Eat, Pray, Love

I love to read. Always have. And asides from a brief period of study when i banned myself from reading anything but vet-related stuff, I've always read for pure enjoyment. Occasionally I browse through Peteys shelf of 'must reads' and ambitiously place them on the bed-side table ready to expand my mind through the world of books, with such wordy texts as the 'heartbreaking work of staggering genius', or the miriad of Murakami books he seems to be accumulating. But i think at long last i've come to the conclusion that reading tastes can be completely individual, and even if it would be great to enjoy the high-brow stuff, i think honestly i just like a good relaxing read. So as i've finally run out of Cormack McCarthys in the Petey library, I was on the hunt for a bit of a holiday read.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is one of those books i usually woundn't have thought twice about picking up, but on reflection it has everything I love in a good book, its part love story, part self-help and part travel story. The premise is that after a horrible divorce she heads off for a year of travel to mend her soul, first visiting Italy to learn Italian, then to an Ashram in India, then to Bali to study with a holy man. I think for all of us who long to find a better way to live in this high stress, consumer-driven, rat race of a society, this book opens up all sorts of possibilities. Why should we work for 40 + hours a week just so that we can buy stuff that marketing types tell us we must have and that we deserve because we worked so hard for it. Since when did a flat-screen TV become an essential item? Why not build a life around family and friends and finding inner peace. As always when I travel, or arm-chair travel, i'm struck by how much we can learn from other cultures about how to live well. The Italians it seems are all about family, pleasure and food. Food is simple, made from fresh ingredients, preferably high in carbs and meant to be enjoyed with those you love. The India section is hilarious as she battles with those pesky little internal chatterboxes, to try and find peace in meditation. Onto Bali, where she experiences the friendship of a collection of crazy locals and eccentric expats, who have also dropped out from society and eventually falls in love with a Brazilian hippie-type. Its made me want to travel again as soon as possible...now I suppose for that I may need to go back to work.

Cloud Swinging

I can barely type this post. All those wimpy little muscles that usually hang limply from my shoulders are screaming for mercy with even the slightest movement.

Now, some may think that perhaps today I exited the The Kirk a little weary from another type of activity entirely. In its previous incarnation (I assume a some time after it stopped being an official church), The Kirk was a well-known Sydney BDSM venue. Thankfully those strong support beams are also useful for other purposes, including the regular practice session of the Sydney Burlesque Cabaret Aerial Artbabes.

This is the great thing about Sydney, so many amazing activities going on right under our noses, if only you look for them. As a complete amateur, I vainly tried to flip myself around a rope loop hanging from the ceiling, really wishing I had a little more upper body strength up my aching sleeves. The other girls made this facinating art form look incredibly easy and graceful. Maggie was as always a blur of grace and finesse as she easily dangled, flipped and arabesqued herself in mid air...

A couple of hours later, rock climbing was on the bill with another group of friends. It was not pretty. I think I did more dangling in mid-air than actual climbing...perhaps a day of rest between two such activities in the future!

Anyway, great experiences, both of them. If my weary fingers can work this out, i'll post a u tube link for cloud swinging, which is what we did at the Kirk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2yhef3CuKE

At the time I had no idea what it was called, its kinda seems like a cross between spanish web and static trapeze. Incidentally there are many other great arts of the circus out there. And they all have great names, including the Diablo (a spool tossed between a string connected by two sticks), the Corde Lisse (a vertical rope), Rola Bola (balancing on a plank with some cylinders rola-bola-ing around underneath) and the Perch, which is another equilabristic or balancing art, where one performer balances a pole, atop which the second performer balances. Most likely without even looking down. Even more intriguing is the Hair Hang. Apparently according to wikipedia which lists these and quite a few more circus skills, if a single human hair can carry 100 grams, it only stands to reason that a whole head of hair can support between 5,600 kg and 8,400kg. So the idea is the performer saves on such props as ropes and perches and just uses what nature provided. Painful I imagine. Apparently it may have been invented in China. I really don't know what i've been doing with my time, to miss out on these delights.

And although I did swing from aforementioned Cloud Swing, there was nothing else I did up there that resembled a cloud. Perhaps I would be better suited to the aptly named circus skill of Buffoonery. Yep, that's the ever-popular jester of the circus. Heaps of fun. Any interested parties, check out http://burlesque.meetup.com/55/.

More Livingstone Road Cuteness

The sensei has somehow been dubbed the resident bat-woman, or at least flying fox expert at work. They are definitely not bats, and those in the know will be most indignant if they are called such things!

How cute is this little guy? A little flying fox pup, that came in from WIRES with diarrhoea. After a hasty call to another flying fox expert we established what normal bat poo is supposed to look like. Apparently like cottage cheese, if anyone is interested. The technique for handling these little guys is to get them latched onto a rolled-up towel, with the nipple in the mouth so they feel secure. Apparently this latched-on to the nipple technique, like our little ginger boy is how flying foxes spend the first 3 weeks of their lives, right up until they get too heavy to be carried out on feeding expeditions, (incidentally, the adults can fly up to 50km from home to find food). At about this age, the mum starts leaving them back at the flying fox 'camp'.

Apparently numbers of grey-headed flying foxes are declining in Sydney, and you guessed it, habitat destruction is the number one killer. Apparently they love coastal gum tree blossoms, and coincidentally humans love to chop down trees near the coast to build big ugly houses to spoil everyone elses view. The population of flying foxes has thus declined by 30% in the last decade. The poor little flying fox has such a bad rep, mainly due to destroying trees in the botanic gardens and eating fruit crops. But we really can't blame them for that. You gotta eat after all. Incidentally, the flying fox has a penis 1/4 of the length of its body. Probably pretty handy when you mate upside down hanging from a tree.

how cute is this?

So far the new job has been a roaring success. My first night was a late finish, but late finishes are all okay when its for a caesarian...and this was a cat caeasarian at that, which just never happens. Cats usually don't have that silly little dome-shaped head (sorry pom-lovers), that is so foolishly designed that there's little likelyhood it could pop on out without assistance.

This poor little mumma cat was only 7 months old herself...the kittens are just so cute...and there is nothing that brings a team together at work, like a caesarian. We had 4 little kittens to resuscitate, so its all hands on deck, as the cute little slimey things come out pretty quick and get handed over to anyone who is free to help. You then have clean them up like the mumma cat would, get all the gunk out of their mouths and rub them all over to stimulate breathing, and sometimes it takes 15minutes of vigorous rubbing and lots of 'look, i think we've lost this one', 'no, don't give up, he's still got a chance'. There is also this great techniquet to get the fluid out of their airways, where you hold the slipperly little puppy/kitten head down and briskly swing it down and backwards. Just about everyone has stories about slippery puppies flying out on the back swing and hitting the clinic wall behind...s'ok, this time we held onto all of them! So in all we had 4 kittens...all pictured here feeding well. She's a good mum for a first timer.

In the photo you may be able to see the tenacious little ginger boy, initially he wasn't so keen on feeding, but he's now making up for lost time. He's so securely latched onto his preferred nipple, with some sort of super-kitten suction method. He's been found squished under her chest a few times, where she's probably attempted to move, and he's just held onto that nipple for all he's worth...I see a great future for that little guy!

Lucky Couch

As seen on ebay...

This reminds me of the couch we used to have possession of in Granville. Ours was in fact a much uglier, beige-wool, 70's modular arrangement, with many a mysterious burn and stain. As with any couch of its type, it had been through a number of caretakers in its time, providing comfort for stoners, couch surfers, amorous couples and many a tired party-goer. It was so incredibly comfortable and versatile that in its traditional L-shaped form at least two crashers could stretch out full-length at any one time. When it was required for couples or up to 4, it could be rearranged into a cot-like oblong, providing a great lumpy nest for willing participants. The Camel Couch, so named due to its many lumps and bumps was always best suited to a particular type of household. One where excess is not so much the rarity, as the norm. There have been so many memorable evenings (and just so many evenings) to which that couch was privy. And it almost seems a coming of age, when such details as comfort are discarded in favour of a more modern, funky, yet prim design. I like to think that as The Camel sat folornly on the street out front of 230 St Johns rd destined for the oblivion of household waste, that perhaps some young, hopeful student saw its potential and took it home for a second chance.

Lucky Couch

Item Specifics - Home Furniture
Type: Living Room
Color: Green
Material: Some crappy fabric
Condition: Used

WARNING: This is a truly ugly green couch, however I must explain its history. I was furious when my flatmate left this ugly thing behind when he moved out. I never got around to throwing the thing out, but I remembered his stories of how lucky he was with whatever girls who sat on this couch. He even told me of certain parts of the couch not to sit on because of you know... Anyway, I didn't pay much attention until lucky things started happening to me with this couch. You see, whenever I had a girl over and we were sitting on the couch, we'd end up having a cuddle and pash and soon afterwards we would be in the throngs of passion. I'm no oil painting, and I'm certainly not that good with the ladies, but when they are on this couch, things just happen. I just can't explain it. Every girl that I've sat on this couch with, I've been lucky with. Same as the previous owner. So instead of throwing out my couch, I thought I would pass it on to someone else that needs good luck with the ladies. I hope someone else can benefit from this lucky couch as the previous owner and I have. Good Luck.PICK UP ONLY.Comes with one ugly green chair and optional footrest (which is not green and doesn't really match anything).

Its just for the weekend, honey.

Meet Erkel. Beautiful isn't he. We were half way through lunch with Peteys aunty Nita, when Petey all of a sudden exclaimed, "but i thought we just had him for the weekend". Its on a need to know basis with new additions to the household. I myself have no idea why I took this little guy home either. The logic is a little convoluted. On Saturday morning a baby Currawong and Erkel were brought in. My logic was that as the Currawong is a native, so that at least Wires would take him on. Erkel, being a turtle dove is a feral pest. I think technically i'm supposed to euthanase him immediately.

I must say though, that its been a big week for giving little birdies the 'green dream'. The difficulty is always that we just can't fix most of them that come in. Really, if a wild animal is sick enough that a well-meaning member of the public can put it into a cardboard box and get it to the vet, its in a pretty bad way. Or at least by the end of the car trip it is.

The nurse I miss the most at GWAH, was Jodie. She loves birds. She has a 'pet' magpie called Ollie who hopelessly imprinted on her and could not be rehabilitated back to bird land. For some reason we always had a great number of turtle dove chicks through that clinic (I undersand they are a feral pest), and between her and Kylie the receptionist, all were successfully raised, then shipped off to one of Jodies' many contacts for rehabilitation. Its all very well raising the little buggers, but teaching them to fly and feed to the point they can survive solo is the big test. I miss Jodie.

Anyway, it's in tribute to the greatest nurse (and possibly the most entertaining chick) i've ever had the privilege to work with, that I decided in a moment of weakness to take little Erkel home. Just for the weekend you understand.

How hard is this parenting business

Awwww, aint Claire cute? Not right now she isn't. Right now she's pretty unhappy. Petey and I are attempting to put her to bed. Yep, all the best of our combined skills, which according to Claire are pretty much zilch, have left us with a very overtired little girl. The schedule for this evening of babysitting was supposed to be, an hour or so of playtime, at 7pm feed, change, put pj's on, read her a story, wrap her (arms out now she's older) , put in cot, put windy nursery rhyme thingy on, and Claire to enjoy some zzzz's, while Petey and I enjoy the Foxtel. It instead went a little something like this: playtime, lots of fun, very awake revved up little girl, not much interested in being fed, and even less interest in storytime or bedtime. Meanwhile at 8pm we get a text message from Del casually asking "is she asleep?"....i cannot tell a lie, so we just ignore the message. Its now 2 hours later and finally after many, many tears (she's got some mighty strong lungs now), she finally fell asleep.

The whole concept of a baby getting overtired is horrifying. Where is the way out? She's so tired she's irritable and can't relax. There is no way she could possibly sleep. Crazy. I think we've all been there in some form or another. Perhaps after a big night out, or a long flight, or perhaps as a parent dealing with an overtired infant? Ah, it all comes full circle. An overtired baby is just so hard to settle down. And I think that's exactly what we just dealt with.

Anyway, at last I got her to sleep. I'm not sure what worked, but i did do some hasty internet research and found that the key is to not just keep picking them up and definitely don't rely on rocking them to sleep in your arms. As soon as you then try to put them down they'll wake up anyway, and be even more startled. Not surprising when the last thing they remember was being rocked and now they're half way into the dreaded cot, or even worse, have woken up in a different place and all alone. Put them down and soothe them in the cot. Try and wind down early before they get overtired (oops, too late for that one), and most importantly of all, get some routine going. This is why new parents go through those glory days when the baby sleeps in a sling right through parties, and spends the day dozing in the pram while mum 'does lunch', but there gets to a time when the new parents have to hunker down and get a little routine going for the little one. Thats the year or so when their friends rarely see them.

There are a lot of theories, books and clinics dealing with the issue of babies and sleep. I can see why. The thing is, I imagine Claire is probably one of the better ones, and yet after tonight I have no idea how parents get through the first year without completely losing it. Or is that why parents for the most part develop an ability to completely sublimate themselves to their children's needs. That first year of intensive training, combining sleep deprivation, sensory overload and a complete lack of control. No wonder parents somehow seem so different to the rest of us unencumbered pleasure-seekers. Respect.

Farewell dear Garry

I came home tonight ready for a bit of soothing fish swimming action after a hard day at work, and was greeted with a new level of inactivity from Garry. Yep, this time he really wasn't sleeping. Funnily enough he wasn't floating either. There was also a little tetra stuck to the filter. I presume it was less likely misadventure, and that he was another victim to the the Garry disease.

Poor Garry. He lasted just over 24 hours. But what a beautiful, short time we had together. I think for the record he had Ichthyophthirius, the dreaded white spot disease, and I suspect he has now contaminated the rest of the tank. Of course 5+ years of veterinary book-learning and I of course poo-pooed the idea of actually quarantining new fish before introducing them to the existing tank, so it probably serves me right.

I was all ready to perform a post mortem to confirm my diagnosis, but Petey put a brake on that little idea by insinuating that I really know nothing about fish innards, which is a good point, although I indignantly responded that I might know what I was looking at if I saw it. I guess i'd really rather remember Garry as he was anyway. It also seems in such poor taste to post mortem a fish with a steak knife on the kitchen bench. So here is Garry in all his glory. We will remember you buddy.

Garry the Gourami

And now for the article about fish

Heheheh! Surely after coming up with a blog name, the next hardest thing is coming up with the second post. Particularly since its only 10 mins since the first post, and I really haven't gotten up from my seat, let alone got on out into the world to live a little. Apparently its necessary to write at least 2 blogs per week to keep your readership interested. Probably a good idea to just get this one out of the way early, then as Petey says, i can just 'put it to sleep'.

So, i'll write about our fishies. Specifically i'm worried about Garry. We've only had him for just over 24 hours and already he's our favourite fish. He's a kissing Gourami, so he has these big luschious lips which he uses to suction off all the algae off the glass, which not only looks cute, but is extremely useful. All the rest of those layabout tetras only seem to eat fishy food, leaving me to take care of cleaning the tank.

So Garry has become very popular in the tank. At the same time that Garry joined our 'community' we took home Buffy. Buffy is an Angel fish (we're so good at fish names!), and was hanging out with Garry in his home tank in the store. The weird thing is that Buffy is hovering around Garry, possibly just as concerned about him as what I am. He's just lying there at the bottom of the tank. I'm not sure if he's just gone out too hard on the algae-eating, and just needs to sleep it off, or whether he's on borrowed time.

Now, in answer to the question, do fish sleep? Yes, yes they do. Or at least they do something like sleep. They have no eyelids, so of course its all eyes wide shut style. But they don't need to be moving in order to get air over their gills for breathing purposes, as apparently most sharks do. Interestingly sharks also don't have that bouyancy gland the swim bladder that other fishies have, so they have to constantly swim or sink. They do however have a huge fatty liver that accounts for 30% of their body mass and adds to their bouyancy. And probably their ability to hold their liquor.

Fish are so cool. And even better is the word aestivation, which is like hibernation, but in summer. The canny lungfish, not only can breathe air, as well as use gills to extract air, but they can slow down their metabolism to 1/60th of their normal rate, coat themselves in a layer of mucus and wait in the dried mud of riverbeds breathing only through a little tunnel to the surface until the rains come again. Come to think of it, i think hibernation is much more sensible, why miss out on the greatest season of all, summer? But then i'm not a fish. I blame Mandy and her spelling bee (definitely very addictive) for my new-found interest in cool words.

How hard is it to come up with a blog name?

Pretty hard. I now understand why Maz has 3 blogs. I suspect I may ditch this name and start a new blog myself when I eventually come up with a better name.

Petey in an extremely generous moment gave me a name he was saving for a rainy bloggy day. Its a great name. It is however better suited to Petey than to I. It just sounds a little riske for me, "naked beneath her/his clothes" just doesn't seem, I dont know, me.

Anyhoo, why a blog? Why, when I have never before shown an interest in blogging, why would I start a blog. Why, when life is already incredibly full of things I've started and am yet to complete and full of commitments it seems impossible to fulfill when we all have such limited time in the day. Why?

I'm asking myself the same question. Which brings me to my objectives, 'cause its always important to define your goals and set some clear objectives. I think what really cracked it for me was when I was sitting here for ages trying to think of a blog name, and what I could possibly write about and I looked out at the pool and thought, well i could write about the pool...well...I could write about the fish....geezus, what a narrow boring life I have? I really need to get out more. So that's it. My aim is to get out more. Read the paper (or at least news.com), be more interesting so that at least i'll have something more exciting to write about than the view from our kitchen table. I also aim to get a little more informed about whats going on in the world.

And already its a resounding success. I've learnt something already today. I learnt that that quote I have had stuck up in my wardobe for years is by Gandhi...of course it is, its just that I wrote it on that post-it note so long ago that I forgot its source. And so the blog title is born. At least for now.