Poor Mumsy

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Emily Sue DON'T read this (you've been warned)

Exercise is bad for your health

My Rabid Mother

Did you bite him back?

My Mum, who has been walking to get fit for our overseas holiday was out on Wednesday afternoon when a dog jumped over a fence and bit her.

Thankfully she was walking with my Nan, who then fended the dog off when it tried to have another go. When I told my Nan that she was very brave for trying to scare off a dog that had a demonstrated ability to attack, she simply indicated that there really was no other choice.

They flagged down a passing car and got them to ring for the ambulance, and Mum was taken up to the hospital. Nan also borrowed a phone to call Dad to tell him what was happening, and he came down, picked up Nan and took her home and then went up to the hospital.

The first I knew about it was a late phone call from Dad. If I'd been looking out of my bedroom or family room windows I could have seen the whole incident.

The dog was taken straight on a one way visit to the vet.

Mum was told to keep her leg up for 48 hours, then to go back yesterday, then told to keep her leg up for an additional 48 hours (but she's allowed to have crutches now). We're off to my Grandmother's 90th birthday party in a park today, so that's going to be easy!

We're hoping that she'll be better for our trip overseas - but the doctor doesn't think she'll be able to put weight on it for a week. He reckons that it was quite a bad bite. We've all been praying that it will heal quickly and there will be no infection. When the doctor looked yesterday he said that there is no sign of infection yet and that it seems to be healing well. Strange, huh?

What I have learnt?
1. Exercise is bad for you.
2. Don't wear your good, comfortable (and expensive) shoes and orthotics walking, because when you get bitten by a dog, one shoe will fill with blood and will either be wrecked, or have to be cleaned out by your husband and/or daughter (and possibly still be wrecked because of the extreme measures needed to try to get them approaching clean).

The chance that we're not continuing to pray for a speedy recovery?

... APPROXIMATELY NONE!!!

PS for any overseas readers, rabies doesn't exist in the Australian dog population - so we're fine on that score.

Don't you hate it when...

... you're punished because someone else has behaved badly?

This is a guest post from Harry.

You may know me as the Little Black Dog.

I'd just like to complain about being punished for something I wasn't entirely responsible for.

Okay, so I'm partially responsible for it, but it wasn't ALL my fault.

This morning Mum went for a walk without me. It doesn't matter that it was only about 150 metres, and that the neighbour she was visiting is afraid of dogs. She is not allowed to walk without me. I barked. I might have used some language that Mum doesn't approve of in order to express my level of frustration.

My barking set off the two tiny yappy dogs next door.

Then she came back and had to hang out the washing in the back yard. The tiny yappy dogs next door don't like Mum being in the back yard, particularly not if she talks to me.

This made the tiny yappy dogs continue barking.

Then she went inside to do some stuff, but the tiny yappy dogs continued barking. One in particular is very shrill in pitch and it's that one who was doing most of the barking.

Mum timed them and reckons they barked from when she first walked up the street at 8.45 until she left the house at about 9.15.

I think she was sick of the barking, and glad to be leaving the house because there was no end in sight.

As she backed the car out of the garage I got mad at her for leaving and barked.

She warned me about the collar, but I didn't stop.

So she anti-barking collared me.

I don't like the anti-barking collar.

And it's not fair because she probably wouldn't have done it if the tiny yappy dogs next door hadn't been barking for half an hour.

The chance that I'm not one cheesed off mutt?

... Approximately None! (as Mum would say)

A Letter From Grandma

Another busy couple of weeks shaping up this end. I'm involved in Easter Services and then our family are going to Malaysia for our much-anticipated holiday. We fly out on Easter Monday, but why I'd say Easter Monday when the plane leaves at 0:50hrs, and we need to be at the airport two hours before, I don't know. Sounds terribly like we're leaving Easter Sunday to me...

Madly trying to get stuff ready to go, and get all the bits together for special Good Friday and Easter Sunday services, so please find attached letter from Grandma.

This is my fish. The big one is a comet and the little one a guppy.

The chance that my Grandma was as fish-i-cidal as me?

... Approximately None!

There's something so demoralising...

... about a Little Black Dog that finishes a gargantuan meal, then looks up hopefully for more, before resignedly licking the plate absolutely clean.

The chance he got anything else?
... You guessed it!

Breakfast

I've said before that I'm Not a Morning Person.

I'm really not.

And why do I find it necessary to defend this position? Well that's another psychological track entirely, and I'm not going there today.

One of the manisfestations of my NaMP status is that breakfast can be a bit of an ordeal. I don't decide easily at an early hour, so it needs to be quick to prepare and all the relevant bits need to be easily procurable and either store for a long time, or be something we usually have in the house.

I will usually have exactly the same thing for a couple of months (lets say toast) and then one day I will wake up and simply not be able to tolerate the thought of toast for breakfast. The smell of toast toasting will turn my stomach. The very thought of toast is repugnant to me (and yes, I have been reading both Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer recently, in case you're wondering).

Then I need to come up with a new idea in a short period of time because I've got to get out and doing for the day, and my higher executive powers don't wake up as early as I have to be vertical, and my Mum always told me that breakfast is the most important meal of the day so I can't skip it, and my life is a mess of stress for the morning.

I've recently been on a healthy Vita-Brits-are-whole-grain-no-sugar-isn't-that-healthy? kick. Add a little fruit in natural juice and some milk and I've got to be doing something good for my body. Haven't I?

I've been jokingly calling it 'chaff' and have realised that, while cleaning my teeth after breaky is usually pleasant and to be desired, the consumption of chaff means that it is absolutely imperative IMMEDIATELY because otherwise I find bits of chaff all around my teeth and I don't like that.

But the writing is on the wall for chaff for breakfast, because my half-awake brain this morning recognised that, actually, horsefood tastes better than Vita Brits. Yep, when I was in primary school we used to nibble on the working horse mix, and my memory is telling me that it tasted better than my breakfast (at least, it did if you got a bit with molasses in it).

So how much breakfast am I likely to have tomorrow?

... approximately none (but don't tell Mum).

A Letter From Grandma

I can't think of anything today and the next couple of days are going to be busy, so here's the next installment...

This was our camp at the Bunya Mountains. Lots of pretty birds came to eat seed that the men put on the sand in the front. We slept in the tents on the left side of the picture, and travelled in the bus behind them.

And the chance that I can come up with a clever way to segue to my tag line today?

... Approximately None!

Thanks Heaps Education Queensland...

I was reminded this morning of all the things I was taught in school that were not entirely accurate. I always used to say there were three main things. In fact there were more.

Add to this the fact that I was not taught enough English grammar to be able to learn another language (and in fact none of the schools I was at ever taught another language anyway), and that we were not made to rote learn our times tables (thankfully Mum was pretty keen on that activity), I begin to wonder what I was doing for those 12 years at school?

Wrong Fact #1:
Taipans only live on the very tip of Cape York Peninsula.

Yes, the most deadly snake in Australia, the bite-first-and-ask-questions-later type of attack snake isn't a threat to you unless you live on the hardly-populated-at-all tip of the Cape.

Then I moved to Cloncurry.

This is the best advertisement for sending all the new graduate teachers into western or northern Queensland where they may learn stuff not relevant to SE Queensland. And maybe we will warn them about the taipans in advance. Neh... much more fun if we don't!

Wrong Fact #2:
We don't have earthquakes in Australia.

Okay, so we don't suffer as much as New Zealand or San Francisco, but hello...the whole Great Dividing Range is a result of plates shifting. There was even an earthquake in Newcastle when I was in high school.

Wrong Fact #3:
The Ancient Greeks believed "everything in moderation".

Then I did ancient history at uni.

Pardon me for laughing immoderately, and allow me time to collect myself for a minute...

The truth is that some Greeks of the upper classes talked about "everything in moderation" - usually as they drank themselves into a stupor at a symposium.

Fact that I'd forgotten about:
Menstruation lasts for 4-7 days precisely 28 days apart.

I don't think I need say more?

And finally the fact that they didn't manage to teach me because I already knew that they were wrong:
Draftsmen don't design roads.

At the time my Dad was a Design Draftsman at the Department of Main Roads. In fact he was in charge of the Design Office. I'm not certain what he was doing with his time, since he obviously couldn't design a road, but I'd like to thank the Queensland Government for paying him for nearly 40 years to do nothing!

Certainly engineers check things; engineers may design bridges; they may do some design themselves from time to time. But the majority of the design and checking was done by drafties.

But the chance that my teacher would take my word for it?

... Approximately None!