sure the scream was squirrel for, "Banzai!" or maybe, "Die you gravy-sucking, heathen scum!" The leap was nothing short of spectacular...

He shot straight up, flew over my windshield, and impacted me squarely in the chest. Instantly, he set upon me. If I did not know better, I would have sworn he brought 20 of his little buddies along for the attack.

Snarling, hissing, and tearing at my clothes, he was a frenzy of activity. As I was dressed only in a light T-shirt, summer riding gloves, and jeans, this was a bit of cause for concern. This furry little tornado was doing some damage!

Picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and leather gloves, puttering at maybe 25 mph down a quiet residential street, and in the fight of his life with a squirrel. And losing... I grabbed for him with my left hand. After a few misses, I finally managed to snag his tail. With all my strength, I flung the evil rodent off to the left of the bike, almost running into the right curb as I recoiled from the throw.

That should have done it. The matter should have ended right there. It really should have. The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristinely kept yards and gone on about his business, and I could have headed home. No one would have been the wiser. But this was no ordinary squirrel. This was not even an ordinary angry squirrel.

This was an EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH!

Somehow he caught my gloved finger with one of his little hands and, with the force of the throw, swung around and with a resounding thump and an amazing impact, he landed squarely on my BACK and resumed his rather antisocial and extremely distracting activities. He also managed to take my left glove with him! The situation was not improved. Not improved at all.

His attacks were continuing, and now I could not reach him. I was startled, to say the least. The combination of the force of the throw, only having one hand (the throttle hand) on the handlebars, and my jerking back unfortunately put a healthy twist through my right hand and into the throttle. A healthy twist on the throttle of a Valkyrie can only have one result. TORQUE. This is what the Valkyrie is made for, and she is very, very good at it. The engine roared and the front wheel left the pavement.

The squirrel screamed in anger.
The Valkyrie screamed in ecstasy.
I screamed in .. well . I just plain screamed.

Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a slightly squirrel-torn T-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, and roaring at maybe 50 mph and rapidly accelerating down a quiet residential street on one wheel, with a demonic squirrel of death on his back. The man and the squirrel are both screaming bloody murder. With the sudden acceleration I was forced to put my other hand back on the handlebars and try to get control of the bike.

This was leaving the mutant squirrel to his own devices, but I really did not want to crash into somebody's tree, house, or parked car. Also, I had not yet figured out how to release the throttle. My brain was just simply overloaded. I did manage to mash the back brake, but it had little effect against the massive power of the big cruiser.

About this time the squirrel decided that I was not paying sufficient attention to this very serious battle (maybe he was an evil mutant NAZI attack squirrel of death), and he came around my neck and got INSIDE my full-face helmet with me.

As the faceplate closed part way, he began hissing in my face. I am quite sure my screaming changed intensity. It had little effect on the squirrel, however. The RPMs on the Dragon maxed out (since I was not bothering with shifting at the moment), so her front end started to drop.

Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a very raggedly torn T-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, roaring at probably 80 mph, still on one wheel, with a large puffy squirrel's tail sticking out of the mostly closed full-face helmet. By now, the screams are probably getting a little hoarse. Finally I got the upper hand ... I managed to grab his tail again, pulled him out of my helmet, and slung him to the left as hard as I could. This time it worked...sort-of. Spectacularly sort-of...so to speak.

Picture a new scene.

You are a cop.

You and your partner have pulled off on a quiet residential street and parked with your windows down to do some paperwork.

Suddenly a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a torn T-shirt flapping in the breeze, and wearing only one leather glove, moving at probably 80 mph on one wheel, and screaming bloody murder, roars by, and with all his strength throws a live squirrel grenade directly into your police car.

I heard screams.
They weren't mine...

I managed to get the big motorcycle under control and dropped the front wheel to the ground. I then used maximum braking and skidded to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke at the stop sign of a busy cross street.

I would have returned to 'fess up (and to get my glove back).

I really would have.

Really...

Except for two things.

First, the cops did not seem interested or the slightest bit concerned about me at the moment. When I looked back, the doors on both sides of the patrol car were flung wide open. The cop from the passenger side was on his back, doing a crab walk into somebody's front yard, quickly moving away from the car. The cop who had been in the driver's seat was standing in the street, aiming a riot shotgun at his own police car. So, the cops were not interested in me. They often insist on "letting the professionals handle it" anyway.

That was one thing.

The other?

Well, I could clearly see shredded and flying pieces of foam and upholstery from the back seat. But I could also swear I saw the squirrel in the back window, shaking his little fist at me.

That is one dangerous squirrel.
And now he has a patrol car.
A somewhat shredded patrol car...but it was all his.

I took a deep breath, turned on my turn-signal, made a gentle right turn off of Brice Street, and sedately left the neighborhood. I decided it was best to just buy myself a new pair of gloves...and a whole lot of Band-Aids.

It's hard to be serious with your face painted.....

Michael and Caitlin went to a Job's Daughters meeting last Friday. It was an early Father's Day one, where the lucky dads got to have their face painted.

It would have been funny if the police had pulled him over on the way home Friday night looking like this! (Nice work Caitlin)

Road Trip!

The last week has been a very busy week. It was time for my grandmother (BigNanna) to return to her home in Sydney after living with Mum and Dad for the past 6 weeks or so. As Dad was driving her down, I took the opportunity to scab a lift with him to visit Michelle and Mark. Of course, I took Mim with me, so Michael only had to cope with one child at home, one who is (more or less) house trained.

We left Wednesday morning at 7am, detoured via the city to get Michelle her Brisbane News (because we all know how much she needs to read up on the goings on in Brisbane) and then onto the freeway. Before we'd even gotten to Ormeau, the little voice from the back pipes up "Are we almost there?" No darling, only another 950km to go!

With only a stop at Grafton for an early lunch and a pit stop at about 4, we were dropped over at Chateau Cammeray at 7.15pm. Thank goodness for Caitlin's DVD player to keep Mim amused as she only slept for about 45mins the whole day (going through the Gold Coast).

We ordered yummy Livio's Pizza for dinner! Bugger Dominos or Pizza Hut, this stuff is the real deal! I can't find anywhere in Brisbane that is comparable. After dinner, Mark set up the laptop and we went through 900 photos of their recent trip to Dublin and London. Couldn't see the last 100 as my eyes were just too tired. Mim had dropped off to sleep about 9pm
(outside the Art Gallery)

Thursday - will Michelle and Mark went to work, Mim and I took the bus into town and wandered. We visited Haigh's Chocolates to get Michael's chocolate order (talk about a kid in a candyshop!) and then went on the monorail, followed by a walk to the Art Gallery and a look at the real paintings (not that modernist bullshit fingerpainting that passes for art these days). Then back to Cammeray to cook dinner for Mark and Michelle and Dame Mary (Mark's mum). And another late night for Mim.....

(spot the clone!)

Friday - Michelle took the day off work, so we caught the bus into town again and went to the Sydney Aquarium at Darling Harbour. It's a wonderful place - pity there were so many students there! Mim had to be carried into the entrance - she refused to walk through the shark jaws on her own!

We saw seals, penguins, eels, sharks, manta rays, Nemos, starfish, turtles, bitches (from Bankstown High)...... Mim was not overly impressed by the sharks. You got to walk up and down the perspex tunnels looking up into the fishtank. A few sharks were sleeping on the tunnel. We were watching a largish shark swim around when suddenly everything went dark. It was a huge manta ray swimming over the tunnel and blocking out all light!

Auntie Lelly was clearly flavour of the week, none of this holding Mum's hand business! After the Aquarium, we went back into town to have some lunch. The only place that had seats available was next to a McDonald's so we had that. Michelle was treated to a glimpse of parenthood - how simple things like having a drink of water, can go horribly wrong for a child. Like forgetting to swallow a mouthful of Coke before opening it again to take a bite of Cheeseburger!

After lunch and a couple of panadol to help Michelle's "ache head", we caught the train to Panania. All was quiet until we reached Kingsgrove.... A gaggle of school girls got in, not one of them spoke in a volume below 80 decibels. I was soooo glad to hear them yelling at Amy not to have sex with Andy tonight and discussing various other members of the male species! God, we were never like that as kids.

Friday night involved dinner at Big Nanna's favourite nightspot (and dayspot) - the Revesby Workers Club. It's even swankier than the Kedron Wavell RSL! Poppy ordered Mim a small coke which ended up being a mega sized glass of Coke so she started the night on a sugar rush. All was fine until I took her to the toilet and made the mistake of pulling her undies up for her .... there was a massive tantrum involving throwing herself onto the toilet floor and crying childish obscenities at me. Just love it when kids do the rag doll impersonations when you are trying to pick them up off the floor, unlock the cubicle and get the hell out of there! She cheered up pretty quickly when Poppy took her.

It was another late night on Friday - so I'd expected her to fall asleep on the drive home pretty quickly. that didn't happen. She didn't crash until about 6pm, just before Ballina. She was funny at Fredo's Pies, Fredrickton though. We were perusing the million choices of pies to have for lunch when she turned around and said "I just warted!" Poppy kept his cool and said "I wouldn't be advertising that fact".

So we arrived back home by 9pm Saturday night and boy wasn't I grateful to go to bed!

My Rose has Risen

I leave it alone, don't bother to water it, occasionally prune the dead wood off - and every September it honours us with its presence.

This year it is early. I love the colour!

Barbie House vs New Computer

As I mentioned in a previous blog, Caitlin got a computer for her birthday. It's a swanky one that has fish in the side of it! (Plastic ones of course). She's really pleased that she can surf the net from the comfort of her own bedroom. A big thank you to Poppy for putting it together. I'll be getting her a proper computer desk and chair out of my tax refund.


Because there is limited room in her bedroom, the deal was that when she got the computer, the doll's house went into Mim's room. So last Friday, I proceeded to do the swap over, including cleaning Caitlin's room and destroying her collection of dust bunnies (how can she live like that!)

Mim is over the moon to have free access to the dolls house! She has spent the last two days playing Barbies and setting up the house with all the accessories. She even woke Caitlin up on Saturday morning to play dolls with her. It's great - she doesn't require adult attention every 20 minutes now! It's just a pity her room looks like a bomb's hit it.