Park Life

I've had a very busy, productive but good weekend. This has facilitated by the fantastic weather we have experienced considering it's still winter. On Saturday it was 21degrees. I had what I consider to be a Ferris Day on Saturday, I got so much done, you can look at it and think, how!? especially as I didn't even get up until just gone 10am.

I took some lovely photos of the family, see ‘Back to Front’ below.

I went into town to pick up a camera flash; I’m still replacing bits from when my bag was stolen in Kenya. Cara got to walk on George Street and didn’t freak out.

We went for a walk in Lane Cove National Park, well next door really as dogs aren’t allowed in the park. We relaxed and chilled for about half an hour.


We popped into Eden Gardens for some garden stakes.

Went home and started digging a veggie patch. CatTV got to eat fresh worms, Cara got to roll in cow manure and Oren stalked the chooks. Puss, being wise old man that her is, just lay in the sun and supervised.

I wasn’t feeling great on Sunday, but pottered about in the veggie patch and planted the seedlings I had. About four o’clock I went inside, showered and sat and watched Food Inc. while I was eating a sandwich. This is a disturbing documentary about the food industry in the US. While it isn’t directly related to what goes on in Australia, I’m sure there are some similarities.

Footage of cows being unable to stand and being folk lifted to the killing floor made my think of the recent ‘live export’ footage of Malaysia and the uproar that that caused. Do similar things happen here in a bid to grow food fatter, faster, and cheaper? I’m sure they do.

One thing the movie did do, was reinforce my choice to buy meat from my local butcher and fruit and veggies from my local market. I really don’t need images of thousands of naked hanging chooks flying about an air-hanger sized warehouse on a conveyer belt, in my mind when I tuck into my grilled chicken salad. And did you know, that much raw meat in America is treated with ammonia or chlorine to kill off any potentially harmful bacteria, such as e-coli and salmonella (at least it was in 2008 when the film was made).

After the movie I gave Cara a bath, and then we cuddled up in the warm house and watched the evening movie, Iron Man 2. It was a good weekend.

Back to front

It's such a beautiful day in Sydney today. The sun is shining, the animals are all outside and I'm soaking up a few rays myself. A hearty dose of Vitamin D before the sun has the power to fry me in 30 seconds flat.

I had my camera with me and I managed to get a few snapshots of my babies, but I decided to show you a different side to each of them...


This Is Rizzo. She is the Leader of CatTV, and one of four chooks that roam around my garden at the weekend, and currently, the only one laying eggs.


This is O-Ren. Youngest in age of the four legged children, and the one that causes the most heart-ache. Loves to climb trees, hang out under cars and keep CatTV on their toes.


This is Cara, also known as 'The Killer', not because she vicious, just because. She's the smallest in the house. She like eating, sleeping, and the occasional walk on the beach, oh and sleeping.


This is Puss. The oldest, biggest and grumpiest. He's my boy in a house of girls.

New Friends, yet to meet

I noticed a while ago that I now have six followers here. This pleases me.

Four of you I know well.

Two of you not at all. I shall ask you a couple of questions, be honest, open up, you’re amongst friends.

I’m curious, how did you stumble across my random ramblings?

Which post inspired you to click the follow button?

Thank you, please leave your responses in the comments ;-)

The perils of Winter entertaining

Many years ago, when I first visited the shore of this wide brown land, I decided to go to the movies. My host asked me, ‘Why tonight, it’s raining?’

I was confused. In my native land of Britannia, if you didn’t venture out wearing an over coat and wellies you would never leave the comfort of your home. It rains much of the time in England, it still amuses me when folks back home say, ‘Where did summer go?’

Really!? Just except it, Great Britain never has and never will have a reliable summer; Global Warming has not changed this fact and never will. Anywho, I digress...

Winters in Aussie tend to be kinder, with chilled days and clear blue skies. This year has been a bit strange. It appears that Al Nino has decided to throw us a curve ball and make it cold, wet and windy, all at once. Facilities Management doesn’t know what to do, turn the air-con off, heating on, then back on with the air-con, then off again. So we have, for the first time since I’ve lived Down Under had a proper winter.

It takes months of grey skies and early darkness before a weather hardened Pommie starts suffering the winter blues, in Aussie it’s a matter of days. Seasonal Ambience Disorder hits here and hard. A nation that spends months in the sun and heat, the slightest dip below 10degrees and you’d think the end of the world is nigh. Doors gets locked, coats come out and social lives go into hiatus until the sun come out again and the world defrosts.

The Tupperware party I have booked for tonight has become a victim of this. In fact, I’ve started to refer to it as a Tupper-where party. Because where are my guests? It didn’t even start out as my party...I agreed to have it at my house for someone else.



Many are suffering from ‘Blurgh’. While not technically an illness, it is a reason to stay at home and recover. So they shall miss out on the mountains of funky plastic storage wear and me being the hostess with the mostess.

Others simply got a better offer.

I’m going ahead tonight as I have made food and cleaned my house, and the Tupperware Lady said four including the hostess (that would be me) is a nice number. I think she’s being kind. I was hoping for more than just a Tupperware party, I was hoping for a girls night in where we would continue after the TL lady had gone.



I have learnt my lesson and will never attempt any kind of entertainment in the winter again. I too shall hibernate and get with the Aussie winter program and embrace the feeling of Blurgh! Bring on BBQ season, I say :-)

Get well soon.

First picture from here, funny article to go with it.
Second picture from here.

News Flash!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to secure a new contract. This means I can I exit stage right from my current nightmare and start afresh in the hope that a new location and different environment brings better mental health.

In the mean time, of course, I shall continue my current general admin duties, I have been collating training documentation today, and in my considerable down time I shall blog and continue to develop the lifestyle of the rubber bands on my desk.

RubberBandBall MkII hit the 35mm diameter today, and as you can see, there is plenty more weight just waiting to be added.


Ps. The Pink Lady apple I just ate was really tart!

Embryo

I had a plethora of rubber bands on my desk after collating several training documents today. What to do with these poor lost souls of the latex variety?

I decided they needed a purpose in life, so I have given them a calling.
In an attempt to stave off madness and to kill time during the next couple of weeks I have decided to start RubberBandBall MkII.

Watch it grow, from tiny seeds, mighty RubberBand Balls grow :-)



Last time I did one of these was in 2007...amazing how things come back into vogue.

Club 27

Amy Winehouse died over the weekend, at the age of 27. It makes her eligible to join other famous singers that have passed away at the same age. Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix. Current speculation is that it was a drug overdose, there has been no official cause of death released.

I’m not sure it club anyone would aspire to be a member of.

Amy Winehouse was an undeniable talent that deserves to receive the tributes she will receive. If the news was a contest there would always be a more deserving case in someone’s eyes. But I would like to say, every life lost is a tragedy, no matter what the circumstances. If a death is proceeded by years of addiction, eating disorders and every wrong move being reported in the press then I hope peace has finally been found.

But what has really interested me about this death, while tragic, she was after all a woman in her prime with a talent that a lot would kill for, is the online reactions of some people on groups, social networking sites and in the comments spaces under online media. Frankly, I’m disgusted.

It appears that it is completely acceptable to write derogatory comments about the way she lived her life. Apart from I have gleaned from the media coverage of her career and troubled private I wouldn’t dream of assuming that I know anything about what was REALLY going on in her life. Therefore, all I can say is:

Rest in Peace, Your music will be your legacy.

I wish others could have been as neutral, but sincere. Comments such as ‘Glad she’s dead, hope Lady Gaga and Beiber are next’, are simply uncalled for. The amount of, ‘she wouldn’t go to rehab, no, no, no’ is astounding, and the number of folks saying she choose a life of drugs and alcohol and she choose her end so she deserved to die, makes me think that they were probably puffing on a cigarette as they typed.

I have seen this before and it always annoys me. People hiding behind their computer.

Whenever a posting from NSW Police tells of a death on the roads, posters start blaming the driver that died. I’ll never forget the day that the wife of a truck driver had also posted early on in the thread saying her husband was driving that route that day. She would have been alerted every time a nasty comment was posted, because so many don’t read earlier posts, he’d crashed into a car and all had died.

I have a personal policy. If I wouldn’t be prepared to say something to the originator’s face or the family of the victim, I don’t post.

Isn’t this one of the cardinal rules of Netiquette?

Please people, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.



Pinched the image from here

Seek and you shall find

I don’t have a full time job. As in, I’m a contractor, so not on anyone’s books from a payroll point of view. In the past this has caused issues due to extensive periods of unemployment, but in line with attempt of finding the positives in everything and my new mantra of ‘Mah Na Mah Na’ I have found the silver lining of being a contractor.



I have made many lasting friends.

Goddess, The Director, Tiger, Bling Bling, Knitter, Cat Lady, Pho, and a couple of others I can’t think of witty nicknames for right now. Of course I do have a few other friends that I have met through alternate means: interwebs, friends of friends and talking to strangers.

So despite have moments of desperate financial distress, I have become rich with friendship

Thanks to this site, for the image

Recommendation

I had dinner with a good friend tonight. He came into my life as an employer and boss, so it comes in handy to be able to give his number when I need a reference for a new contract.

Agent: And what would you say is Jodie’s weakness?

PH: She doesn’t like or handle being micro-managed very well. I found it best to give her a task and point her in the direction you wish end up in and you get results better than you expected.

The Rules

Yesterday I had the privilege of presenting to a Communications group about keeping presentations simple, but engaging. I think it went well, at least 18 of the 20 strong audience took a card, I figure if I’d been boring, they wouldn’t have taken a card, but then they are very spiffy cards.

I took them through my 10 rules of creating a MS PowerPoint presentation, it took an hour, they asked questions, they laughed (very important), I said OK a lot at the beginning (always do, it’s the nerves) and they left feedback, but didn’t nick my post-it notes. It was good.

The issue was I had to get back to the office in a different suburb. I’d already had a two hour lunch break, so I decided to get a taxi rather than take the train. It would save me about half an hour. Ohh how wrong can you be?

My driver was a middle aged Asian man, fairly standard for Sydney, who had little grip on the English language, also fairly standard for a Sydney taxi driver. After he had run over more than his fair share of cats eyes, I asked him if it was knocking off time soon. Change over happens at 3pm, it was about two fifteen. He pointed at his face, shook his head and said ‘nose’. I had noticed he’d been sniffing, but that wasn't my question.

We got onto the Warringah Freeway, barely mind you, he had to swerve to avoid the concrete barrier. At that point I decided I would ask him to let me out at the first possible stopping point. 30 seconds later, I realised he wasn’t following the rules. The Goddess of Driving Rules (an American friend of mine) includes a rule that states, ‘You can never drive faster than the car in front of you’.

Clearly my driver did not know of these rules and tried to drive faster than the Lexus in front. He realised what he was doing and slammed on the anchors, unfortunately the extremely wet weather outside the vehicle made the stopping process somewhat slower than normal and we hit the shiny silver Lexus in the backend at about 30kph.

Having been on the receiving end of a couple of rear-enders (get your mind out of the gutter JH) I know that bracing for impact is the worst thing you can do, so I exhaled, relaxed into my seat and did my very best impression of a jelly.

The following 45 minutes involved a woman in her 50s wearing more labels than a rally car and a face that looked like a leather handbag that had been stretched out of shape, shouting at a tired Chinese man that shouted back. Neither of them understood each other.

I got back to the office later than if I’d have caught the train and I even had to pay the taxi that picked me up from the side of the road.

New Rule: If you err at taking a taxi...take the train.

Today, I feel like I’ve been run over by a bus but I’m riding high on Voltaren flowing in my veins. I know it’s muscular pain only, nothing broken or sprained. Another hot bath tonight, so can someone please remind me to buy bubble bath!

With age

There are many sayings about age and wisdom, most ring true, some not so.

True:
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
Kin Hubbard (1868 - 1930)

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.
Cullen Hightower

Could be agued:
Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.
Abigail Van Buren (1918 - )

I’d like to add one.

‘If you’re a woman a few things happen with age. You get breasts, the ability to have children and a desire to build a nest. You also learn to control your emotions. No one tells you you’re going start sprouting hair from your chin and you’re going to need a plastering qualification to fill the cracks next to your eyes. That was not in the advertising materials!’

It never rains...

...but it pours.

In good times and bad. As you’ll no doubt be aware I’ve had a pretty rough few years, well it seems to be changing, at last.

I’ll whisper the next bit in case the Gods of the Short, Sharp, Shafting with a Big Stick hear, but I’ve have four job offers in less than a week. Five if you include the part–time photography gig and six if you include the wacky Board of Director thing for a community radio station.

Fingers crossed this good fortune continues, I have placed money trees at my back and front doors to help with my feng shui, so maybe it could :-)


Picture borrowed from here. Thank you!

It's been a while

I have been travelling by bus lately. I like it because it slows down the inevitable arrival at work. Last night I was sitting my favourite seat (back row right). I was nearly home for the evening when the driver hit the curb for the sixth time on the journey.

‘Dude, stop hitting them, they’ve always been there.’ I muttered under my breath.

The guy sitting two seats away starting giggling.

I looked over at him, he looked back and said, ‘Hi’.

He looked like he should have been wearing school uniform. He had short wavy hair on the top of his head, a silly mullet thing growing out of the back. He was wearing jeans and casual jacket with trainers on his leg ends.

We started chatting, he had to take a bus and two trains to get to his job in Marrickville, he was a storeman.

He asked me about my job, I told him I was a corporate trainer, he asked me ‘what’s that then?’ I explained.

He asked why I didn’t drive to work, I told him I liked taking the bus because it meant I could read.

He led the repartee, when I fell silent he’d think of another question to ask. Being polite, I replied and tried to engage in the conversation.

Then I asked why he didn’t drive. ‘I’ve just got my Ls. I’m 17.’

My stop arrived.

As I climbed off the bus I heard, ‘I catch this bus every day, hope to see you again.’

Women!

Over the past few days I've been giving consideration as to why there's an issue with the woman I work with. I can't even begin to guess what's going on in her head but I do have a clear insight into my own.

While others support me by saying things like, 'she's insecure because you're better at your job than her' and 'she's a skank', yes, someone (other than SI) said that and while I tend to agree, not really all that helpful, but thanks.

My thinking and over-analysing has led me to this conclusion.

I don't work well with women.

History has taught me this, not just the current issue. Every time I've ever had an issue at work, it's always been a woman. Except once, when I worked for a guy in his 60s and he told me women should stay at home to cook, clean and have babies. That was 1999 for you.

Back to the ladies. I don't think like a girl. I've been told this by many a female and male acquaintances. I have no burning desire to prove myself capable of being able to hold down a full time job. I don't live to work. I work to live, but it needs to be a job I enjoy with people who know how to relax.

I'm pretty sure I've never manipulated anyone to do something they didn't really want to do. In any part of my life.

I don't have and have never wanted babies. I like other people's kids 'cause you can give them back when they start crying. I'm a sucker for a broken animal though.

If I have an issue with the way someone is behaving I try to address it. I do not passive aggressively try to control the situation. I wear my heart on my sleeve and deal with it, if it can’t be dealt with I will extract myself from the situation at the first possible opportunity.

Which brings me back to my point.

I speak up. And as I said in my last post, I internalise a lot.

Let me explain the history of working with ladies in reverse. Only a couple of things per person, I don’t wish to bore you too much.

LC: was supposed to hand over all project work and move to another project. Hasn't, is still directing me to do admin tasks, took me aside and bollocked me for doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Got me to do 'urgent' report then told me the data I'd been working from was incomplete and I had to number crunch again. Constantly chases me and makes a point of saying, 'GOOD MORNING', while looking at her watch.

RA: After 3 years of employment I started to report to a new manager. This one completely rewrote everything I wrote and started to check where I was. Luckily, I left before this one started to really became an issue.

DJ: gave me Whooping Cough because despite being really sick considered herself indispensable and coughed on me for two weeks before proudly announcing the doctor had officially diagnosed her. When I got back from three week sick she had a go at me for being behind in my work. She clock watched. She knee capped me in a meeting, I handed in my notice 20 minutes later.

Of course I always second guess myself and think I'm imagining this behaviour, am I just being paranoid? Until someone else spots it and brings it to my attention, I’ll torture myself that it’s all in my imagination, because what could they possibly be getting out behaving in such a manner? On the occasions that I have confronted passive aggressive behaviour, it just gets worse in the following days, such as yesterday's phantom report that prevented me from attending a training session for the project I'm working on.

I've never had these sorts of problems when working with/for a guy. I find if guys have a problem, they just tell you. Men are upfront. 'You're crap! Because of X Y and Z' and this conversation is likely to take place at lunch, in a pub.

Women, especially those with children, start talking to you as if you have an IQ of 10. They always do this in front of people. I apologise if you are not such a woman, this is from MY experiences in horror employment.

'Oh, well done, Jodie!'

Condescending Biatch!

They explain things to you as if it's a completely new concept to the world.

'Now, I'd like you to make up an address label for this box, addressed to XYZ and then, get a trolley and take it up to the mail room for posting'.

Really, I need to let the mail room know where I want it to go? Why don't I make the address label up for someone completely different, surely ESP will get it to the correct person?

Supercilious Biatch!



Now granted, I've got an attitude about this, but despite getting sick to my stomach with stage fright, I'm a good little actress when I need to be. I take it for the sake of reducing chances of escalation. Confronting it, always, leads to escalation.

I'll bide my time, perform like Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side (and maybe a bit of Miss Congeniality) at any up-coming interviews and get the hell outta Dodge and remember, work with men.


Thank you to this website for the image :-)

Mangy Mongrel

For nearly 15years I have suffered bouts of depression. It’s what my doctor refers to as ‘reactionary’, meaning that something triggers it rather than it occurring for no apparent reason.

For the last few years I have constantly struggled to get the black dog to back off and leave me alone. Six months ago I resorted to trying to kill it with a daily dose of 50mg of Zoloft, but I figured something out last night. The mongrel really doesn’t like being slowly poisoned to death, it knows you’re trying to do it, and it bites back. Hard.

Being brought up with a stiff upper lip and not showing emotion in public I have developed a stoicism that often leave completely in the dark as to my mental state until I crash. I’ve crashed. I want to retreat from the world, tell everyone to get lost and stay in bed surrounded by the family that gives me comfort.

Unfortunately, one of the reasons this black dog is following me my every waking moment is money worry. Nearly 18 month of unemployment in the last three years has made a massive dent in my finances that I am desperately trying to claw my way out of. This month, I’m going from fortnightly to monthly pay, after all my bills got paid the day the cash hit my account, I now have just $100 to last me until the end of July. Just another reason to retreat.

I was doing OK until yesterday, my brave face has held up mostly, but an incident at work yesterday, sent me sliding down the spiral into the jaws of the pi*sed off dog.

I got told off for doing my job by a woman who isn’t even supposed to be working on the project anymore.

I know it sounds insignificant, but without going into the whole long, back story, you’ll just have to trust me that it’s just another thing from a long line of controlling behaviour by a woman who thinks she owns me.



While I acknowledge I have quite a dominant personality. I really don’t have a competitive bone in my body. I just want to do a good job and go home at the end of the day. However, I have come across the odd colleague that sees me as a challenge. They win of course, because I don’t have the fight in me, I can’t be arsed. It’s not that I can’t fight, I have in the past I just find it’s not that important to prove I have the biggest testicles and that I can be a wife, mother and high-powered executive. I don’t care, no, really. I simply do not care. I really just want to do MY job, do it well, get paid for doing said job and go home to my life. So when I come across someone who wants to control me, by clock watching, checking up on me and generally limiting my ability to do my job effectively it has a profoundly negative effect on me. It makes me not want to get up and go to the job. It makes me not want to do anything while I’m at the job and it really makes me wanna bitch-slap the biatch that’s making me wanna bitch-slap them. Of course I do get up, I do do stuff once there and I don’t resort to physical violence.

While dominant, I’m fairly mellow, good natured and generous (time wise and financially when able) to those that treat me well, even those that I don’t know are gonna turn on me and stab me firmly in the back when I turn to pay for lunch. Once you F#ck with me at work (I’ll always try to find out what’s going on with friends), I shut down. I become uncommunicative (for a Communications specialist this can be an issue), I become withdrawn and I will not engage with your behaviour. I will not confront you, it’s what you want, fight. I will moan to others (sorry others), but mostly I will internalise. And we’re back to the dog.

Time has come for me to withdraw from the world again. Heal. Deal with the shemozzle that is my life for the next 36 sleeps (my dealing with the dog breeder ends in 12th August), I need to focus on securing a new contract, and sorting out my house. Once the black dog moves in all facade of houseproudness flies out the window. I need to sort out my tax paperwork.

It’s likely you’ll still see me around, but it won’t be out and about town, it won’t be Farmville and it won’t be at any social events organised through work because I can tell you I can hear that fake laugh at 1000 paces, see the annoying hand gestures through concrete walls and most of all I can feel my air being polluted by it’s breath.

I will continue to smile. Never fear, I have a fur family that would miss me too much.

Anniversary

Yesterday saw the third anniversary of a day that affected my life in a way that cannot be described. I became motherless. Clearly I had a mother, but on the 4th July 2008 mine, Sally, ceased to exist in this world and moved into one where she could wear red shoes all the time, drink G&T with more more G than T and cook up a storm at any time of the day.

In memory of my Muv, I finally figured out her Bread and Butter Pudding recipe, I think.



The weather wasn't rainy in Sydney, in fact the sun was shining, but I thought I share this picture of Muv and me on the Isle of Wight in the early 80s, because it reflects the feeling in my heart on the day that marks her death. Rain, muddy knees and a desire to stop waiting

MasterChef

I've been taking in the odd episode of MasterChef this year and I've enjoyed what I've seen. I saw this episode the other night and I absolutely love this recap, because it's true. It's all taken so ridiculously serious by so many people :-)