One koel, two koel, three koel, more...

A lot of our birds are migratory ~ like the koels.  We haven't seen them for a number of years but they are back! They are big, beautiful birds with a loud, distinctive call.

We have seen a pair over the last week.  The glossy black male with a satiny sheen to his feathers was seen @ the birdbath while the spotted female was in the large soap tree partway down our hill.

Despite the name, & their resemblance to pheasants they are a parasitic brood cuckoo. Lots of people don't like them for that reason but seriously...lots of our birds have really grotty habits. I once watched a pair of butcher birds retrieve a large & very dead rat Kirby had brought me & drag it away to hang in their *larder*, so I have to admit koels seem pretty tame by comparison.

Butter wouldn't melt.

I've got 2 cats.  There is the *couch potato* aka Fat Cat [he's not really, we just call him that] aka Marlow  &  then there is Kirby. 

Kirby is a most beautiful cat.  Photogenic.  Adorable.  Loving.  Quirky.  It is the quirky that is the problem.

Marlow has all the wonderful attributes of a ragdoll: big, heavy, gentle, floppy & generally underfoot.  He is very attached without needing to be on you & he is the sort of self~confident, plumy~tailed, beautiful cat that attracts comments like: Gosh!  Isn't he gorgeous!  And he knows it!  With his *Cleopatra eyes* & outgoing personality he is the cat my friends smooch over.  It is never Marlow interrupting prayer meeting with yowls of:  I've got a present for youuuuu...

This was Kirby the day we brought him home.  While Marlow was hiding & quivering with fright, Kirby was mesmerized by what he could see outside the window  & he could not wait to get out & investigate. And that is the problem!

At some point or other Kirby has managed to destroy every flyscreen in the house. Initially he just went straight through them but Kirby is probably the smartest cat I've ever owned & eventually he just perched innocently on the windowsill & gradually worked the rubber free until he could squeeze through.

Lots of people would probably just let the cat rip but we are responsible owners & our cats are in at night.  Apart from anything else I don't like being brought snakes & rodents & that is what happens when Kirby goes night hunting.

Last summer we sweltered.  The only way to keep Kirby in was to shut every window in the house & I can assure you no~one enjoyed that during a Queensland summer!  As fast as I could mend the screens Kirby was through them until they were no longer worth the mending.

The MOTH has finally conceded that regular screens are not going to keep Kirby in where he belongs. He has bought me a roll of aluminium screen wire.  It is not the special pet wire, which costs a fortune & then some, but it seems to have done the trick.  I have been working my way round the downstairs windows redoing the screens, though I have taken the precaution of putting them in backwards so the temptation to try removing the rubber is removed. Not that he hasn't tried!  Each window has been thoroughly inspected ~ & tested!  So far, so good!

Meanwhile Queensland has started its summer with a huge bang.  Each afternoon the thunderstorms roll in with booms & flashes but while Kirby is hiding safely under one of our big lounge chairs Marlow is perched on a windowsill with his nose pressed up hard against the screen watching the world light up.

It was Interesting...

 October is our month for birthdays ~ not that we fuss overmuch but a nice meal out, off~island, is usually a good way to go. So as it was my birthday I got to choose. *sigh*

You know, you can be rainbow coloured & all the letters of the alphabet but finding vegetarian options on anyone's menu round here is harder than finding a needle in a haystack.  If you are lucky the restaurant in question will offer one: one entree, one main. And then they don't ever change their menu.  I cook better & more interesting vegetarian @ home. So knowing this, & knowing how very much my man likes to use my birthday as an excuse to eat out, I began looking early, scrolling through the on~line menus of the local restaurants. I opted for The Lighthouse even though their specialty is seafood.  They @ least change their vegetarian option regularly & the view is wonderful.

It turned out to be a really, really bad option.  The MOTH's meal was lovely ~ but he eats seafood.

There are lots of things to like about the Lighthouse.  They have a huge outside dining area that is spectacular & gets the sea breeze but on  Sunday it was super crowded & unbelievably noisy ~ a huge negative for me.  I don't like crowds & huge amounts of noise make me anxious & irritable ~ but birthday treat so I'm prepared to be accommodating.  They also do signature cocktails.  I hardly ever drink so these are always an experience as I never know what it is likely to taste like.  This was a *Blush Blast*.  Interesting.

The vegetarian option was pappardelle [with shiitake mushrooms, spinach & pine nuts] ~ which I had no idea was pasta. I'm not a huge pasta fan but whatever...About halfway through something cut the inside of my mouth & I spat out a huge chunk of mussel shell. Gag. Absolutely gross ~ apart from the pain. Nothing like trolling through your meal in public in search of other nasty surprises.

I remember my mother telling T1, after he'd ordered a particularly awful meal when eating out as a child & was hugely disappointed, that the dining experience was always about taking risks: win some, lose some ~ & sometimes your experience will be less than optimum. Well, mine was less than optimum!

Dessert was fun.  I ordered affogato ~ because I'd never had it before & it sounded interesting.  It was! ☺ I had no idea how one was supposed to tackle this but had a vague idea one was supposed to pour one's shots over one's icecream ~ so I did.  Apparently that is correct. Hmmmm.  Not sure what the attraction is....

We took ourselves round to the kids' place for coffee where the Little Man, who is experiencing his first day care & church creche, took exception to our appearance.  All in all it was an interesting day & a huge relief to arrive home!

The Pink Car.

We feel so flash. Upmarket.  Part of the cool crowd. Really we're such yobs but the car is classy ~ classier than we are. ☺  Almost worth driving across all of Brisbane to collect.

That's the drawback of giving my man access to the internet.  He trawls it like a deep sea trawler when he wants something ~ because he invariably gets the best deal... which is all well & good but we  end up travelling miles & miles: Ipswich for the mainland car; Virginia for the island one. Hours upon hours ~ & me the car~sick, traffic & crowd adverse one... *sigh*

I had looked @ the map ~ & I had looked @ the satellite image & I was pretty sure it wasn't quite so straightforward as the MOTH assured me.  I was right.  Getting in was a nightmare.  No problem until we crossed the Storey Bridge because the southside is ODD's stomping ground & I know it well enough to be able to get myself out of most difficulties but once you cross a bridge ~ any bridge [& there are 13 of them & counting!] ~ then it is foreign territory & unbelievably frustrating! 

As I pointed out to the MOTH once we were safely home again, we drove halfway across Europe without the sort of issues we have in Brisbane because Brisbane thinks everyone knows where they are & how to get where they are going, so they don't bother to signpost anything.  We were halfway to Virginia before we got a signpost for the road we were on [& it wasn't the right one, just going in the right direction!]

Coming out we at least started on the right road but of course I was driving the mainland car [which is lovely to drive] & tailing the Moth in the new one, absolutely terrified of losing him in the Brissie traffic & getting totally & completely lost in the Brisbane maze!  Once we were over the bridge all was good, but we are two very, very tired little bunnies tonight.

Meanwhile: this is why I never get my washing up done! Like, seriously...why here?

And then there's this!  Both of them! I put down a nice fresh tablecloth on the end of the bench on Sunday for our church morning tea & the cats promptly took over!  Later I removed the tablecloth & put down an old towel instead because if they insist on sleeping there @ least it needn't be on the good stuff but OT was really put out & informed me he hadn't built a nice kitchen for the cats! *sigh*  They live here too. And as anyone knows who owns cats, they are persistent.  Very.

Randomness.

So this week more odd things have happened than can be accounted for.  Why, for example did ODD find a not pregnant cat in her garage?  And where are her kittens?

And why, oh why, did all our finances fly out the door just when we are saving really hard for a new island car ~ which, by all accounts, looks like being pink...PINK! Not hot, bold pink, but that faint champagne pink...still...

And it bucketed & bucketed down when my MIL needed the plumber to fix a leak in her main, the MOTH shattered a tooth & needed the dentist, & we had an interview with Rhema on the other side of town, when what I needed to do was oil treads & stringers for OT ~ still not done & he is due any moment.

I was asked to babysit but that is not going to happen.  I just can't. I have a grumpy man, a sermon in the making & 2 psychotic cats who have been locked up for far too long & are hoping the rain is long gone.  It isn't ~ but I washed anyway.  They can rinse as long as they like!

We went from hot to cold overnight.  We lit a fire.  In October.  When we should be starting to swelter.  I do not like being this busy ~ but the worst is yet to come.  At some point we must drive across Brisbane, to the north side, to pick up a car.

One Birthday...

My Chile Girl was a very chill baby. Adorable ~ much ~ but with very decided ideas of her own, like my family not passing her round like a rag doll to be smothered in kisses & cuddles, or scooped up & bear hugged by some complete stranger. Fussy.  That's my girl.

And because she looks slim & frail & rather ethereal lots of people make the mistake of thinking she is delicate & sweet & accommodating.  Nothing could be further from the truth. My CG is one of my soccer ones.  Until she was about 13 she always played on the boy's teams [because that was all there was] so she grew up tough.  Tough enough to board a plane for Chile via Holland all alone at 21  to be a missionary in a country whose language she did not speak & whose culture she knew nothing about.

She is a strong independent young woman who has just boarded a plane for Ecuador for 10 days intensive training but something of the little girl remains.  She rang me [what else are mothers for?] to discuss who she should fly with because there was a prolonged stopover & not all South American countries are equally safe. What would I know?  I've never been to South America.

And as mothers do, as my daughter dithered between differing risk factors, I pointed out bluntly [as only mothers can] her biggest problem was pride.  She didn't want to be the one arriving late because of the route she took. Hmmmm.  I think I need to work on my tact factor ~ but if you knew CG like I know CG you'd realise CG in a dither can dither for quite some time & it is best to pop the bubble early & bring her back to reality.

But today is her birthday. If she were here there would be presents & pavlova & lots of spoiling.  Instead there are FB posts of  candles stuck in  lamingtons & missed skype calls, complete strangers leaving uninterpretable messages in a foreign language & vast swathes of sea between me & thee.

The away birthdays are starting to add up & the ache of missing hurt more ~ which is very strange because last year she was home on furlough & actually here for her birthday.  Perhaps that's why...

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Gorgeous Girl.  May it be a blessed one.

Why?

My mother watches tennis.  My brother is a sailing addict.  My husband watches the NRL ~ as do 2 sons & one daughter. Sport is Australia's great idolatry.

As a thing I'm not very sports minded.  All that sweaty exertion, don'tcha know. So inane ~ fully grown human beings chasing little balls about.  I mean, really?  We don't have something better to do with our time?

The one exception, & only if I remember, & only if nothing better is on offer, is the socceroos playing for a world cup place ~ which they did last night.  Even then, more often than not, I don't watch because watching the soceroos is an exercise in avoidable angst.

Most of ours played soccer.  It is the sport for the under 12 crowd. The ones of ours who played played @ an elite level ~ so, you know, I know a little bit about soccer ~ the one sport my dear MOTH won't watch because he reckons it has to be the most frustrating game ever!  There are days I have to agree with him. And watching the socceroos is frustration upon frustration.

Australia has always been good @ sport.  As a nation we have excelled in Cricket, Union & League ~ American sports are not really sport ~ or universal ~ & we mostly leave those to the Americans because no~one else plays them.  We're a competitive bunch so we mostly play those sports where we can sit on our own dunghill & crow long & loud. Seriously.  When State of Thuggery comes round the only thing our news reports on is~ the State of Thuggery.  Kim Jong Un could press a dozen buttons & I swear our media wouldn't even notice.

Anyway, kids transition out of soccer when they enter high school & opt for Aerial ping~pong [Aussie Rules], Rugby League or Rugby Union.  Consequentially our international soccer team has lacked depth for years & we have never dominated in soccer the way we have in other sports. Over the last couple of decades that has been slowly changing.  Immigrants play soccer. They play well.  So our team is mostly unpronounceable names from all around the world until slowly we have edged into the bottom ranks of the *Beautiful Game*.

But we're competitive.  We like to win.  And soccer is not for the faint~hearted. It is low scoring.  It is difficult to score.  It is unpredictable.  And it is completely unforgiving of mistakes. The socceroos, love them to death & all that, have a tendency to dominate without scoring, to be fitter & have more stamina than their opponents yet lose their formation & open up huge cracks in their defense. *sigh* Which they did last night~ with aplomb.

OT geed me up. Australia V Syria to advance to the next level.  Do or Die. Played in Sydney.  Home ground advantage.  And you know, given the inanity of Australian t.v @ 6pm on a Tuesday night watching the soccer looked like a really good option.  For about 7 minutes it was.  Australia was looking good.  Dominating the middle.  Fast down the wings.  Keeping good formation.  Great passing ~ not always their strong point. One mistake & the away goal advantage ~ gone! 

At which point I rolled my eyes.  This is how it so often goes for the socceroos.  They like coming from behind or something. Don't ask me to explain the World Cup scoring system.  I don't think anyone really understands it except FIFA & I wouldn't put money on that either, so even the equalizer wasn't enough & despite dominating, despite numerous shots on the Syrian goal, it stayed @ one all for the full 90 minutes.

Now a pro soccer player runs 3 or more kilometers a game so the lactic acid build~up can get pretty bad & Syria wasn't in good shape to play an extra 30 minutes even before they got red~carded & lost a player.  I get it.  Soccer is a hugely exhausting game requiring the sort of stamina & mental strength required of marathon runners.  It requires similar sorts of stamina from its fans.  It was exhausting to watch shot after shot on goal deflected & the one rule I cannot abide [& will not watch] is a penalty shoot out ~ which is where we were headed.  Thank you, Timmy Cahill, for saving us from a penalty shoot~out!

I watched to the death ~ but my.oh.my!  By the end I had enough Adrenalin pumping through my system to power a small village! *sigh* And sadly I will probably do this again.  And again.  And again ~ until some European powerhouse or South American genius puts an end to the agony.  Why do I do this to myself?

You know, when the kids were little we always watched the World Cup & it was great.  Australia was never there so we chose a team to barrack for & when they got wiped out we chose another team, and another team, right up until the Grand Final. Reckon that's the way to do it but with Australia still in it...Aussie. Aussie. Aussie. Oi. Oi. Oi.

A little Food @ a time...

 After a day or so of skulking round feeling sorry for himself my big, beautiful, boofer of a cat is back to normal ~ or what we define as normal for this cat.  With attitude like this, it's no wonder he's so big!

Meanwhile I've been having more than my fair share of "...But I don't wanna cook..." days. Gosh but I hate dealing with food! Eat? Sure.  Plonk it in front of me & I'm happy enough to make it disappear ~ mostly because I can do something else while I eat ~ like read.  Cooking doesn't work like that, though I have tried ~ mostly unsuccessfully.

My children have never understood this attitude but @ least now I don't have to deal with the 2 who don't eat tomato, the one not keen on pumpkin, 1 mint hater, the vegan & the vegetarian, the mushroom hater, the seafood lovers, the suspicious looks, the one who forages through her food in case something's snuck in she doesn't like [as I am apt to do the same I can't really fault this one!] & cries of, None of that for me, please.

 The MOTH is relatively easy to please though when you don't eat meat yourself cooking meat is pretty gag~making. So looking down the barrel of having to provide yet another meal when I didn't want to I came across this happy pasta meal. Twenty minutes from start to table.  Oh, happy me!

Steamed broccolini heads, pine nuts & a squeeze of lime ~ topped with Parmesan if you like. I made cheese bread instead.

As an inveterate food hater how did I manage to raise food lovers & good cooks?  Because given the right day & plenty of time I actually like to bake.  Baking was our go to activity when it was cold & had been raining for days on end, board games threatened to get violent & everyone was bored out of their brain.  I taught all of mine to make bread, pies, biscuits, cakes.  It could take all day & kept everyone happily occupied & fed.

Then the oven died & as the children left the house I decided this was a good thing because I couldn't get fat on my own baking.  The MOTH is more of a savory man ~ which means I was the only one eating all that sugary sweetness.

Renovating meant we got a new oven.  Oh dear. It has begun.

 I found this Impossible Pie recipe on line.  With a name like that who could resist?  Not me.

It was very yum.

Adventures with the Little Man.

 Last time I was @ the Little Man's it was because most of the household was sick.  From the look of Old Sobersides here you wouldn't think he was enjoying himself much but in fact, now he recognises me, he  can't wait until I make overtures for him to get in his stroller & head out.

 The new fangled contraption is nice & light & apparently converts, by degrees, into a trike.

For me it has always been easiest to learn a new area by walking it so each time we go in a new direction on @ least one trip out.  This time it was to one of the Green Spaces council has put in ~ though, quite frankly, I think it is less they are ecologically minded than because the majority of these are swampy.

 The one we visited is a large patch of mostly grass but someone has put up a lovely driftwood  bird feeder.  Wrong time of the day to see much but nice to know it is there.  Apparently all the dog owners like to walk their animals there & one lovely lady stopped to chat so the Little Man could pet the easiest of her 3 very large dogs.  Not being much of a dog person I'm always a little leery of any dog;  One never knows...However this one behaved itself & like so many dogs liked me far more than I liked it.  Too sad making.

 In the middle, where the land dipped down, all the swamp had drained into a large billabong ~ obviously the waterhole for any native wildlife around & a huge attraction for the Little Man. As he wasn't going to be content just looking, I put him down knowing full well the prickles on his bare feet would put an end to any wild ideas he had about paddling!

 I know most people like their suburban gardens to be neat & rather unimaginative so I am always charmed when I find someone with a bit of imagination ~ even if it's not particularly my thing.  If you click on the image you can see the huge variety of old farm implements these owners have on display.  Their lawn is just like everybody else's though ~ half dead.  We haven't had rain, any rain at all, in months & all the sidewalks were brown & patchy.  We often walk by here & I always like to stop & look because...well...there is something to look at!

As we go round our circuit we are invariably accosted by large braying dogs hurling themselves against their fences ~ one reason I don't like dogs.  Most people seem to own @ least one, some people several.  Cats are rarer but we do see the occasional one & for the most part they are far more friendly & will come over to investigate & get a scratch under the chin.  As the Little Man doesn't have a cat he finds these encounters most exciting.

Most times I've visited we've been able to head down to the little park not far from home & have the swings & slides & round~a~bouts all to ourselves but last time was school holidays & there were children everywhere.  Like his father, the Little Man is a social animal but despite his overtures One is too little for the big kids to be interested.