Grumpy trolls from Down Under

Over the years I’ve received a fair few comments on my blog. Most have been great, a few have cheerfully disagreed with something I’ve said and others raised a differing topic to debate. A small handful have, unsurprisingly in this troll-infested world, been downright rude for the sake of just being nasty.

But unlike Twitter, where you have little choice but to put up with such drivel, here on my own blog I believe I have every right to keep those with a potty mouth from spoiling the nice, clean lines of my page.

So if something pings into my inbox that makes me wrinkle my nose in distaste, then of course I’m not going to “allow”. I’m all for freedom of speech – it’s not like I don’t make the most of it here – but quite frankly, if someone wants to wretch up a stream of ungrammatical drivel all over the screen, then they can bloody well take the time and effort to write their own blog, not just invade mine.

The other day two comments arrived in my inbox for approval. One was from someone who was kind enough to say she enjoyed the blog; the other was from a man who obviously took great personal offense to my reasons for leaving Australia.

Now his comment wasn’t littered with expletives and he didn’t even tell me where to go, but his patronising tone so rubbed me up the wrong way I thought I’d write a post about it:
r

What did you expect, you were living in perth full of Saffers jocks and poms.
If you had come to Melbourne and given yourself a fighting chance you may have made it.

Still at least you have the rest of your life to regret the decision best of luck with that.

f
Well, Chris W from Melbourne, what can I say. Thank you, I guess, for arguing my case so well as to why I wanted to leave Australia in the first place – and for so perfectly living up to that ‘friendly, unbitter about the prison ships’ reputation that so many of your fellow countrymen – for whatever reason – seem to strive hard to obtain.

So should you find yourself tossing and turning at night Chris, worried that I am wracked with guilt about throwing in the towel and giving up, then please, fear not. Regret is certainly not something I have, rather it was the best decision I ever made. Two years on and I still wake up every day feeling glad to be home and looking forward to enjoying the rest of my life in the very best place on earth.

And for the record I did spend time in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney, but none of these places would have made me want to stay. How shall I put it, the reasons for leaving were far more ‘nationwide’…
t

P.S. In light of your being such a great ‘sporting’ nation and us being mere Poms, how’s that medal placement table working out for you?

‘Courtesy’ my arse

I don’t know if I’m getting more impatient with age, but I have never experienced such bad customer service as I have in Perth. Maybe it’s because WA works on a completely different level of urgency to the rest of the world, or because the ‘Wait Awhile’ attitude is all people have grown to expect. Whatever the reason, when it comes to getting anything done, it’s bloody irritating.

Restaurants can often take 30 minutes to serve you coffee, and by then it’s stone cold. Or, as happened to me recently, they nuke your apple pie in the microwave and leave you with a burnt oesophagus and large medical bills to repair the damage. In any other country that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen, here the manager just laughed it off and told me I need to be more careful what I eat.

It’s common for telephone companies to try rounding your bills up to whatever prime number springs into their head, and then take months of arguing before they eventually pay the money back. And dare ask a question in a shop, and you can sometimes be made to feel like you’re inconveniencing the assistant.

The latest establishment to have my eyes rolling back in annoyance is the Kia dealership in Wangara.

My Rio – a car which bears a remarkable resemblance to a Dinky toy – is broken again. Having already had new parts fitted back last June to correct a faint knocking noise in the engine, it recently started to do the same thing again. This time the knocking noise was so loud it sounded like something was about to drop out of the engine.

So I drove my sickly car into Kia and asked the head mechanic to come out for a little spin. Of course he had absolutely no idea what the noise was, which, while very predictable, seemed a little odd as they’d already fixed it once before. I was just glad he heard the noise at all. I was fully expecting sods law to intervene and to be left looking like a neurotic woman driver making a fuss about nothing.

Two days later the car was dropped off and I asked to be provided with a replacement car while I was waiting for the repairs to be made. Pretty normal request I would have thought, especially considering the car was only 2-years-old and had its service just the week before.

Sorry, there were no cars available for me to use I was told, Kia don’t cover this in their warranty. Even if the fault is as a result of the rather flimsy design. If I would like I could hire a ‘courtesy car’ from them however, I could pay $33 a day. Plus an additional 25 cents for each km I drove.

Seriously? Since when is it a ‘courtesy car’ if you have to pay for it.

The last time I looked in a dictionary, the word ‘courtesy’ meant to provide something out of generosity -  a polite gesture. Preferably free of charge. The word doesn’t mean to fleece a stranded customer and then, to add insult to injury, try to charge them $13 more than the local car rental company would.

“So how long do you reckon the work is going to take then?” I asked.
“We don’t know” they helpfully replied.

Marvelous. Judging on the last time they tried to fix it, it took nearly 3 weeks. So that would be $630 dollars plus mileage (plus the month’s motor finance payment) out of my pocket, to pay for a car that shouldn’t be broken in the first place.

Surely that can’t be right?

The gear box was eventually taken apart and half-a-dozen new parts ordered from the East coast. I think the parts had to cross the country by train, because obviously the warranty wouldn’t cover anything as costly as DHL.

After waiting several weeks for any news I’ve finally been told the car might actually be ready to collect tomorrow. Although more likely next Tuesday. Or possibly towards the end of that week. Sometime anyway, depending on the mood of the person fitting the parts and whether they need to knock off early each day to watch the footy.

No rush guys, really. We love being left high, dry and car less. It makes life so much more interesting, especially when Mother Nature has a strop on.

uglg

Raining Cats, Dogs and Maltesers

Mother Nature wasn’t very happy yesterday. In fact, I’d go as far as to say she was pretty pissed off. If I was a guy I’d probably say it was a case of PMT, but I’m not, so I’ll just hazard a guess and say she was having one hell of a bad hair day.

Whatever the reason, Ms Nature certainly gave 2 fingers up to anyone in Perth who’s been moaning about the weather. Or more specifically, the 40 degrees of constant heat with not a drop of rain since November.

Now I do appreciate that to people in wetter isles, England lets say, the idea of nearly 5 months without rain might seem like something of a dream. But let me tell you, it’s not. When a total lack of precipitation is teamed up with temperatures more suited to melting iron ore, it can make for some pretty uncomfortable living. Not to mention a rather dry, dusty, brown and monotonous landscape.

So that said, I think it would be quite safe to assume that rather a lot of people in Perth (and some extremely dehydrated plants) were rather looking forward to the dry spell breaking. And break it did. With bells on.

With barely enough time to drag the dog through the fly screen, the blue sunny sky disappeared and the hailstones arrived. Hailstones the size of Maltesers, pouring out of the sky so fast you’d think God had accidently left his freezer door open, and a passing angel had carelessly tipped it over. We were lucky only to get Maltesers, in the city they were apparently the size of golf balls.

Then came the rain. Or should I say the downpour, pelting in at us from at every angle but up. Within minutes our garden was several inches under water, and there was, what could only be described, as a flash flood going past the end of our drive.

Being me, of course I tried to take some photos of the hailstones stacking up 9 inches deep at our back door. But the moment I opened the door to take the picture, the bloody dog shot off into the garden. How stupid is he? He see’s, what to him must have looked like a Noah’s Ark moment, and he still decides to go out for a quick dig in the sand.

Needless to say once he went out I refused to let him, or his soggy wet fur, back in again. He may be of the non-smelling variety of pooches, but even a soaking wet Spoodle has something of a whiff about it. So I hardened my heart and held my resolve – right up until the point where my daughter stood sobbing at the window, looking down at a pathetic excuse for a fur ball, trying to pin himself flat against the wall with his damp ears plastered around his snout. Two clean towels and a vigorous blow dry later and he was back inside and on the rug. I hope he’s learned his lesson, that nothing is worth the pain of a dig in the hail.

Dumb dogs aside, in the sort of weather that heralds the start of Armageddon the average person normally chooses to stay indoors, steer clear of windows and turn up the TV. Sadly I’m not average, so I grabbed the car keys, swam to the car and set off with oars at the ready.

Of course as the sky turned pitch black overhead and the odd branch blew past like tumbleweed, it did cross my mind that this might not be the most sensible decision in the world. But really I had no choice. My son, who isn’t partial to loud noises and the car wash at the best of times, was stranded at his nursery 8 minutes down the road. Even if he’d had the foresight to take his water wings with him that day, I very much doubted he’d have managed the journey alone.

“The clouds are very angry” he told me, over and over all the way home.

My poor husband arrived back quite a bit later than usual that night.  Something to do with me having his car, the train tracks being flooded, every cab being taken and the buses being fit to burst. I’m not sure it necessarily helped, when I pointed out that if he had had his car that day, he’d no doubt still be stuck in the bumper-to-bumper traffic, as the world and their wet dog struggled to leave work.

Needless to say the news teams and anchormen (I would be P.C. and say anchorwoman, but all the women sound like men anyway) were practically salivating with joy on the TV last night. Finally, something worth reporting in Perth that didn’t involve a drunken AFL player, a misplaced kangaroo and a runaway shopping trolley on the freeway.

As I know I’m rather prone to the odd bit of exaggeration (creative license and all), I’ve added the pictures below to show that for once, Perth really did have something happen to get excited about.

lylyl

A spot of colonic – doggy style

Now no one ever said being a dog owner was a glamorous affair, but even I didn’t envisage the day I would find myself out in the garden at night, giving Charlie a colonic.

It started with my daughter detecting a faint whiff of poo, which was quickly, and without too much investigation, traced back to Charlie. He was promptly directed through the dog flap and into the garage, to await some cleaning and de-clumping by my husband.

Said husband soon returned home, and was pointed in the direction of the dog. Wet wipes were brought out and the tail was lifted, but nothing was going to budge. After about 60 seconds of struggling to remove what obviously didn’t want to be removed, my husband declared that Charlie would have to stay outside that night. Now granted he irritates me on an hourly basis when he trips me up and empties my bin across the floor, but given how cold it’s become, I just didn’t have the heart to banish him from the fire and the fluffy rug – the dog that is, not my husband.

So back outside I went out, cornered Charlie, took him to the grass and proceeded to wipe him along behind me. A bit like you’d wipe your shoes to get the mud off.  He looked at me as if to ask ‘What the hell are you doing to me’, and my husband, who was of course watching me through the window, was shaking his head.

Of course, as any woman worth her weight in manipulation knows, the best way to get someone to help you with something they have already said they wont, is to attempt it yourself, make a complete pigs ear of it, then stand back as they can’t help themselves but to step in and show you how it’s done. Works every time.

As expected, my husband reluctantly reappeared outside to tell me that dragging Charlie backwards and forwards over the grass wasn’t going to shift anything, not even that large lump of poo that was still stuck half way up his backside, and clinging onto his tail fur for grim life.

So out came the hose. Poor Charlie, he didn’t look best pleased. Can’t say I really blame him, it was dark after all and far too nippy for an al fresco shower. I was told to hold him down while my booted and business suited husband squirted him. Every time the high pressure jet came in contact with his bottom he, understandably enough, tried to make a bolt for freedom. After 3 failed attempts and a couple of “you’ll have to hold him tighter than that”, my hubby resigned himself to my uselessness in the dog grappling department and realised he’d have to get down and dirty with the dog on the grass.

I took the hose, gave it a long hard squirt with the jet and then realised it was pointing in the wrong direction. Now that Charlie and I were both soaking wet, I had even more sympathy for him.

Poor thing, he lay there on the grass, with his back legs lifted a good foot off the ground and his tail held up high. By the 5th or 6th squirt he didn’t even flinch. I don’t know if by this stage he was enjoying the experience, or he was just numb to the cold water.

The whole event was very undignified for him, made even worse by me then whipping out a large pair of kitchen scissors to give him a Brazilian around his bottom. I’m sure it’s a memory he will want to block for a long time to come.

dfs

Other Spoodle related posts:

What is a Spoodle – Exactly that..
Bad Fur Day - What happens when a Spoodle isn’t happy with his fur cut
Charlie turns 2 – Why Spoodles make excellent baby training pets

Another Shark Attack in Perth

On Saturday (9th May) a 35 year-old man had a very lucky escape when he came nose to nose with a 4.5 m pointer (great white), and survived to live another day.

When out in his boat around three nautical miles off Point Peron, he turned around to see most peoples worst nightmare coming true – a shark having an early morning snack and nibbling away at his engine.

As he tried to push the shark away with his oar, he ended up dropping it overboard. And then fell in himself. As they say, when it rains it really pours.

As his boat drifted away from him, he knew he had to keep as still as possible, so as to prevent the shark from attacking. Not an easy task this, given that he was bobbing around in choppy waters and being eyed up by a killer.

Eventually the shark got bored and went off in search off his next meal. With the coast clear, the man was able to make a bid for freedom and was picked up by a passing boat.

I have to say it’s hard to imagine what goes through the mind of someone being circled in the water by a man eating shark, I’m guessing your life flashes before you.

According to the Rockingham Sea Rescue, the man was ‘frightened and shaking’ when he was picked up. Do you think? Never mind frightened, I’d say he was probably in a heightened state of shock.

For a refreshing change, particularly in this incredibly publicity led world, the man has refused to be named or to speak publicly about his ordeal. So I think it’s safe to say we won’t be seeing him and his pearly whites appearing on the next McLean’s ad.

Who ever this lucky individual is, I’m sure he’ll be looking over his shoulder the next time he goes out in his boat, and remembering to wear his life jacket.

I think I can safely say, given my Jaws related phobia, I would certainly never even put myself in the vicinity of a such a shark. Unless of course it was being displayed in a museum or behind 3 foot of glass.

Other Shark attack posts>

Playtime

An Aussie influenced playground..

Posted From My iPhone

Hunting Skippy

One of the things that Australia is best known for, (apart from killer spiders) is its lean, mean, hopping machine. AKA the kangaroo.

When you first arrive in Australia, driving past the ‘Watch out, watch out there’s a kangaroo about’ road signs can be something a novelty.

They certainly beat the more mundane signs for cows, hedgehogs or ‘Men at work’.

My daughter to this day believes that whenever she sees such a sign, a kangaroo must surely be sitting nearby. Possibly filing it’s nails and waiting to leap out at the next car that comes past.

I’ve lost count of the number of times she has squealed “Kangaroo” at me from the backseat. “Where?” I yelp, slamming my foot on the break. “On the sign over there.” she offers up helpfully.

Roo spotting is indeed an excellent way to keep seat-belt bound children occupied for hours. The chances of them actually seeing one can be slim to none, but it is a golden opportunity to train up their eyesight, and stopping them asking “Are we nearly there yet?”

Now as far as that particular question goes, in my experience, as both an adult and a child, there is only 1 answer – “No, we only left the garage 5 minutes ago and we still have hours to go. Sit still, shut up and look out of the window.”

Oh, the power of parenthood.

If you live in suburbia, like we do, the likelihood of actually coming nose to nose with a kangaroo when you pop out to check your mailbox is nil. It is probably as unlikely as coming home to find one relaxing in a bubble bath, sipping a Baileys and listening to Norah Jones. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be found.

Up in the northern suburbs for instance, the bushland that runs along Burns Beach is home to quite a few. They can often be seen out and about on the hills, normally kicking back, having their tea and watching the sun go down. Connolly Drive is also meant to be a great place to spot them – so we keep being told.

So far, despite keeping my eyes peeled back up to my eyebrows and driving at a speed that would put my age at about 80, I have seen only 2. One was disappearing at a rather brisk pace behind a bush, and if I’m honest, could have just been a figment of my imagination. The other one was dead.

Poor thing, it was rather unsettling to see. Partly because it had most likely gone into battle with a bumper (and obviously lost), and partly because rigamortis must have kicked in with lightening speed. It was laying there on the edge of the road, rolled over on its side, but still in an upright seated position.

Granted this wasn’t the best example of wildlife to shows the kids, but hey, you have to take it where you can get it. Of course kids being kids, they weren’t at all fazed. My son, who was only 1 at the time, ignored Exhibit A, and carried on eating his rice wheels. My daughter, who was 7, was fascinated by the whole idea of it actually being real and dead.

I, on the other hand was deeply disturbed – all the way to the end of the road and up the next hill.

Another close kangaroo encounter came about on Lakeside Drive. We were driving back from Joondalup hospital in the middle of the night, (that would be night my husband tried to die on me) when a rather large kangaroo shot out from the bush and straight in front of the car. Luckily I wasn’t traveling quite as fast as I normally would, or we would have had a freezer full of Skippy steaks to keep our dog going for several years.

Of course there are many other places you can say ‘hello’,  if you don’t feel like patrolling the roads at night. Or if you already have a permanent crick in your neck, from trying to distinguish what is living, breathing mammal, and what is only a piece of drift wood by the side of the road.

Whiteman Park has a kangaroo enclosure which allows you to get up, close and very personal with a whole mob of them. Yes, ‘mob’ is the collective noun for kangaroos. I know, it sounds like they should be wearing football shirts, chanting stupid songs and drinking in the streets.

This is an ideal photo opportunity – a chance to stick Junior as close as he can go without being bitten, and then jump back as you tell him to smile. Yes, I admit, this is coming from personal experience. This hopefully adorable image can then be sent home, as your ‘Look where we live’ photo. Now, if you could somehow manage to pop a Santa hat on the kangaroo, think of the potential for your next family Christmas card…

Yanchep National Park is another great hot-spot. Here the kangaroos are just wandering around, without a fence or an entry ticket insight. Not so easy to get close enough to pat these, but a lovely setting to see them hopping around. The downside of this place is you are effectively walking on a carpet of Roo poo, but it’s a small price to pay for getting so close to nature.

It was on a visit here that my daughter asked one of those question’s. “What is that, hanging down from all those big kangaroos?”

“That would be their balls,” answered my ever so helpful, smirking husband. Great, thanks for that. How to open up a whole avenue of questions that I have absolutely no wish to answer yet.

There is one more place where you can be certain to literally lay your hand on a kangaroos leg. The supermarket. Or any good pet food supply outlet. OK, so maybe it’s not how you imagined wildlife to be – culled, chopped and cellophane wrapped – but it’s still a genuine kangaroo encounter nevertheless.

If you would still rather opt for those with a pulse, then happy hunting. But remember to wash your hands afterward, they can be more than a little whiffy.

zfsdfsd

sdsa

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One of those nights

Last night was one of those nights that just makes you want to crawl under the duvet and sleep for a week.

It was one of those nights when your children don’t want to eat what you have cooked and you wonder why you bothered in the first place. It was one of those nights where their bedtime simply can not come soon enough, and then when they are in bed,  you are faced with a counter stacked ceiling high with a days worth of dirty plastic bowls, plates, spoons and beakers. It was one of those nights, when you do summon up the last remaining ounce of energy to empty and reload the dishwasher, you find that it never actually did it’s job properly the last time around.

Yes, it was definitely one of those nights.

So lets get past the bit where I had to hand wash all of the crockery, just to get yesterdays dry, crusted on food off. And lets get past the massive tidy up operation, namely finding, regrouping and re-boxing 40 Thomas the Tank Engine books, re-parking a ride on fire engine in it’s respective corner, rounding up 6 cars (of varying size and spec) that have been hidden behind each cushion on the sofa, and trying to contain at least half the contents of my daughters bedroom, which was by this point, now strewn across the entire dining table, and beyond.

I should say that this type of military operation is all pretty normal stuff in our house, or indeed I imagine, in any house that is inhabited by humans measuring in at 5 feet or less.

Yes, lets get past all of that. There I was, at the end of such a day – a day when for every minute the clock ticked forward, it ticked back 2. I was, to put it mildly, rather tired. So, after spending my allotted ‘me time’ washing my hair, I re-emerged to get on with what was left of the day, namely eating, putting my feet up and watching ‘Greys Anatomy’.

Unfortunately, but hardly surprisingly, this was not to be. Before my soup could even hit the bowl, never mind make it into the microwave, my daughter appeared, scratching her head and complaining of an itch.

Now she had said the same thing the last 2 nights, but being the sometimes unsympathetic and always overtired mother that I am, I had sent her back to bed. The first night I gave her hair the once over and then gave her a spoonful of Claratyne, for the allergy itch that she always seems to get when she doesn’t want to go to sleep. The second night I just sent her back to bed.

Last night however a little voice (that would be the nagging voice sent to reprimand lazy parents) told me to check her head again. So I did. And ewwwwwww. There were nits, or head lice if you want to use the now more politically correct terminology, marching across her head.

Now having a child who has friends who sometimes have nits, this shouldn’t have come as such a shock. In the last 7 years however, she has somehow managed to sail, completely un-infested through every outbreak at nursery, kindergarten and school. I guess I had put this lucky streak down to her either having super resistant hair, or just a very uninviting scalp.

Winning streak obviously over, all the lights came on, the torch came out and I was forced to be the adult. I quashed my inner squeamishness and picked through her hair, strand my strand, until they were all caught, found and squashed in a tissue. My husband had the, I would say, slightly nicer job of going out on the hunt for nit killing lotion.

As I oiked out the little critters I tried to hide them from my daughter, thinking it would upset her. I needn’t have worried. She was, I believe, actually quite chuffed to now be in the ‘I’ve Been Nitted Club’. Children are odd like that. If I’d given her the option she might well have opted to keep one as a pet. She would probably have named it Fluffy.

We on the other hand, spent the evening with an imaginary itch. When we did finally get to sit down and eat, our heads were coated in conditioner and our scalps were on the verge of bleeding, after such a vicious combing with the metal contraption provided.

Like I said, it really was one of those nights. The sort of night you can well do without, especially when followed by one of those days.

Needless to say my daughter is having a hair cut next week, something as she rather smugly pointed out, that she had been asking me for for weeks. Yippee. After the recent hair related fiasco’s with both my son and my dog, I just can’t wait to make it a hat trick.

litt

Here’s some handy INFO on nits, and how to kill the little blighters.

litt

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Damn that fairy

This past week has been something of a traumatic toothy experience for my daughter, and a scary glimpse into her dental future for me.

First she started off in the dentists chair, for what we thought would be a quick once over and out. It turned into several x-rays, and the photographic proof that she has more cavities than a rabbit warren has burrows. This news made my jaw drop. When the dentist turned to me and told me that I would have to improve her diet, my chin all but hit the floor.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that my child’s baby teeth were full of holes, I was being accused of pumping her full of Coke and Coco Pops for breakfast and filling her lunch box with pick ‘n mix. Marvelous, just marvelous. Everyone knows that asking a mother what sort of diet their child has is paramount to calling them hopeless, useless and completely irresponsible.

If I believed for even a millisecond that I was any of the above (and we’re only talking about diet control duties here, not mothering as a whole)  I guess I would have just hung my head down to meet my jaw and wished that the floor would open up and suck me on in. But I don’t believe that, so I decided to argue my case. Or rather defend myself, and say how incredibly healthy her diet actually is.

Chocolate is a treat in our house, sweets are a rarity (the last consumed were 2 jellybeans given by the doctor, go figure) and fizzy drinks are a no-go. She brushes and flosses twice a day, and resigns herself to 99% of the contents of any of her party bags going into the bin.

So short of sucking out all the sugar from her fruit, vegetables and wholegrain bread as well, I am at a loss of just how far I can go to improve her diet and stop the rest of her teeth dropping out as well.

I’m sure everyone claims the same, and the dentist probably just sits there thinking to himself  ‘Madam, you do protest to much’. But I was, to put it mildly, shocked, upset and riled up. Not at my daughter, or even really at myself, but at all those other countlesslittle Fruit Loop eating children out there. The ones boasting a perfect set of knashers, who are undoubtedly served up nothing but junk by a mum who doesn’t know her arse from her electric oven.

Seeing my stress levels increase, the dentist did try and pacify me somewhat, telling me that some kid’s teeth just can’t handle the same amount of contact with sugar. For the record, and for anyone else wondering what you are supposed to do in a situation like this, the dentist told her to start using a pea sized amount of adult toothpaste (not enough fluoride in the kids stuff when they are 7/8) and then not to rinse her mouth after. He also said to rinse her mouth out with some water after everything she eats, to brush her teeth after any treats and to steer clear of anything with any flavour.

OK, maybe he didn’t say the last, but he may as well have.

Her menu has now become as unappetising as a horses nose bag. The Sultana Bran (at 22.7% total sugar) is out and the Puffed Wheat (at 1.8%) is in. Not hard to see why Puffed Wheat is so low, it looks, tastes and bobs around on the milk like a handful of saw dust. The juice cartons have left her lunchbox, along with the ‘healthy’ fruit cereal bars and boxes of raisins (natures equivalent to candy floss).

Even the yogurt is being re-assessed for it’s high sugar content and then rationed. Quite frankly mealtimes are becoming a bloody nightmare. Still, what to do. Until her teeth are back on track and we can start again with a blank slate, I reckon it’s better to be safe than even sorrier.

It does seem that nothing on the shelves for kids these days comes without a cup or so of sugar thrown in for good measure, and this seems criminal. Cigarettes packets now host graphic images of the consequences, alcohol abuse is highlighted in hard hitting TV campaigns and even the danger of the sun is spelt in no uncertain terms, yet any company can target kids with their fat, salt and sugar laden foods, and no one seems to mind. Yes, the boxes are all labeled with food contents so a parent should know, but surely the kids ‘healthy breakfast cereals’ could at least veer a little more towards actually being healthy.

Little wonder that childhood obesity is taking over the way that it is, when these companies care more about profit, than doing their bit to try and prevent future generations becoming balls of doughy lard, with shorter life spans, diabetes and no teeth.

Anyway. Off my soapbox and on to the next dental disaster took place this afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon, with a referral in hand, we trotted off to the nearest Orthodontist. Several more costly x-rays later, and we were seated to be told even more news. The expensive sort of news. Is there any other? Apparently her lower jaw is too far back, her teeth are too far forward and she’ll need a plate to bring them all back together. OK then. So that will be another $1700.

On the bright side the plate comes in a wide variety of pretty colours, something which I am now using to try and sell the idea to my daughter. The idea that I steer clear of the whole issue of discomfort, increased saliva and the problems that she will have stringing two words together when it’s in.

That wasn’t actually the worse part of the days bad news . Oh no. Not at all. The news that really had me jumping up and down with glee, was the glimpse into her future and the joys that are still to come. The x-ray also showed crooked adult teeth making their way down, that would in time require a full brace to be glued onto her teeth, for a rather reasonable $6000. Once again it does come in a choice of colours. Train-track grey, or the more expensive and less effective clear plastic. Hmmmm. Decisions, decisions.

So was that the end of the bad news? Don’t be silly. Add to that a tooth that’s gone AWOL. That’s right a missing tooth. No, I can’t say I saw that one coming either.

dcfdsf

dcfdsf

I  guess at some point the tooth fairy got the hump with us, possibly for not leaving enough under the pillow, and as revenge decided to swipe a tooth to make us pay. Literally. In the form of a no doubt ludicrously priced false tooth when the other one falls out. Have to say that if I ever catch that damn fairy she’ll be lucky to make it out of there with both her (or his) wings intact.

So was that the end of the bad news? I’d say. Don’t you think that’s enough to be going on with?

dcfdsf

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Getting hot, hot, hot

I think it is safe to say that summer has most definitely arrived in Perth. Temperatures are way up, the sun is out and the sky comes in just one shade of a very bright blue.

After all those months of moaning about how cold it got in the winter, here I am, cooking slowly in my own skin. Add an onion, a couple of carrots and a bay leaf and I’ll be good to go.

For the most part I love the heat. Always have. Something to do perhaps with growing up in Africa and being oven baked at a very young age. Having later gone to live in the blistering heat of the Middle East, followed by Singapore, I can’t say basking in the warmth of the sun every day has ever really given me a cause for complaint.

So yes, I do love the heat. Humidity, on the other hand, is not my friend. Granted, Singapore is about as humid as it gets, but life is conducted in homes, cars, offices and shopping malls, all of which are cooled down to the same arctic temperature as a freezer storage unit.

Here in sunny WA however, our evaporative air-con, while totally effective 95% of the time and a bargain at around $1 a day to run, does absolutely bugger all when a humid day rears it’s unwelcome head. Well I suppose it’s a bit unfair to say it does nothing. It does gather together all of the hot air flowing through the pipes in the sweltering loft space above, and then puff it down on to us in great muggy blasts.

As we did last year, this year we have decided that next year we are definitely going to invest in an air-con unit that actually does what it says on the tin.

Aside from that gripe all is fun in the sun, though perhaps not for the dog, who is admittedly spending far more time passed out under the trees than he is fetching balls. Our grass is also facing an uphill battle to stay green, and all of my various vegetables (except the peppers) have given up the good fight and withered away to nothing. So much for my grand plan to grow the contents of our crisper drawer this year.

The interior of my car, when left out in the sun, can now double up as a microwave. By the time I have strapped my son into his seat, shut his door and opened mine – ‘ping’ he is done. If I forget to put my cars ‘sunglasses’ on, the steering wheel is just about hot enough to remove my skin on impact.

On the subject of glasses. Over the past few months I have taken on similar facial markings to that of a panda. I have large permanent white rings around my eyes, giving me a somewhat startled appearance when at their worst. On the upside, I believe I have probably lessened my chances of being run over at night.

The trouble with the sun in Perth is that it gives a whole new meaning to the word bright. Having very light sensitive eyes, if I go outside without sunglasses I will almost certainly be blinded by the glare, and possibly reduced to nothing more than a pile of dust on the pavement.  Exposing my eyes to the elements will also give my skin just the excuse it’s been looking for to start wrinkling out of control. So if it’s a choice between looking like a candidate for Beijing Zoo’s breeding program, or looking like a little old lady who works 12 hours a day in the paddy fields, then there really is no competition. Bring on the bamboo and just call me Chi Chi.

Of course having a pool is a God send when the temperature shoot up. It also makes up for the rest of the year when it just sits there in the garden, like a rather attractive water feature. Unfortunately after a few days in the late 30′s, a pool can become something of a tepid bath, and swimming in a bath is not always relaxing. So when looking to cool down, the best trick I have found is to leap straight out from the shower and stand spreadeagled in front of a fan. Of course best to first check that the floor isn’t too wet on the way out and that your curtains are firmly closed.

One benefit of the heat is that I can now get my clothes washed, dried and back on within 45 minutes. How handy is that, it just makes doing the housework that little bit more special. All fabrics are currently drying within minutes of coming into contact with the peg, unlike in the winter months when clothes get draped across every surface in the house until the overpowering smell of mildew takes over, and they end up in the tumble drier.

Of course, if when pegging out your stuff you forget to turn your things inside out and hang your tops up back to front, by the time you bring them in they will have faded by several shades in the most obvious places. Or, if like me, you often forget to bring the washing in at all, then after several days all your have to do is open your door and let the clothes march in by themselves. I currently have at least 14 crispy fried shirts all sat in a basket, each one so rigid that I know it’s going to laugh in the face of the steam iron.

That said and done, we have been lucky in Perth. Despite the soaring temperatures, we haven’t had to contend with any of the terrible bush fires that have devastated parts of Southern Australia. This last week has proved what a a scary thing nature can be and with global warming on the war path, weather patterns as we know them are being turned on their heads.

For now the best thing is just to stay inside and avoid the sun during the hottest part of the day, slap sun cream on every inch of exposed skin and drink my bodies weight in water everyday. As I keep telling my daughter, by the time you realise you’re thirsty, your body is already well on it’s way towards dehydration.

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These pictures show how even the locals understand the importance of a good drink!

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