Weekend round up

Had the most brilliant night on Saturday night. Saw in the newspaper an advert for a local theatre production over in Camperdown of Godspell, so we decided to go. Absolutely fantastic. The actors were so good, not a bit of fear, they were up there singing and dancing their hearts out to a full house.

We had a nice meal at one of the pubs in town first, enjoyed the show, and I love that at interval we got a cup of coffee and a cup cake! :-)

Plus I also loved that the program had the cast and where you'd find them around town - the doctor's office, the local bakery, the librarian, etc.

So much fun, we decided on the way home to look up more nights out like this. Because it was so nice to have a fun night out and not have to drive 2 or 3 hours each way to either Geelong or Melbourne.

New looks for the menagerie

The menagerie got new collars recently, not because the old ones were worn out, but every time animal registration rocks around I think a new look is in order for the new tag to go on. And much like the first day of school, that means a picture is taken. They were looking up because Mike was standing there with a treat held in his hand, ha!

Aren't they great collars though. I have stumbled onto a fabulous lady on etsy who makes them, and they are really sturdy for the leash to attach to as well, and look oh so stylish, the best looking doggies in the street! So if you are in the market for a bright new look for your dog or cat, Coley's Collars are the go. And the price is excellent even with the postage and the USD conversion.

Credits Designer Digitals.

Oh Lordy Lord!

We just finished watching The Shining. Remember that? Jack Nicholson. "Heeeeere's Johnny". I was shocked to see it was 30-odd years old. So that made me mid-teens when I saw it at the movies. I remember being terrified, absolutely bone-shakingly terrified.

So we're watching it tonight on Fox Classics and the whole way through it Mike decided to make scary noises, all of a sudden like, to make me jump. Or Hannibal Lector noises (wrong movie I know). Anything to get a rise out of me. Make me jump. Make me annoyed. MAKE ME VERY ANNOYED. Arrrrrgggghhh. When you want to be scared, sometimes you just want to be scared in peace, yanno.

Still flipping scary movie 30-odd years on.

Am still finding some fun photographs to scrap of my nephews. This was from one day when they came down to visit, the day we went to my friends when they picked out Nelli. My friends have some land next door and Gertie the boy sheep (yes read the journalling) was in the paddock. Check out David and Matt's hands. They were going no where near Gertie. It was so funny. Love these photos, and thankfully again, some of the photos that Sam's husband was able to retrieve from my dead hard drive. I still can never thank him enough.

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Tomorrow Mike and I are going out for dinner and to see a local production of Godspell. I think local productions are a lot of fun, the community putting on a play. Looking forward to it, and I figure as long as I don't jump up and down (which obviously won't happen) I won't get the coughing fits that I'm still prone too.

So now ... do I dare go to the bathroom, because I just know as soon as I do, Mike will be waiting round the corner to scare me! haha. He really has never grown up, has he?

This made me so sad

I don't give a lot of news commentary on this blog, but an article in the Herald Sun yesterday and I near on cried. The thought of this poor darling dog, who was a victim of his own appetite, but also a victim of very cruel owners, who in their misguided way thought they were doing him a favour I'm sure, but in my mind they need to be prosecuted for animal cruelty and named and shamed.

Labs love their food, there's no secret in that. They are a walking garbage disposal unit, but responsibility means to make sure they can't get into food while you're not watching and have a regular meal time. Feeding this poor darling dog hamburger and pizzas and whole roast lambs? You have GOT to be kidding me. If they could afford that type of food for him, they could afford good quality weight controlled dog biscuits.

And now poor Sampson at 8 years old and it's all gotten too hard and they've handed in over and given him up for adoption. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! Get this dog into this state and then it's all too hard. Too bad they didn't give him up about 40 kg ago.

Can you tell I'm mad? I'm furious. 85 kgs my friends, that's 187 pounds.

Does this dog look happy to you?

So so sad.

And yet still it rains

Still raining out there, just more of the same. It's definitely going to be a very wet winter. Slept like a starfish last night and even the menagerie didn't wake me up this morning until around 9am. So lovely.

So I've been watching some home improvement shows on telly this afternoon whilst waiting for Mike to head home. It sounds like they had a fine time last night. My SIL texted me a few times about how raucous Mike and his dad were getting, obviously whiskey was involved!

Another of my pages of my nephews to show here. WARNING! Pitiful photograph. When we took Kim and the boys to the airport, because of the amount of suitcases and that mum came too, we took two cars. So this was the result when I offloaded my lot and we were waiting for Mike to make his way to us after parking his car. I think Matt's look here reflected everyone's mood. Oh and that was a steel post he was learning up against with the cases, it's not a rubbish bin. I just realised how bad that looked if you thought otherwise.

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So I'm thinking a pot of tea is the next order of business, I'll put another log on the fire and settle down for the rest of the afternoon.

Still barking

I'm still barking. This is never going end. There is NO light at the end of the tunnel I fear.

The first time I've ventured down the street at lunch time, big mistake. Abbey Lane, a very nice gift shop, was having a 30% off everything in the store sale. There were some beautiful smelling diffuers, I think that's what they are called. Those bottles of liquid with cane sticks hanging out of them. I sniffed and that was the end of me. My cough caught in the back of my throat and I swear I was dying. I coughed and coughed and coughed and bore the wrath, or at least the evil eye of everyone in the store. I hightailed it out of there and coughed my way up the street. Note to self - no smelling scents.

Mike is feeling so much better, he's almost back to himself. He's visiting with his dad at the moment before his dad heads off to Scotland. So tonight I vegged out. I brought home my favourite Thai takeaway - Penang Curry with Chicken. Mmmmmm. Then I watched Master chef Master class, my favourite episode of the week. Now a bit of scrapping and tidying up my hard drive. The fireplace is blazing. It's lovely and warm in here. My cat Bo is sitting on the desk beside me. Life is good.

On the scrapping front I am busy making pages of my darling nephews, so I can put them all in a book for them for Christmas, so they never forget us. This is a fun idea, what they call "subway art" that I got from my friend and fellow CT mate Doris. And apologies to the Beatles for a bit of leeway I took with the lyrics.

I love the conspiratal nature of this photo. Is that such a word - conspiratal. I know what I'm trying to say. Matt just idolised his Uncle Mike and I just love the sentiment behind this photo. The fact that Mike had time for this 6 year old, would spare him all the time in the world which in turn made Matt feel quite important I think. Or at least that he mattered.

Sorry Mike, the blending of this photo highlighted the bags under your eyes, it had been a long day when this photo had been taken!

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And with that it's time to crawl into my warm bed. Soon enough then Lucky will jump up and curl around my feet on the doona at the bottom of the bed, what better way to keep my toes warm.

Sniff, cough, bark, wheeze ...

Yep, that's why I've been absent this past week. The first half was spent making sure Mike was okay as he was in the throes of it, and then Wednesday I came home from work, took one look at the couch and collapsed on it about 6.30pm, dragged myself to bed a while later, and didn't get up until 1.30pm the next day when Mike woke me as he had made an appointment for me to see a doctor.

Now I'm on antibiotics for whooping cough no less. Apparently I don't have whooping cough, but my symptoms and the type of cough I have were similar. So Thursday and Friday were a blur, mostly sleeping. We've both never been this sick at the same time before that all we want to do is sleep, no energy, it's really taken the stuffing out of both of us. Saturday Mike started coming good, even though the tiredness creeps up as the day goes on. I've started feeling human today but still so flipping exhausted.

So what a waste of a long weekend.

Oh, and by the way ... Happy Birthday QE2 !

Well this has been a day and a half !

We had tickets to see the Tutankhamun exhibition at the Melbourne Museum today. They were actually my wedding anniversary gift for Mike from April, just that we were going today. Mike is an Egypt freak, he has seen every documentary on TV about Egypt. I think it may have come from him being a small boy voyaging from Scotland to Australia, around the coast of Egypt and through the Suez Canal. Perhaps that's why Egypt has always stuck in his mind and been a passion.

In any case he'd been looking forward to this for weeks. BUT ... yesterday a scratchy throat started and he went downhill from there. I told him this morning we weren't going when he woke up and was shaking, I was pulling rank. Except obviously my rank doesn't rate very highly! ha. Mike was still smarting over missing the Bat Out of Hell concert and as I've nicknamed him today, Scrooge McMike didn't want to waste more money on unused tickets.

So like death warmed up we drove to Geelong to train to Melbourne them tram to the museum. That was the plan. Got to Geelong and the trains were out because of track work, so we bussed it to Melbourne instead. Which was still good and timely. We took it easy when we got there and had a short walk through DFO and a Starbucks coffee, then found the tram to take us to the museum. A few photos out the front and then to the exhibition.

Well it nearly did poor Mike in. Every room he had to sit for about 5 minutes to catch his breath. He loved it, absolutely loved it, the grin on his face showed that, but he was struggling. It was a shock to find we had spent nearly 2 hours in the exhibiton, which was WONDERFUL, so I highly recommend anyone to go. But he was ready to go home. He looked green by that stage. So we trammed back and then bussed back to Geelong and on the way home here he said to me words that you just don't want to hear "I think you better take me to hospital".

Mike doesn't "do" doctors, let alone hospitals, so I knew it was serious. He was having so much trouble breathing on the way home that anything other than a shallow breath felt like razor blades in his lungs, and his ventolin was making no difference. So we went to our country hospital in the next town where he was put straight onto Oxygen. At that stage I had a small quiet little freak out. Mike just doesn't "do" sick. He's now on antibotics with a chest infection, and taking it very easy tonight.

The exhibition though was everything and more than we could have expected. Simply stunning. And so hard to get my head around how old the artefacts were.

Mum and Me

This is a special page of a special day recently spent together. No more words needed except that we are healing. These photos were taken on the first day we have spent alone together since November 2009. (thank goodness camera have self-timers).

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