Sunday Selections

Sunday Selections, brought to us by Kim, of Frogpondsrock, is an ongoing theme where participants post previously unused photos languishing in their files.

Anyone can join in, just post your photos under the Sunday Selections title, link back to Kim, then add your name to her Linky list at Frogpondsrock.

Like River, I like to have a theme for my post and this week my photos are from a trip we took to Dubbo Zoo.  I am extremely ambivalent about zoos.  I don't like to see anything caged but, as we encroach into animals' natural habitat, it seems to me that some day too soon the animals in zoos will be the only ones left.  A tragedy.

Simiang Ape

An elephant dutifully displaying its mouth for inspection

Cape Hunting Dog

And the tigers.  I love, love, love the big cats.  And tigers probably most of all.

With the chook it caught while in the water.

Splashes of Colour

When I got up this morning my mood was still blue verging on black.  So I took myself into the garden both to look for splashes of colour and to escape myself.

The colour I certainly found.

I also weeded.  Two big bags full.  There are probably only another twenty two bags of weeds to go.  Some time in the next little while we have 20 Sumo lilies, the same number of assorted dahlias and ten calla lilies to squeeze into the garden.  Somewhere.

Then I came back inside.  Almost as soon as I was in, the king parrots arrived.  I knelt on a chair in the lounge to take a photo.  Jazz ran up my back to see what I was doing and attempted to sit on my shoulder.  He slipped off.  So, using his claws like crampons he climbed up my back again.  I shrieked.  The smaller portion removed Jazz.  When I turned around (blood seeping through my t-shirt) it was to see Jazz in himself's arms being petted and soothed after his mishap. While I can see the funny side  I haven't forgiven either of them.  Yet.

I am having

an attack of the inadequacies.  I don't know where it came from, but it is seriously demoralising. 

I was on call for Lifeline last night and still on the phone at half past midnight while the smaller portion and Jazz slumbered blissfully.  Jewel was helping me, and I had to fend her away from the phone at regular intervals.  I do not think the sounds of either a purring or a complaining cat would have been positively received.  A very sad call, but not a tragedy and I think the three of us (the caller, the telephone counsellor and I) came out the other side reasonably OK. 

After the call I was over Jewel demanded some one-on-one time.  She wanted to bat her acorn around the kitchen, and be applauded for same.  And then she knocked it under the fridge.  I flatly refused to even attempt to get it out for her and got her another one.  Which she rejected emphatically.  So she and I both retired to bed with the huffs.

This morning I was wearing my MS peer support hat.  I rang a person I have been recently matched up with at 11, as previously arranged (by phone and by mail).  The call went straight through to voice mail.  I left a message saying I would ring back in half an hour.  Through to voice mail again, so the new message said I would ring back at 12.  Voice mail again.  His phone was obviously not switched on, or he had been on the phone the whole time.  So I left yet another message saying I would ring at the same time next week.  Seriously frustrating.  And of course I had to document both my attempts and eventual failure to get through.

In the middle of all that the phone rang.  A person, also with MS, also providing peer support.  She has been matched with someone in a heart breakingly difficult situation and wanted to talk it through. 

Somehow I did those things, while simultaneously feeling an abject failure in every aspect of my own life.  Very, very weird.  The human psyche I mean.  It is a grey day here and I am really, really hoping that a modicum of self confidence will emerge with the next rays of sunlight.  And that I can go out to play in the garden again.

Sunday Selections

Sunday Selections, brought to us by Kim, of Frogpondsrock, is an ongoing theme where participants post previously unused photos languishing in their files.

Anyone can join in, just post your photos under the Sunday Selections title, link back to Kim, then add your name to her Linky list at Frogpondsrock.

Like River, I like to have a theme for my post and this week my photos are largely from a walk I took through the garden yesterday.

And two exceptions.  Jazz is in far more photos than Jewel, so I decided to add one of her.  The smaller portion says she has a nose like a pig, but I think he is prejudiced because (at the moment) she prefers me.

And another cockatoo, because they are a source of never ending joy.

Friendly Blogger Award

The lovely River passed this accolade onto me this morning. River herself epitomises friendly and nice, as was illustrated by her distress earlier this week when she had thrown a very mild hissy fit at someone who had been ungracious, rude and just plain mean to her.  Anyone who was less nice than River would have ripped him a new intimate aperture and rejoiced in his discomfort.

To accept this, all I have to do is link back to River, then award this to other bloggers that I think deserve it.

I have been brooding about this on and off all day. I have been very fortunate since I started playing in the Blogosphere earlier this year.  I have been welcomed and met with friendliness, kindness and support on all sides.  People commenting on my blog have also been, (with one exception) very friendly.   The exception firmly believed that she was commenting on someone's elses blog and, since I pointed that out, has not been back.  A blogger who disagreed with me (not at all the same thing as being nasty) has become a friend.

I love the glimpses of other people's lives I have been given.  Many blogs are filled with beauty.  Others educate me.  Some entertain me.  Others do all three.  I am in awe at the creativity of people around me.  I have met one wonderful blogger, and corresponded with others.  How can I possibly complain?

Essentially what I am saying is that I cannot nominate any particular bloggers for this award.  If I visit you, or you visit me, consider yourself a recipient of  the Friendly Blogger Award.

And thank you.

Sunday Selections

Sunday Selections, brought to us by Kim, of Frogpondsrock, is an ongoing theme where participants post previously unused photos languishing in their files.

Anyone can join in, just post your photos under the Sunday Selections title, link back to Kim, then add your name to her Linky list at Frogpondsrock.

Like River, I like to have a theme for my post and this week I am posting photographs of some of the birds who came to see us.

Bones, Books and the Brazilian Edelweisse

Good news:  after my mishap with the wheelie bin there are no chips in either my tibia or fibula.  My face is only a bit scabby now, and many of the abrasions are gone, or nearly so.

Less good news:  The physiotherapist is wondering whether I have broken bones in my foot.  I am currently encased in a compression bandage from toes to knee.  Not stylish and, which affects me much more, too warm for my liking.  Three of the toes poking out the end of the bandage are the attractive dark greenish grey of an approaching storm.  A big storm.  The bandage has reduced the swelling beneath my knee, so there is good news there too.  The idea is to wait until next week and see the physio again before rushing off for more x-rays.

On the books front:  A while ago, after I received these books as an unbirthday present from my nephew's wife, I said I would post a review when I had finished reading them.  Which promptly escaped my mind.

I read 'The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove' first.  It could probably best be described as a combination Sci-Fi, Fantasy, cosy murder mystery, romance novel.  Sound confusing.  Well it is.  It gallops across the genres taking flying kicks at the accepted conventions (and a few other sacred cows along the way).  So I giggled my way through it.  Good literature, well no, but fun just the same.

I then moved onto 'A Dirty Job'.  I found myself bookmarking my place and wandering off and picking up other books, not once, but several times.  Not a good sign.  I did (finally) finish it, but didn't like it nearly as much.  Many of the same elements are present, so perhaps I just tried to read it too soon after the first. ( And I warm so much more to Terry Pratchett's take on Death.)

One of the books I am reading at the moment is completely different.  It isn't a recent publication and I picked it up from a remainders table.  'A Midwife's Tale:  The life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary 1885-1812', by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  Martha Ballard lived and worked in Maine in the USA.  Ulrich intersperses excerpts from the diary with information she has gleaned from available historical records, including court reports, title deeds and other diaries. She then ties the information together to give a much more comprehensive picture of Martha Ballard's life, times and the society she lived in than I would have gleaned from her diary alone.  It isn't easy reading, but I am finding it completely fascinating.

And to something different again.  In July, while buying a present for a friend I fell in lust with a Brazilian Edelweisse and bought it for myself.  When I first bought it, it looked a little like a badly baked donut.  It has been sitting on the kitchen window, and how it has changed.

And there are more shoots coming from the base to come.  It is one of the first things I focus on when I come into the kitchen to make my first cup of tea of the day, and I am really pleased that I weakened and bought it.  I just noticed that it has come out even more today!