The Secret to Getting Kids to Pay Attention!

Image source

I think I’ve discovered how to engage primary school students in the classroom… make everything you teach them revolve around poo and wee.

My class has been learning about the First Fleet and even though we’ve researched it thoroughly, studied the Industrial Revolution, the meagre rations on the ships, the landing at Botany Bay and Port Jackson, watched movies and read books about it, drew pictures; the only thing any of the kids could regurgitate in their test essay was a fleeting comment I made one day about how the convicts had to do their business in buckets below deck and that when the seas grew rough on the eight month journey, there was quite a lot of spillage.

Every single student wrote at considerable length about this one fact. 

Bugger the flogging, the scurvy, the two meals a day of stale bread and gruel… oh no. 

It was all about the poo.

One ten year old asked me which World War the First Fleet was fighting in.

“There was no World War,” I said slowly, shaking my head in incredulous defeat.

“But why were there ships then?” he persisted, not quite believing me.

“They were transporting the convicts,” I bleated. “Remember? The convicts?"

He sniffed and wandered off, clearly disappointed there was no violent war with submarines and machine guns to write about.

And then there was the student who wrote he was being transported on the 18th century vessel for stealing pizza.

Not sure they had Pizza Hut or Dominos in London back then.

It’s very hard to get a room full of kids to pay attention. They’re very bloody good at pretending to listen though. They stare at me and nod and laugh at the right time but they aren’t really taking anything in at all. They just humour me I think.

And it’s not just my personal failing as a teacher either.

We had an actual geologist from the university come to our classroom last week and the only thing the kids were interested in was the fossilised poo the gentleman had cleverly brought along. 

So I’m thinking of introducing Mr Hankey the Christmas poo into every lesson from now on.

You know… If Mr Hankey needs to carpet his bedroom which is 10 metres x 7 metres how many square metres of brown carpet will he need?

Or… if Mr Hankey weighs 500 grams how many Mr Hankeys would be needed to make 4 kilograms of poo?

Or in geography… Mr Hankey is travelling to South America. What sort of clothes should he take to suit the climate?

Or in literacy… Write an descriptive cinquain including imagery about Mr Hankey the poo.

Or in religion… What gifts did the Three Wise Christmas Poos bring the baby Jesus?

Or even in science… if we left Mr Hankey out in the wind and rain for several years what would happen to him and why? Draw a diagram to go with your explanation.

I could make classroom posters with Mr Hankey telling everyone to be respectful to each other. All poos are created equal and that sort of thing.



Or maybe I should just change career...

What do you think? Should I send by idea to the Board of Education.

Linking up with Jess from Essentially Jess for #IBOT

I Found a Diary Underneath the Wii

My Diary

Most of you probably don’t remember the song Diary by Bread. 

My parents had the album on vinyl and I’d sit and listen to that song when I was about eleven, singing along at the top of my voice with head phones on so I couldn’t hear myself. 

Imagine how appalling that would have been for the rest of the household.

While I was heavily embroiled in sorting out the rubbish from the top of my wardrobe, I found a diary I wrote when I was ten years old. I also found twelve unopened rolls of Christmas wrapping, an empty Wii box, five empty shoe boxes, some long lost baby photos and the carcass of a frighteningly over sized huntsman spider. 

I wonder how many nightly adventures that spider enjoyed crawling all over my body as I slept, snoring rhythmically and naively unaware of the horror.

Naturally, instead of continuing to heave the rubbish out to the skip as my husband sweated and toiled downstairs painting the hallway, I perched on the edge of the bed and leisurely sifted through the diary. It was quite entertaining.

"I do wish we could go again!" See... I was always a wanker.

That’s the trouble with sorting through stuff to be thrown out, it’s very distracting.


I can remember excitedly receiving the diary in the Christmas of ’69 and began diligently writing in it on January 1, 1970. 

Every day I wrote about what I did in the school holidays. I got right up to January the 23rd when I suddenly stopped with these ominous words…

Really?

I had the attention span of a gnat.

I did revisit the diary from time to time including this revealing snippet about my mother!!!

Quick! Someone call DOCS!

I think things must have picked up in my life around October. This cryptic note scrawled in the diary seems to indicate a surge in my love life.

 Obviously I had to delete the evidence in case my sister, Sam saw it and told on me for having a boyfriend, but I got a thrill writing it down, I’m sure.

What a stroll down memory lane eh?

Love, Pinky xxx

Did you keep a diary when you were a child?

Man, You Wouldn’t Believe How Much I Spend on Grass!

The 'Before' Shot.

Our lawn has been dug up, ready for the brand new Buffalo grass to be splendiferously* laid. Our irrigation and lawn man is called Bill and he’s married to my colleague at work, Donna (a.k.a. Sausage Roll Rebellion villain). 

I told him he should call his company Buffalo Bill and surprisingly it wasn’t the first time he’d heard that. His last name is Crabb... but he’d hardly want to be calling his company Crabb Grass and Irrigation, would he?

Anyway, if you need to get your lawn spruced up or a watering system put in place let me know and I’ll pass on the details (but if you live in Canada he may take a while to return your call).

The only problem is that Bill is having a bit of trouble sourcing grass. Can you imagine him calling around the contractors saying, “Hey man, it’s Bill. Know where I can get my hands on some grass?”

Scotto finished painting the outside of the house and is currently annoying everyone (me) with signs everywhere telling us not to touch the interior walls.

The carpeting will be done within a fortnight. The wooden blinds have been cleaned, the wooden window sills sanded and tinted, new curtains in the lounge room, the front foyer will be re-sanded and polished and I’m packing up useless items and scrubbing bathrooms.

Financial Cost: about 20 fudging thousand dollars $$$$.

Emotional/Mental Cost:

Every single one of the four dogs has paint on its body… somewhere.

Lulu (19 year old daughter) is cracking a mental because everything looks different and it’s stressing her out.

I decided I can’t throw away the kid’s astoundingly huge collection of plastic trophies and realised I really am a sentimental old woman after all.

Scotto got a job on the Gold Coast and will be moving two months ahead of me and I’m worried he might have such a good time he’ll just start sending me postcards of meter maids and that’ll be the last I hear of him.

Not really.

I don’t think my 14 year old cat will handle the move. She doesn’t like change because she’s so old and frail. (Who am I kidding? That bitch could take down a wedge-tailed eagle. She’ll be super keen to move so I’ll have to fork out several hundreds of dollars to have the fudging twenty dollar cat transported in a luxury trailer down the Queensland coast while I’ll be sweating in my four cylinder car with a German shepherd and a Silky Terrier breathing their bad breath down my neck as I traverse the potholes on the Bruce Highway).



* I thought I made that word up but Spell Check seems to think it’s okay???

Any moving tips you'd like to pass on to me?

Pinky's Very Exclusive Beauty Secret

Scotto walked into the bathroom last night as I was putting Anusol on my face. “Haven’t you got the wrong end, Pinky?” he asked innocently.

“No,” I replied. “I just put face cream on my bum. I think I know what I’m doing buddy boy.”

He shook his head and went back to watching his Netflix movie.

I read that you can use haemorrhoid cream on broken veins, which I have on my left cheek… (and it’s not from drinking alcohol, okay, it’s from washing my face in hot water or eating chilli or having too many saunas or something). 

Apparently it works the same way as it does on the piles in your bottom. It shrinks the little buggers. But at the other end of my body I seem to have developed a dry, flaky tailbone. What’s that about? Can anyone tell me? At first I thought it was a bed sore from lying around too much. My tail bone is actually peeling so I rubbed some of my inexpensive but ultra-rich eye cream into it. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Speaking of bums, I’ve had the most fantastic idea for my book week costume this year.

This will be my last year at the school after ten long years and I want to go out with a bang. I want those kids sobbing and wailing on the last day because they’ll be missing that rascally old Mrs Poinker. I don’t want them all cheering and whooping when it’s announced I’m leaving. Imagine how mortifying that would be.

So, knowing how much kids love anything to do with bums and poo, I’m going as “The Day My Bum Went Psycho.”

When I was cleaning out cupboards on the weekend I found a large and anatomically correct bottom which 22 year old son Hagar bought for a costume party one year.

Sneak preview!

Scotto fashioned a poo for me to hang around my neck.

Realistic Poo!

*I did ask Kaz, Shazzy, Lee-lee and Kyles if they wanted to dress up as poos and we could do the group thing but they're very unadventurous and boring so they declined.



The only problem is, the bum is just a tiny bit too realistic. I’m going to have to shove some blu-tac in a certain area and put a fig leaf over it or something.



But can you just imagine it? Those kids are going to go ballistic!

Would you like to see the photos after the event?
Got any beauty secrets?

Linking up with Jess from Essentially Jess for #IBOT

I was Nearly Arrested Yesterday!

You said what, Pinky???

I was running late for work yesterday and was annoyed to notice two police cars parked on the side of the road and a rangy policeman waving me over on to a side street. 

As I said, I was already late and it was a bit inconvenient. I considered putting my foot down and squealing off with my tyres smoking and my rude finger pressed up against the window but I thought that might make me even later to school… you know, in the long run.

I pulled up beside the cop and wound down my window. “Good morning,” said the twelve year old, rosy cheeked policeman. “We’re doing random checks on vehicles. Did you drink any alcohol last night, madam?”

“Hell yeah, I did!” I replied, hoping I’d make him laugh and then he’d say, “On your way then you cheeky, old bugger.”

But he just blinked. “Had a good night’s sleep and some breakfast though I hope?”

I nodded mutely, even though I hadn’t slept well at all and definitely hadn’t eaten breakfast. I could see this policeman had no sense of humour whatsoever.

“Can I see your licence please, madam?” he asked without smiling and clicking his heels together.

It was at this point I started to get nervous. My hands shook as the policeman watched me searching through my wallet in a fluster and my credit cards and shite spilled on to my lap and the floor and all the while he stared at me in an accusatory fashion. 

I hadn’t done anything wrong. Why was I acting so guilty for God’s sake? Why do cops always make me feel guilty?

“I’m going to need you to supply a breath sample, madam,” he smirked, as he unwrapped a tube from a plastic bag and plugged it into a walkie talkie thing.

My brain began to spiral in an uncontrolled vortex. How many drinks had I actually scoffed down last night? We’d had my friend and real estate agent, Nettie, over and I’d gone a bit silly. What time did I have my last one? Ten o’clock? 

Yes. My last drink was at ten o’clock and I’d had about five drinks over the night. That meant my liver should theoretically have finished its mopping up of vile toxins by three o’clock in the morning and it was currently seven-thirty so unless there was something seriously wrong with my hepatic system (which wouldn’t surprise me) I should be in the clear.

Then I remembered the mouth wash I’d used less than 5 minutes before. What if that was enough to put me over the limit? 

Damn my obsession with clean breath. Would they let me make one phone call so I could let my Deputy Principal know I'd been arrested so she'd have to get someone else to do my oval duty at big lunch? Would they cuff me and push my head down as I got into the cop car?

The young policeman watched the numbers clicking on his machine as I huffed and wheezed into the tube and I swear he looked disappointed at the final result.

"Have a nice day," he grimaced in defeat.

As I drove off, the older cop (the one much closer to my age), yelled out to me exuberantly,“Why does your number plate say ‘Pinky P’ when your car’s yellow?”

I poked my head out the window, “It’s not my car,” I shouted. “I stole it!”

I could see him laughing in the rear vision window as I puttered off.

Life is wasted on the young.

Have you been pulled over ever?

Did you make any jokes?

Do you get nervous in an unwarranted way or are you actually a criminal?

I had a fantastic IKEA!

Pablo being a model.

There always seems to be a casualty when I go away on a trip.

Somehow, despite checking every fudging drawer and cupboard, the bathroom sink and under the bed, I always manage to leave something behind; like a hairdryer, an eye cream or a valuable, family heirloom earring.*

After I arrived home last weekend, I realised I’d left my brand new shower cap dangling on the nozzle at Mum and Dad’s house. Now, I know shower caps only cost $2 but it took me weeks to find where they stock them in Coles and I’ve forgotten which aisle and shelf they were on and the thought of going through the whole tiring process again is too much to bear so I’ll have to put up with my hideously stained old one with stretched elastic that lets the water in and makes the entire exercise of wearing a shower cap pointless.

I may as well just go and get a bucket of water and plunge my tiny head in it for all the protection it gives me.

So if Coles confuses me in this manner, imagine how circumspect I was when Scotto and I decided (as a frivolous experiment to check how strong our marriage actually is) to stop in to IKEA on the way to the airport on Sunday. We don’t have an IKEA in our one-horse town (or an Aldi) and I’m sick of being an ignoramus when people talk excitedly about how IKEA causes a high level of antagonism between them and their spouse.

I don’t like to miss out on good blog fodder like that.

The parking lot was an ideal place for me to start. 

“Well you could have got that parking spot if you’d been on the ball!” I nagged in my high pitched shrill. “That was a bit close to the pylon, don’t you think! You nearly dinged the car!” I taunted.

But there was no satisfyingly tetchy reaction from Scotto. That’s okay, I thought. I’m just warming up. There’s plenty of time to ignite an argument once we get inside.

But once I’d gained access to the place, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.. It was quite simple to follow the illuminated arrows on the floor and mosey along like a stupefied cow being led through stiles, around and around what seemed, on the surface, to be a furniture shop.

I mean, is that all it is? A furniture shop? Why do couples get divorced after they go there?

I was expecting something far more antagonising. I thought there might be sexy Swedish blondes wearing fur bikinis soaking in Jacuzzis or something and I’d have to keep clipping Scotto over the ear to get his attention.

I’m far more likely to divorce my husband after a trip to Bunnings with all the drill bits and socket wrenches and stuff.

According to my research, walking through kitchen displays brings up touchy subjects like “who does the most cooking” and the fact that most couples who go there are already probably under stress because they’re renovating.

My favourite IKEA Kitchen

It seems as though the more choices there are available, the more scope there is for disagreement.

Fortunately, I don’t think Scotto and I have very passionate feelings about furniture. We save our rage for more important things.

We might get into an argument about him traipsing through the kitchen with his big ugly size 13 feet after I’ve just mopped it, or because he smacked my neurotic Chihuahua on the nose for barking incessantly at the cat, or the fact that I think all zombie movies are pathetically stupid and you’d have to be an intellectually challenged moron with glue for brains to watch them.

We might bicker over who’s going downstairs to check if the kitchen’s on fire at 2 o’clock in the morning because the smoke alarm is screaming blue murder after an unsuspecting gecko accidentally ran across it, or we might squabble because I was clumsy and tripped over the bathroom scales in the middle of the night making a shattering noise loud enough to wake the neighbours three doors down ( it happened last night) and when he gets up one hour later and does the exact same thing and I accuse him of trying to pay me back in a spiteful way by waking me up in precisely the same startling fashion… but we’d never argue about a silly piece of furniture. That would be ludicrous.

Nor would be argue about assembling flat packs, because for a start I’d be nowhere in the vicinity when Scotto was doing the assemblifying. 

I quite liked IKEA.

They even throw in the view!

In fact I think I could live in an IKEA store if they looked into doing a bit of plumbing... you know, actual flushing toilets. 

If they were smart they’d rent their little scenery things out at night to Uni students.

The cutlery drawer was all we could afford.

*There are no valuable heirlooms in our family that I know of. That was just to impress you.

Do you always accidentally leave something behind when you go on holidays? Ever had a fight in IKEA?

Linking up with Grace from With Some Grace for #FYBF

My Homework from ProBlogger

I arrived home from the ProBlogger event, held at the fabulous Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast last night and now I have to write an eBook. Or is it an Ebook? Or an EBOOK? Or an ebOOk? 

I’m not sure which, but anyway... I have to write one.

According to the highly professional speakers we had the pleasure of listening to on the weekend, the best bloggers give back to their reading community. But in the last two and a half years I’ve given you all nothing but a headache and a niggling suspicion there’s something extremely wrong with me. I need to lift my game.

I did think about it at length and I sort of decided I could probably write about “The Disgraceful Habits of Appalling Old Women” considering my reputed behaviour. I could write an electronic book about how to be a disgusting old bat with a side dressing of style.

I was sitting in the teacher's staff room today, regaling my friends with stories about how I was running around with a certain breed of blogging buddies at the ProBlogger function on Friday night and what delirious fun I’d had drinking champagne and ripping off my mouth filter.

 Over my punitive tuna and spinach salad (after a weekend of pina colada-flavoured, macaroon decadence), I told the girls how I left my husband chatting to a decidedly attractive blogger (who looked exactly like Olivia Newton John, actually) and on the way back from the toilet I decided to make an impromptu visit to a bar at the resort with the gals without telling him and how he then lost me for an hour and a half despite calling me eighteen times on my mobile until he eventually grew suspicious and wandered into the bar where I was having a freaking whale of a time 'networking' and proceeded to greet him with a highly animated Mexican Wave (for one) and then he was very cranky and started to speak to me in a raised voice and I told him it was all the fault of my blogging buddies and that they’d led me astray and I was just an innocent acolyte who’d been abducted and besides, the last time I’d seen him, he was talking to Olivia Newton John, so I was the one who should be angry, not him, and would he like to buy me a drink now that he was here. He bucked up about it for a few minutes insisting I’d set him up with Olivia as a subterfuge but after a while he forgot about it and went and bought himself a beer.

I noticed Kaz and Kyles giving each other secretive looks at the staff room table as they listened to my waffling.

“So… Scotto was angry at your blogging pals, not you?” Kyles gave me the stink eye.

“Yes!” I beamed. “Only for a bit, though.”

“So he was angry with them the same way he gets angry with us when we ‘lead you astray’?” Kaz said in a sour voice. I didn’t like the way she used air quotes when she said ‘lead you astray’.

“Do you think maybe it could be you leading others astray, Pinky?” Kyles tapped her fork against her Tupperware container of ‘tuna something’.

I thought about it for a few seconds and realised it was a preposterous notion. Here I am, a dear little old lady, nearly FIFTY-FIVE years old for gawd’s sake. These young girls come along and force champagne down my neck… what am I supposed to do? Say no?

But even though I don’t think I did anything wrong, I don’t suppose Appalling Old Women will be my Eee Book after all.

I think it will be,


Twenty Best Chihuahua Recipes

Chihuahua Schnitzel! Yum!

Me and Kathy from 50 Shades of Age

 

Kat, Kerryn and Pinky

Me and the star of Aussie blogging... Mrs Woog!

It honestly was an even better conference than 2014.

Congratulations to everyone who was involved in the planning. Can't wait for next year!

Linking up with Essentially Jess for #IBOT

For the Parents of Daughters...

A little poem I wrote for the parents of daughters...

                Minotaurs

 I stare at the blackness 

where the shadows

creep on the flickering walls and the blurred,

grey corners leer.

Twist my head again, see

the glowing of the clock

on the shelf, throbbing with its news

and cruel barbs of malice; forcing me

from the cosy warmness to the frigid floor boards,

blindly grope the stiff blinds

dirty with dustballs, filth, cobwebs,

and the prints of my fingers

in the thick coating of grime…



See a taxi parked, a carriage

in black and white, like a magic coach

on the road it’s pulled to a stop

near the kerb. She is home

at last, with a wave

at the driver,

and her shoes clatter up the stairs. She is

safe. In a place where sentinels, watch

the clock on the shelf.



The knob of thread I offered her at birth

spools back. Like that bundle of string clutched by

Ariadne of Knossos

waiting alone, she

gripped the fraying fibre tight

as she shivered, hearing the roar

of the monster.



I kept her so close

in a spider’s web of the finest silk

netting while the dewdrops glistened

in proud joy. Too much to fear

in the ugliness

that wants her; danger springs

from the unknown plexus of life

where just a move, a slip, a lapse

can raze. How long? How long, til spirit bites,

and breaks free when she severs the cord,

amputates the string for good

and then soars through the air

in ecstatic pursuit

of mystery

and Minotaurs.



I could grasp and strain,

stretch my spider hand. She

was a borrowed treasure, but

it’s time now

to let go.

To my daughter, love Pinky xxx

Ten Commandments for Travelling with your Spouse

Travelling with your wife is a bit like downing shots of tequila. If you can ignore the sharp, bitter taste of prickly cactus, it will eventually make you feel all warm and mushy inside.

In order to possibly circumvent the illicit and mysterious severing of your bungee cord just prior to the big jump because you flirted outrageously with the curvaceous waitress at the hotel restaurant the previous night, let me direct you to Ten Travel Commandments which could possibly save your life...

1. Thou shalt not flirt with exotic, foreign waitresses. This includes raving on to the hot flight attendant about how brave and daredevilly you were at bungee jumping the previous day when you assume your wife/girlfriend is asleep in the plane seat beside you. Just because she’s wearing an eye mask and snoring louder than a Boeing 707 taking off doesn’t mean she’s asleep. She’s not asleep. She’s like a crocodile, sunning itself on a log watching you surreptitiously with a nictitating membrane (third eyelid). 

2. Unless thou art some mutant genetic anomaly who is willing to sacrifice his masculinity and ask for directions, thou shalt have a GPS installed on your phone. We know you want to solve the puzzle yourself and emerge victorious from the bowels of the Paris Metro thrusting your man bag above your head and screaming triumphantly like a Manchester United fan after they just knocked Barcelona out of the series, but it’s silly. All that your spouse desires is to get to where she’s going in the speediest way possible. You’re not exactly Marco Polo are you? However, you could end up like Burke and Wills.

3. Thou shalt not be selfish. Dost thou really need to pack two pairs of shoes? You’ll only be away for a few weeks; surely you can make do with the pair on your feet? Your spouse will need the extra room in your suitcase for her extra luggage and it would be wise to curry favour by offering it before she asks. And don’t dare to be foolish enough to ask if she can squeeze your toothbrush in her toiletry bag. That’s tantamount to asking for one more, filthy, bacteria-ridden person to be squeezed on to the last lifeboat leaving the Titanic.

4. On the subject of packing, thou should make sure to pack an adequate amount of underwear, and by adequate I mean more than adequate. The old, ‘inside out, back to front’ method of saving on washing won’t cut it now that you’re not backpacking around Vietnam with six of your grubby, Neanderthal mates. Don’t expect her to be washing the skid marks out for you in the hotel hand basin either. Just put them in a plastic bag and discretely bury them at the bottom of a bin on your way out in the morning.

5. Don’t attempt to channel ‘Jerry Seinfeld’ when thou gets the persuasive signal to come over for explosives/drug screening at airport security. Your clever quips emulating Seinfeld, like, “What? I look like a terrorist because I have a hipster beard?” will merely bring down the wrath of God and his heavily armed henchmen and won’t impress your partner when your flight is delayed because the Federal Police are mining your coal reserves.

6. Okay. Thou may get on the plane and thou and thy partner may have the choice of aisle versus centre seat. Dost thou really needst the aisle seat for extra leg room when thou knowst very well thy partner has a bladder the size of a small nut? Who art thou? Michael Jordan? Shaquille O’Neill? Or art thou not closer to George Costanza? Give her the damn aisle seat, thou!



7. Learn thou, the language and currency of the country thou art travelling to a little bit, so thou art able to haggle. But don’t be a cheap skate in third world countries and argue with a taxi driver because he’s charging you ten dollars for a fifty kilometre trip instead of five dollars. These people need every cent they can get from thy fat Western butt. Benevolence and empathy will win you points with your lady love. Besides, she doesn’t want to be left on the side of the road in the red light district of downtown Saigon because you were a tight ass.

8. Don’t let thyself be a dick. When you go somewhere romantic, like Rome, don’t stand there with your hands on your muffin top, sniff in a superior manner and declare, “Well, I can see they built this in a day.” Don’t climb to the lofty heights of the fabulous Eiffel Tower in Paris and say, “Looks like the scaffolding for a television tower to me.” Keep the romance alive and blossoming, not dead like a clouted mullet in the bottom of your tinny.

9. Thou shalt not force thy tedious passions on thy wife. If you desperately want to go to the Museum of Advanced Star Trek Mythological Creatures or an exhibition on The Journey of the Development of Graphical Interface Architecture and your spouse stifles a yawn, pops a Prozac and begins to snore with her eyes open, it’s probably best to let her go do what she wants to do instead.

10. Thou shalt try to savour the moment in each experience. Go to a restaurant in Rome and slurp up the same spaghetti noodle until your lips meet in a Bolognese sauce bloodbath. Go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and recite your marriage vows then release some helium balloons before security handcuffs you for littering and unruly behaviour, go to Mexico City and get drunk on Tequila shots for heaven’s sake. 

* This travel advice was largely sourced from the Old Testament, Disney movies, “Lady and the Tramp”, “The Aristocats” and the lesser known Disney movie “Herbie Goes to Tijuana”.

Have a safe trip!

Things That Fudging Annoy Me!

    

1. When the doona ends up scrunched up on Scotto’s side and I have nothing except a shred of flimsy cotton to protect me from the arctic blast from the air conditioner.

2. The fact we still have to have the fudging air conditioner on even though it’s winter because the Chihuahua wakes up at every beat of a moth’s wing and goes off barking and growling like a hound of the Baskervilles so we have to have the windows shut at night.

3. When Scotto shakes out the doona to give me more insulation at the same time I have a coffee in my hand and am balancing a laptop on my knees and I spill my wine, I mean my coffee all over me.

4. When Scotto starts swearing at the dogs because they won’t settle because he just unceremoniously shook them out of the doona.

5. The clicking sound of the remote that accompanies Scotto's cantankerous swearing when the Internet is broken and he’s trying to get stupid fudging Netflix to work through his laptop.

6. The dogs trembling beside me like nervous, sycophantic neurotics because they get scared when Scotto swears.

7. When I have to get up and go to the toilet just before I’m ready to go to sleep, after the dogs have eventually slunk under the covers and I've finally organised the doona to accommodate my shivering, skeletal frame.

8. When, after I’ve been to the loo, my nineteen year old daughter knocks on the door looking for toothpaste.

9. When after I’ve found the toothpaste for her I need to go to the toilet again.

10. When I get back to bed and the Chihuahua decides that because I got up, he has to get up and he won’t go back to bed and sniffs around the doona making Scotto swear again.

11. When Scotto snaps his laptop shut in an angry manner and swears again because Netflix still won’t work and I tell him to calm down and then he says he wishes a solar flare would hit the earth and wipe out all technology so we wouldn’t have to worry about it and I say innocently that he should just ‘turn the telly off’ and then he gets all huffy.

Anything annoying you lately?

Apparently I'm Cognitively Disturbed.

When I was bored this afternoon and floundering around on the Internet, I came upon an interesting site and did that ink blot test, you know, the Rorschach test, and I’m sorry to say, the results weren’t that good.

In fact, the scientists very gently advised me that I’m cognitively and psychologically disturbed. 

My Results!!!

Even though I suspected I might have been slightly eccentric (in a light hearted, whimsical way), I never dreamed it would come to this.

I made Scotto do it immediately after me, hoping it was all a terrible mistake… but apparently he’s normal… and I’m not.

So what does this mean? Should I check myself in somewhere? Should I start wearing a white jacket specially designed where the sleeves are sewn together and take to rocking in the corner of the room and howling at the moon?

Maybe I should have seen the signs of mental instability before this...

My obsession with dogs for a start, I mean, what normal person owns four dogs?

What normal person has five kids in six years, then, when the kids grow up, buys four dogs and a cat?

What normal person has violent arguments with the garage door and other inanimate objects when they don’t work properly? What normal person thinks plants talk to them and then writes about it on her blog?

What normal person makes major life decisions based on the title of the next song that comes on the car radio?

(I shouldn’t have told you that one, should I?)

I’ve often reassured myself when the notion, I’m crazytown, creeps into my thoughts, that the experts say if you THINK you’re going mad, then you’re not.

But here I am, seemingly mad as a cut snake, as crazy as a hat full of arseholes.

It’s not fair. I don’t want to be mad. What if I ever want to join the army? I wouldn’t pass the ink blot test. I’ll never be a policewoman, or a pilot, or a fireman or ambulance driver or anything else that requires a modicum of sanity.

I wonder if teachers are allowed to stay in their job if they’re mentally unstable. Maybe that’s what’s pushed me over the edge? The constant everyday struggle with little or no recognition has propelled me into the abyss of lunacy after all these years.

But now I think about it, years ago I applied for a job and it came down to between me and another girl. They gave us a psych test to make the final decision.  I was probably crazy back then too. I remember the guy telling me I didn't get the job because of the results of the test. Did he look at me with pity or was it fear? I can't remember.

It’s the word, ‘disturbed’ that disturbs me the most.

Maybe I should just take the test again. I think I know the answers now. I’m sure I could do much better next time.

Or maybe some of you could take the test and be all disturbed with me so I’m not so lonely here in the land of the nuts.

Please? Prove to me I'm okay xxx

A link to the test!

In the meantime, while you're doing the test, I’m off to run around naked, all through the neighbourhood, uprooting flower beds and singing Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport (because that’s what I usually do on Sunday afternoon).

Why I Love Twitter

Hardly anyone I know in real life is on Twitter. I can’t understand it because it’s so much fun. In fact, I think Twitter is helping to stave off the senility which I’m sure is eventually going to creep up on me one day.

My Facebook friends are all people I know quite well but my Twitter crew are from all walks of life and from all over the world.

Why do you love it so much, Pinky? Because I get to challenge myself every night coming up with amusing hashtag responses, that’s why. I scour the top hashtags every night and if there’s something that inspires me I’ll have a go.

These are a compilation of the ones I didn’t delete the next morning because they were so bloody dreadful. (Sometimes Scotto bans me from tweeting some I come up with because he thinks I get a bit risque.)

So, anyway, that's what I do to amuse myself at night when Scotto's watching zombie movies. Beats crosswords.

Have you embraced Twitter yet? Will you ever?