See my pretty?

It came late last week.

it’s a Samsung A412 and apparently it does just about everything except change the toilet roll. It has a camera, MP3, bluetooth, video capture, blah blah blah. The only thing it doesn’t do is video calling.

I could have gotten a phone that does video calling but we have a problem. Out here in the sticks, all phones are not created equal. I had a nice little LG picked out that I thought would do me fine and dandy, but our nearest Telstra shop ( 71km’s away) doesn’t sell it. Too many problems with it they said. It doesn’t have very good reception they said. So they gave me a choice of what phones work best in our region and the samsung was the closest to what I wanted.

Hubby wanted me to get something chunky and with more bells and whistles. He got a bit snippy when I told him no. He was wanting me to get the phone HE’D like. I see you rolling your eyes and saying ‘of course’ and you’re right. Typical male lol. He’ll just have to wait twelve months till his current contract is up before he upgrades then can get whatever the hell he likes. Although he did like some of my extras.

It came with a bluetooth headset. A teeny tiny little earpiece that I’m sure will come in very handy when zipping about town or over to the shops in colour country. That has hubby pretty envious. He wants one of those for when he’s on the road and it doesn’t work with his phone mwahahahahaaa.

I got another added extra with the phone. A car kit.  This will apparently give me improved and more reliable reception when I’m trotting about the countryside. This one has hubby seething with envy. As a long distance truckie he knows all about the gaps in coverage in our nations phone network coverage and the boosted service is something he’d love to have. I just figured that it would be a good thing for when we go on family trips or when I’m gallavanting around the countryside.

Really though, I just wanted something little, and functional. Something small and flippy that would slip in my pocket and not have buttons accidently pressed if I’d forgotten to lock the damn keypad. I do have handbags, but………… I don’t always use em. I much prefer to stick things in my pockets to run about. I end up accumulating a lot less junk that way.

Yes, it’s that time again.

And as usual I’ll go first.

Quite apart from making myself feel like a walking disaster area with Sunday’s twisting of my ankle, I do have a few other fabulous fuck ups to report.

Like last Wednesday. I was carefully photocopying all our cadet paperwork to send copies over to the bosses when someone else interrupted me. I thought I still had one or two papers to copy when I had finished answering the interrupter’s question but was stuffed if I could find said papers. I searched and searched the office, checking and double checking EVERY piece of paper in the damn place looking for this paper and couldn’t find the thing anywhere. Eventually we got the kid whose paperwork it was to fill out another form cos this bastard piece of paper was gone. I’m magic I tells ya, cos I vanished this piece of paper good!

It did turn up eventually. I found it a few hours later when I got home. It was sitting in the middle of my living room floor mocking me. *shakes head*

Then on Thursday I spent an hour looking for my bluetooth headset that came with my lovely new mobile phone. Hubby had been testing if it was compatible with his phone and had left it on the desk. Do you think I could find it? Of course not. I only managed to find it after having to reduce myself to asking him where it was. Mind you it was sitting on the dead computer tower next to the desk. Right under my frickin nose! Sigh. I fear with my recent lack of searching ability that I must be turning into a man. *gasps in horror*

Oh and you’ll love this………… Not my screw up, but just one of those weird things……….. On Sunday while out of town getting wood for our heater I discovered that while I had no phone service whatsoever, that I could still hop online to download a game! You’d think the phone companies could get their priorities straight - we need phone service in all areas more than internet you fools!

So, what interesting screw ups, foibles and other disasters have you for me this week? Come on. Fess up, leave me a comment and I’ll add you a link.

Anja

Widdle Shamrock

Oirish Lad (Widdle Shamrocks son)

Lisa

is what I feel like of late.

First the frickin’ axe, then tripping and skinning my knees, then the car/phone/pc all shitting themselves at the same time………and that’s just the big stuff. Never mind the usual assortment of dropped knives, stubbed toes, bent back fingernails, lost paperwork, broken cups, treading on catheads………..  and then yesterday I went for a small trip and stuffed my ankle good.

I’m afraid that I’m seriously starting to believe that I may well be jinxed!

I have turned into the most accident prone person I know!!

So I’m not very mobile again. hhhhhmmmp!

And did I mention that there is no chocolate to be had in the house?

How am I meant to sit and feel sorry for myself with any kind of dignity if I can’t even console myself with chocolate?

Now I’m just pathetic in my clutziness.

Sigh.

I must.

Loving the sound of my own voice must be the sole entire reason that I engage in conversation with my children and husband.

Cos God only knows they aren’t listening.

Like the time I told TJ not to take his ten dollar not to school cos it would get lost. He took it. He lost it. He was shocked that I wouldn’t replace it.

Or like the time I told CJ to sort out a problem with her BFF away from the wider of circle of friends so that the BFF wouldn’t feel ganged up on.
She didn’t. BFF wouldn’t talk to her for a week for betraying her.

Or like this morning when I told TJ not to practice his boomerang throwing in our front yard cos it would get stuck in the trees. He threw it anyway. It got stuck. He then was shocked that I wouldn’t get it out for him.

(yes I’m a mean mummy - he eventually got it out himself with his sister’s help by throwing his soccer ball at it)

Or like when we are doing errands and hubby is driving and I tell him that we need to get petrol and go to Woolies and he drives straight past the petrol station and asks me fifty billion times where we are going again.

Yes, mmmm, my sweet melodic voice surely does sound good to my own ears.

I woke up very stuffy headed this morning ( you know it’s gonna be a shocker when you wake up with a sinus headache!) so needed to use my trusty sinus rinse when I had my shower. The idea of the sinus rinse is to wash out the gunk that builds up in the sinus cavities and in that space between the bottom of the nasal cavity and the back of your throat.

Now, to use this instrument of torture wonderful invention, you simply fill with cooled, boiled water then add a sachet of the solution stuff, then squirt the contents up your nose.

Do you remember jumping into the pool and getting water up your nose and how it burned and made your eyes water? Well if you don’t have the solution stuff or let the water get too cold this is what happens. Hurts like a son of a bitch!

So this morning I have added the solution, warmed the cooled, boiled water to the appropriate temperature (think testing baby milk on your wrist cos that’s how I check this too lol Who’d have thought that skill would come in handy for other things?), hop in the shower and rinse away.

With the first squeeze I had hacked up half a lung and blew out enough snot to fill a box full of tissues!

No wonder my head was sore and stuff this morning with all that gunk in it!

Feels much better now…………. except that when I bend over I have water dripping out my nose! lol

Yes it is Hot Hunk Thursday again. Time to offer up your hunks, spunks and oooo errrrr inducing junk to Widdle Shamrock.

I watched the season finale of Supernatural the other night with baited breath and tears in my eyes.

Those boys really are some of my favourite television eye candy, but boy is their singing bad!!

Head on over to Widdle Shamrock’s to check out what everyone else has to offer

Don’t you love those people who, when you start to ask them a question, presume that they know where you are headed, cut you off then proceed to give you a mini lecture on what they think it is that you want to know?

I had to deal with one of those today.

Stopped him dead in his tracks before he got going.

Told him to shut the hell up and LISTEN for a change.

Was told later that other people were dancing behind him in glee. *shakes head while grinning* bastards. lol

And don’t you also love those people who, when faced with a situation that doesn’t reflect well on them, try to tell you that things you have seen with your own eyes didn’t happen?

Same fella.

Stopped him dead in his tracks again, but this time……… I ripped him a new one.

More gleeful dancing was done in the peanut gallery.

I hate being treated like an idiot.

I don’t care if it’s the boss.

Good thing I’m a volunteer lol

Captain Cranky reckons I’ll soon be  called Secretary Surly.

Excuse me while I brain dump. It’s been a hell of an afternoon.

Where to start…………….. hmmm………. I was always a little sad as a child, hearing about things that others did with their grandparents.

My nan died when I was a mere 9 months old. My grandpa when I was 3 or 4 years of age. When I was 5 my granma died, leaving only my maternal grandfather. Grandad was a cranky bastard that I was always a little fearful of. He was crippled with arthritis for as long as I can remember and died when I was 11.

I had a lot of experience with death. But then you expect, as a child, that old people will die. It was the way things were meant to be.

My children have been blessed to have all their grandparents still alive. They may not all be terribly involved, but they are all still alive and kicking. We even have a great grandparent still around. Death has not been part of their world and in this time of prolonged lifespans and improved medical care, it is not something that would be a part of many children’s lives yet.

So where do parents start explaining things like some recent events to children? Where do they start to explain such senseless acts? Where do they start to explain things they don’t understand themselves?

How do you explain to a child that someone younger than them, someone that they knew and had some responsibility for or that they played sport with, is gone?

It’s not right.

It’s not fair.

It’s not how things are *meant* to be.

for the break to our regularly scheduled blogging programme.

But it’s been the WEIRDEST 24 hours.

It’s not often that your home town becomes the centre of attention in such spectacular fashion or with such tragic results.

It’s surreal to be getting phone calls and having the names of people you know thrown into the mix.

It’s damn strange to be getting emails from well meaning, but obviously dumb online aquaintences asking did the SWIL finally push your bro over the edge and make him snap.

This kind of thing isn’t meant to happen in country towns. Children are not meant to die in these circumstances in country towns.

Parent’s are not meant to have to reassure their children that the bad man has been caught before they’ll go to bed at night.

Parent’s are not meant to spend a good whack of their day trying to figure out what they’re going to say and do to reassure and comfort their children when they come home this afternoon with more details and gossip and rumours.

it’s weird. It’s strange. And it’s going to take a while for things to settle down again.

You have so much to learn!

We had a working bee at the station today. We wanted to tidy things up a bit for when we have parents and other services visiting for the cadet’s presentation on Wednesday.

So we trimmed shrubs, pulled out some half dead shrubs and trees, pulled weeds, raked rubbish, trimmed edges, burnt rubbish……… The place looks pretty damn good now.

I cooked lunch for everyone, then after was helping pull weeds around the grevillias in the back garden bed. I sat down at one stage only to have a junior come up and ask me why I wasn’t helping. ‘It’s your station too’ he says to me.  I told him that I was just about to clean the loos and asked did he want to help.

‘nah bullshit’ was the reply. ‘Toilets and inside things is women’s work, I’ll stick outside with the men’.

heh heh heh heh

sucker.

Completely wrong thing to say.

We have a rule at the station.

There are no men, there are no women, there are only members. Some of us girls may not quite have the fella’s strength, some of the fella’s don’t have our knowledge, but we don’t distinguish between the genders.

People are allocated jobs based on what they are physically or mentally able or have developed the skills to do. Not what sex they are.

The first job this kid will get next time we do station maintenance will be inside. Toilets or vaccuming or something wonderful like that.

Cos while he might be 15 and know it all………… he still has so much to learn