Now this blog is a memorial.
Bernie died last week. I'm still so upset about it I don't really want to write anything here. But I said I would write every day and I haven't been here for a week.
Poor Bernie had diabetes. There was no way my grandmother could give him shots every day. So he was put to sleep by the vet. He was 14 years old. The cat, not the vet. Maybe 15.
When I got him from the SPCA - 13 years ago - the SPCA told me the guy who had brought him in had asked them to put the cat down. They didn't, and I met him when I went to take the "Pet of the Week" photo for the little paper I worked for. The SPCA lady was calling him "Bertie" after Engelbert Humperdinck. Poor cat!
So I went home and said to my husband "can we have a cat?" and he said "No". If only I had listened to him, I would have spared myself and my grandmother and the rest of the family the gut-wrenching feelings of losing a much-loved pet.
My poor grandmother now has to go on about her life without Bernie's company - and fairly demanding company at that. He literally gave her a reason to get out of bed in the morning. She had to get up and let him in, feed him and then let him out. And then let him back in again, cos he liked to be brushed at about 10, 10.30am.
There are lots of Bernie stories. I'll save them for another blog. Or two.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
The Moths Are Back
I really don't like moths. Never have.
I mentioned this to my husband when we were out on our first date (because there was one climbing on the window behind him in the restaurant) and he thought this very amusing. Years ago he was given the nickname "The Moth" because of his habit of tapping on the windows of friends' houses with their lights on after dark.
Very cute I'm sure, but not enough to cure my life-long dislike of those furry unpredictable stalkers.
They are stalkers because they follow the light, and usually that's where I'm headed as well. And they are unpredictable. Flying around all over the place. You never know where they are going. And they are furry. I hate that.
Some really yucky moth incident must have happened to me when I was a child. Maybe I swallowed one by accident. I've blocked it out so I don't have to relive that trauma, but the fear of it happening again remains.
And now it's back.
Alarmingly we have been living in a flat for almost three years now, that holds some kind of attraction for the yuckiest moth of them all - the Bogong.
Bogongs usually live way out west of Sydney but when it starts getting too hot out there - right about now at the beginning of spring - they migrate to the mountains, where it's cooler and they hang out in caves til the heat goes away.
The Aborigines used to find them in the caves and knew they were a delicious summertime snack. Very nutritious too.
Well I wish someone or something was eating them now. Cos some of them get blown off course and instead of ending up looking for a nice mountain-top cave in the Great Dividing Range, they are walking all over my balcony on the 12th floor of an inner-city apartment.
And it gets worse. Someone stuffed up when they were fitting the sliding doors in the aparments on this building ... there are gaps at the top and bottom of the sliding part. The doors aren't air-tight - or even moth-tight. Yes, that's right, the horrible furry bastards can crawl into my living room, and bedroom, right through the doors. Yeah.
The first year we were here was a bad moth season - it starts in October. I didn't know about the doors then, so couldn't figure out where the hell all these moths were coming from. One day I came home and found about a dozen flying around. Nearly had a heart attack. I pulled out the vacuum cleaner and sucked them all up, then put the vac away in the cupboard. About an hour later I saw them crawling out under the door of the cupboard. Another heart attack. The vacuum spent the next week sitting out on the balcony.
Finally I spoke to the building manager about it and he told me to stuff paper towels in the gaps in the doors. Now this I am happy to do - except I know there are other people in the building who won't know any of this moth stuff. So there was a moth in here last night, because it came through from another apartment. It's dreadful really. I'm glad I don't own the place. The building manager told me it's worse for the apartments on our side of the building because of the direction the moths are coming from. Terrific.
I'm not the only person in Sydney who can't stand them. Bogongs get blamed for all kinds of bad stuff. When they come into the cities they are a "plague". They are a pest because they eat cauliflower. One of them supposedly landed on the breast of the woman singing the anthem at the Sydney Olympics - but moth specialists say it wasn't actually a bogong. Too bad, the rest of us prefer to think it was.
The Bogong (Agrotis infusa) is almost completely brown and quite big for a moth - about the size of a 20 cent piece, sometimes bigger. This is a good website http://linus.socs.uts.edu.au/~don/larvae/noct/infusa.html
Although why people want to actually spend time studying these things .. I don't know.
I read somewhere else that Australia has about 20,000 different kinds of moths and only about half have been given official scientific names. Doesn't surprise me! Although it would be a great fundraising opportunity for some smart university - charge people money to have a moth named after them.
No thanks.
I mentioned this to my husband when we were out on our first date (because there was one climbing on the window behind him in the restaurant) and he thought this very amusing. Years ago he was given the nickname "The Moth" because of his habit of tapping on the windows of friends' houses with their lights on after dark.
Very cute I'm sure, but not enough to cure my life-long dislike of those furry unpredictable stalkers.
They are stalkers because they follow the light, and usually that's where I'm headed as well. And they are unpredictable. Flying around all over the place. You never know where they are going. And they are furry. I hate that.
Some really yucky moth incident must have happened to me when I was a child. Maybe I swallowed one by accident. I've blocked it out so I don't have to relive that trauma, but the fear of it happening again remains.
And now it's back.
Alarmingly we have been living in a flat for almost three years now, that holds some kind of attraction for the yuckiest moth of them all - the Bogong.
Bogongs usually live way out west of Sydney but when it starts getting too hot out there - right about now at the beginning of spring - they migrate to the mountains, where it's cooler and they hang out in caves til the heat goes away.
The Aborigines used to find them in the caves and knew they were a delicious summertime snack. Very nutritious too.
Well I wish someone or something was eating them now. Cos some of them get blown off course and instead of ending up looking for a nice mountain-top cave in the Great Dividing Range, they are walking all over my balcony on the 12th floor of an inner-city apartment.
And it gets worse. Someone stuffed up when they were fitting the sliding doors in the aparments on this building ... there are gaps at the top and bottom of the sliding part. The doors aren't air-tight - or even moth-tight. Yes, that's right, the horrible furry bastards can crawl into my living room, and bedroom, right through the doors. Yeah.
The first year we were here was a bad moth season - it starts in October. I didn't know about the doors then, so couldn't figure out where the hell all these moths were coming from. One day I came home and found about a dozen flying around. Nearly had a heart attack. I pulled out the vacuum cleaner and sucked them all up, then put the vac away in the cupboard. About an hour later I saw them crawling out under the door of the cupboard. Another heart attack. The vacuum spent the next week sitting out on the balcony.
Finally I spoke to the building manager about it and he told me to stuff paper towels in the gaps in the doors. Now this I am happy to do - except I know there are other people in the building who won't know any of this moth stuff. So there was a moth in here last night, because it came through from another apartment. It's dreadful really. I'm glad I don't own the place. The building manager told me it's worse for the apartments on our side of the building because of the direction the moths are coming from. Terrific.
I'm not the only person in Sydney who can't stand them. Bogongs get blamed for all kinds of bad stuff. When they come into the cities they are a "plague". They are a pest because they eat cauliflower. One of them supposedly landed on the breast of the woman singing the anthem at the Sydney Olympics - but moth specialists say it wasn't actually a bogong. Too bad, the rest of us prefer to think it was.
The Bogong (Agrotis infusa) is almost completely brown and quite big for a moth - about the size of a 20 cent piece, sometimes bigger. This is a good website http://linus.socs.uts.edu.au/~don/larvae/noct/infusa.html
Although why people want to actually spend time studying these things .. I don't know.
I read somewhere else that Australia has about 20,000 different kinds of moths and only about half have been given official scientific names. Doesn't surprise me! Although it would be a great fundraising opportunity for some smart university - charge people money to have a moth named after them.
No thanks.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Bad Days
A few years back I spent a bit of time in hospital, I was sick for awhile. Had to go through a bit of yucky stuff ... not really life-threatening, just scary. You keep your perspective because there is always someone in hospital worse off than you.
I know from back then, that when times are tough, there are good days and there are bad days. Oh yes it is a cliche, but I didn't really know what it meant until I got sick. There were days when I just wasn't firing. And there's nothing you can do about it when they happen. That's a 'bad day', plain and simple.
I had one yesterday. It went from average at about 10am, to bad by 12.30. I even shed a few tears at about 2pm. I didn't want to write here yesterday cos I knew I would be shitty and horrible.
A couple of things lead up to it. Number one I went out for a drink with my former workmates the night before. They were nice. Too nice. I don't want to hear how upset they are. The cynical part of me thinks they are not just upset for me, that I was made redundant, they are upset for themselves.
Let's be honest here, the first thing you think when someone is made redundant at your work is "shit what if it happens to me?" not "oh my goodness, how dreadful for 'x'. That comes second. Especially if the workplace is known to be 100% dysfunctional anyway.
And then I feel guilty for thinking that way about them.. They do care. I know that. And then I feel sorry for myself - they still have jobs. What a mess!
So there was them being nice on Thursday night, and then a recruitment consultant was nice to me yesterday morning. Not only did this company email me after I'd submitted my CV online to them, but the consultant talked to me when I called up and was really helpful and positive. I was totally floored. Just over 99% of those people really are no fun to deal with. This woman was the recruitment industry equivalent of finding out someone has handed in your lost wallet to the police. And it still has money in it.
Another thing - my lawyer hasn't called me about taking action about my old company, I've called her but she's not returned my calls. And to top it all off nicely, my husband and I had a fight about the size of the crowd at the parade in the city yesterday. How dumb is that???!!
Suddenly I found myself feeling so angry with absolutely everything I couldn't even answer the phone.
It's that 'seven stages of grief' thing again isn't it? Trouble is I seem to have gone through all seven, now I'm going back through them again!
Maybe you keep going through the seven stages over and over until you don't feel them anymore. Yeah.
Time to get some perspective from somewhere. Maybe I should pretend I'm back in hospital. That could be weird. I'll walk around the flat wearing only a sheet with a gap all the way up the back. I'll pulp up all my food and eat it off a large plastic tray. I'll wake myself up by shining a torch in my face at 6am.
Yeah that'll work fine.
I know from back then, that when times are tough, there are good days and there are bad days. Oh yes it is a cliche, but I didn't really know what it meant until I got sick. There were days when I just wasn't firing. And there's nothing you can do about it when they happen. That's a 'bad day', plain and simple.
I had one yesterday. It went from average at about 10am, to bad by 12.30. I even shed a few tears at about 2pm. I didn't want to write here yesterday cos I knew I would be shitty and horrible.
A couple of things lead up to it. Number one I went out for a drink with my former workmates the night before. They were nice. Too nice. I don't want to hear how upset they are. The cynical part of me thinks they are not just upset for me, that I was made redundant, they are upset for themselves.
Let's be honest here, the first thing you think when someone is made redundant at your work is "shit what if it happens to me?" not "oh my goodness, how dreadful for 'x'. That comes second. Especially if the workplace is known to be 100% dysfunctional anyway.
And then I feel guilty for thinking that way about them.. They do care. I know that. And then I feel sorry for myself - they still have jobs. What a mess!
So there was them being nice on Thursday night, and then a recruitment consultant was nice to me yesterday morning. Not only did this company email me after I'd submitted my CV online to them, but the consultant talked to me when I called up and was really helpful and positive. I was totally floored. Just over 99% of those people really are no fun to deal with. This woman was the recruitment industry equivalent of finding out someone has handed in your lost wallet to the police. And it still has money in it.
Another thing - my lawyer hasn't called me about taking action about my old company, I've called her but she's not returned my calls. And to top it all off nicely, my husband and I had a fight about the size of the crowd at the parade in the city yesterday. How dumb is that???!!
Suddenly I found myself feeling so angry with absolutely everything I couldn't even answer the phone.
It's that 'seven stages of grief' thing again isn't it? Trouble is I seem to have gone through all seven, now I'm going back through them again!
Maybe you keep going through the seven stages over and over until you don't feel them anymore. Yeah.
Time to get some perspective from somewhere. Maybe I should pretend I'm back in hospital. That could be weird. I'll walk around the flat wearing only a sheet with a gap all the way up the back. I'll pulp up all my food and eat it off a large plastic tray. I'll wake myself up by shining a torch in my face at 6am.
Yeah that'll work fine.
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