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Friday, March 30, 2018

Forgiveness at Easter

Moon on Good Friday 30/3/18 by Scotto (with a hand held camera)


We just saved Brienne of Tarth (chief chicken), from the jaws of our German Shepherd. Normally, they get along fine but Brienne must have poked her beak in the middle of his feed bowl while he gobbled his dinner and he clearly resented sharing with a farmyard bird.

She seems okay but now she won’t come out from under the deck and there are white feathers littering the lawn.

Never mind. I’ll be home to watch over them all for the next two weeks because it’s the Easter holidays!

My Stations of the Cross liturgy went well yesterday despite ‘Jesus’ not turning up on the morning. You can only imagine my utter panic and horror at this state of affairs.

I elected another unrehearsed, little boy to get dressed in the Jesus costume, pronto.

“You’ll be fine,” I coerced the trembling child. “You just have to walk around with the cross on your back for a bit and then die on the cross with grave sincerity and a great deal of solemnity. Don’t let me down, or else.”

The stunned little boy gazed at me dubiously then finally nodded in reluctant assent when he saw the desperate look in my pleading eyes.

Thankfully, the real Jesus turned up at the eleventh hour. Not the ‘actual real’ Jesus of course. That would have made a truly excellent Stations of the Cross though. Can you just imagine the kudos I’d get for pulling that out of the bag?

I must admit, this was the best class I’ve ever re-enacted this liturgy with. I screamed and ranted much less than usual during rehearsals and no one was sent to the office for being silly; not even once.

My Jesus didn’t accidentally clock anyone on the head with the cross and the technology didn’t break because I had my beautiful friend and colleague, Kath, operating it for me, as my hands were shaking too much to work the volume knob.

My husband, Scotto and my parents even made the hour long drive out to the school to watch it.

I think this is my seventh time presenting this particular liturgy and I finally nailed it.

Sorry.

I gave my class Easter eggs at the end of the day and someone accidentally left their eggs on the window sill.

Seamus, one of my ‘energetic’ students, spotted the abandoned eggs. “Can I have them, Mrs Poinker?” he asked wistfully, a curious gleam in his eyes.

“No,” I replied. “Go downstairs, Seamus.”

“Please?” he insisted.

“NO! You have your own eggs. Go downstairs and wait for your mother. Whoever owns them will probably be back in a couple of minutes.”

I walked back into the classroom and tidied up. Ten minutes later, I walked out and spied Seamus, still loitering around the window sill, staring longingly at the eggs.

I made him walk downstairs with me. He dragged his feet dramatically the whole way and kept glancing back at the window.

I went into the staffroom and said my goodbyes. As I walked to my car, I observed little Seamus, standing underneath the stairwell and scrutinising the windows in a doleful, forlorn manner.

“No one came for them,” he whispered to me in a sad voice as I swept past him. “No one came back.”

I’m pretty sure that as soon as my car drove away, Seamus snuck back upstairs and nicked the eggs.

But that’s okay. I didn’t care.

By that stage of the day I was like an amoeba reacting to stimuli. My brain was on automatic.

And anyway, Easter is all about forgiveness, don’t you agree?

Let me take this opportunity to wish you and your loved ones a very happy and safe Easter. I'll catch all of you on Facebook on Easter Sunday xxx

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Happy Birthday to Everyone Born after Ash Wednesday!


Tamborine Mountain Heritage Centre


I went to phone my daughter yesterday and noticed the option of using Facetime. I miss seeing her adorable face and immediately buzzed her. An image of her in the car wearing a seatbelt, manifested on my screen. I gathered she was driving home from gym or something. She’s so health conscious that girl.

“I’ll hang up,” I breathed urgently into the phone. “I don’t want you to have an accident, sweetie.”
“It’s okay,” she replied. “I’m in the queue at KFC.”

Hmmmpf… so much for the gym.

I think part of the reason my kids don’t like where I live is because there are no KFCs. There is no Maccas, Guzman Y Gomez, Domino’s or Hungry Jack’s either and I hope there never will be.

Can you believe Tamborine Mountain doesn’t even have a single traffic light? Actually, we don’t even have street lights. It makes driving in the fog around treacherous, curvy cliffs very exhilarating.

I love the rural atmosphere and have resolved to open a petting zoo here in my retirement. Scotto supports me fully and happily listens to me list the animals I will have in my zoo. He’s even promised to help me with all the mucking out of stables and pens. I’m not sure what ‘mucking out’ means but I’m positive I will like it.


We go walking on weekends and lately, we amble along a circuit that travels past the Tamborine Mountain Heritage Centre. We snuck in today (even though it was closed) so I could take a photograph and an older man frightened us by seemingly popping out of nowhere.

“That sign is spelled wrong,” I commented, pointing to the TAMBOURINE mountain sign in a know-it-all, teacher fashion and attempting to divert him from the fact we were trespassing.

“No,” he corrected me. “It used to be spelled that way until 1920 when this was built.”

He went on to inform us that as the legend goes, there was a local business back in the day which had a truck, and the sign on it said TAMBO on one side and URINE on the other. Apparently the general population took offence and changed the spelling of the mountain.

After our walk, we went to the Mitre 10 hardware store to look for stuff to make a crown of thorns for my little Jesus. My class is performing Stations of the Cross on Thursday and Jesus is currently sans headwear.

Unbelievably, there didn’t seem to be a Crown of Thorns aisle in the shop and we left empty handed.

We will have to fashion one from something in the garden. Naturally, we won’t use anything with real thorns because it’s only a representation and I don’t want my Jesus to bleed in front of the preppies. Nailing Jesus to the cross will be quite enough for the under-fives to witness, I feel.

On Sunday, Lent will be over and I can annoy people on Facebook again.

Even though I haven’t been ‘liking’ or commenting or posting, I have been taking a peek at it now and again. Of course, I was still private messaging as well because that’s the only way some people will communicate with me.

My teaching buddy, Catherine Mary, told me she thinks that it all sounds very dodgy and shouldn’t be counted as a Lenten sacrifice since I have pretty much been stalking everyone on Facebook the whole time.

Hmmmpf… I’d like to know what Catherine Mary gave up.

Oh! I forgot to tell you! We sold Golden Boy! When the mechanic checked the car for the roadworthy he told Scotto my six year old brakes were almost at 100% function.

“Does she ever slow down?” the mechanic asked Scotto in astonishment. Little does he know I never speed UP. I drive to conditions even when there are no conditions.
That was my week.

But, I have a question for you...

Will you visit my petting zoo?

and also...

Did you even miss me on Facebook?


Sunday, March 18, 2018

Autumn is coming... no wait... it's here!



“Can you smell that?” asked Scotto this morning, as he inhaled deeply and stretched out in bed like a languorous Tom cat.

“Do you mean the chicken poo?” I replied blinking vacuously.

“No,” he arose from bed and opened the curtains.

“Did you fart under the sheets again?” I eyed him suspiciously.

“No, not recently,” he answered, flopping back on the bed and making me spill my coffee.

“It’s not the neighbour’s septic tank again is it?” I croaked in dismay. (The neighbour’s septic tank smells like burnt pubic hair. It’s gross. I’d say it was our tank... but we don’t burn pubic hair so, nah).

“No, Pinky. Can’t you feel it in the air? Can’t you smell it? It’s autumn!”
I attempted to feel autumn in the air. I sniffed in a sincere manner. I cupped my hand to my shell-like ear to try to hear it. I used my Shaman techniques.

It didn’t feel any different to the day before.

Scotto is very sensitive to the seasons because he originally comes from Melbourne where they have seasons.

I come from the tropics where the only season we have is cyclone season and a brief two week window where you need to wear a cardigan until 9:00am.

Anyway, because it is autumn (apparently) I have updated my banner with cheeky chickens and a rambunctious hare.

No wait… that’s spring.

Oh well. My banner is updated.

Please thank Scotto.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Ten Reasons Why Owning a Hare is Not Boring!

Night Vision Camera on Hare



1. Even though they are nocturnal creatures, you can watch them sleeping for hours on end.

2. You can’t teach hares cute tricks because they are wild animals, but when you give them food they will creep down from their hutch and eat it long after you’ve gone to bed.

3. They like to be patted but you have to hold them very firmly or they will push their strong hind legs against you and scurry away and hide in a tight space where you can’t reach them.

4. They will never love you because they regard you as a predator, however, they don’t actually hate you; they’re just horrified by your presence.

5. They will NEVER get to like your other pets, however, your pets will be frenetically curious and strangely obsessed with what could be hiding all day in that mysterious hutch.

6. You can’t wear perfume if you wish to handle a hare because they will have a panic attack and scratch you to death in order to escape the pungent odour of your scent.

7. You can’t give them toys to play and frolic appealingly with because they will eat them and most probably die.

8. They will never answer to their name because they don’t want to have anything to do with you, so why the hell would they come when they’re called.

9. When they are frightened, which is any time you are near them, they flatten their ears and look like guinea pigs. In fact, they may as well be a guinea pig for what it’s worth.

10. When you tell people you have a hare, they think you are lying and that you are granting asylum to an illegal rabbit and you can see the person wondering about whether or not they should dob you in to the authorities.

(When Scotto went to pick up some pellets the other day, the girl serving him said, "Here are the pellets for your long eared-guinea pig!")

Should I get another one to keep it company?

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

I'll Make You an Offer!

Source


For the last two Tuesdays, I’ve stayed at home because flood waters prevented me getting to school.

“You’re making it rain aren’t you, Pinky!” my deputy principal accused on the phone. “It’s because you hate taking the kids to swimming lessons on Tuesday!”

Whilst it’s true I hate swimming lessons, I haven’t managed to control the weather yet.

I say ‘yet’, because one day I might work out how to do it.

Both Tuesdays, I awoke to the 5:30am alarm, dressed, packed my lunch and drove for twenty minutes before one of my colleagues rang me to tell me the road was closed.

It’s only one bridge that’s closed and that bridge is five minutes away from the school. I can’t imagine why the council doesn’t raise the damn bridge. 


I offered to buy a rubber dinghy and park my car on the side of the road and row across, but my deputy started carrying on about workplace health and safety rules and kept saying ‘If it’s flooded forget it, Pinky’.

I offered to go and work at another school for the day but was informed it would be a ‘conflict of interest’.

This response afforded me a great deal of relief because I can’t think of anything worse than going to work at another school for the day and when I offered, I didn’t really mean it on a sincere level.

It was one of those ‘token’ offers, like the rubber dinghy.

Also like when your husband drops his ice-cream on the ground and you offer him yours. Or when your husband is going out with the boys and you offer to pick him up when he’s finished, really late at night. Or when the dog vomits on the bathroom floor and you say, 'I’ll clean it up, darling, you stay in bed'.

You don’t make a token offer and anticipate it will be accepted.

When you make a token offer you have to make sure the recipient knows deep down that it would be outrageously insensitive to accept it. You have to direct your prey into believing that what you are offering is a ridiculously extreme and contemptible expectation to ask of another human being.

When making the token offer you should make your body as small and pitiful as possible. You must use a childish, plaintive tone and compose your face into a timid, humble expression of servitude. That is a challenge when you are doing it over the phone but can be managed with practise.

Indeed, you can even do it via text messages.

Example:
Hi honey. Noticed we are low on milk. I’ll pick some up after our late staff meeting if I can find a servo that’s open on the lonely highway at that time of night. Love you xxx


Remember, you must make yourself the victim in order to engage your target.

Don’t worry; it’s mainly Scotto I use this skill on.

I would never use it on you...

What token offers do you make?

P.S. If my boss is reading this I'd totally LOVE working at another random school for the day.

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Putting the Fox Amongst the Chickens

CCTV close up of criminal Chihuahua
Wanted in three states.


“Jon Snow is attacking the Chihuahua!” I commented to Scotto last night, sipping casually on my Chardonnay and observing the heady drama unfolding below the lofty heights of our deck.

Jon Snow is our tiny bantam hen and while she is basically the same size as the Chihuahua, she suffers from a dearth of carnivorous teeth, thus placing herself at a decided disadvantage when confronting a known chicken killer.

Fortunately, the Chihuahua merely gazed at her in curious fascination and no feathers were ruffled in the altercation. 


This week, Scotto and I embarked on a precarious experiment by allowing our four ravenous hounds to intermingle with our fowlish creatures. 



We held our breath as the thirty-five kilogram, lumbering German Shepherd energetically competed for scraps with the chickens. 

Yum! Bread!


We hung on tenterhooks as the Chihuahua fastidiously sniffed the bottoms of the Silkie Chickens and we drew blood digging our fingernails into palms as the Fox Terrier diligently rounded the flock of chickens into their coops at dusk. 

Chihuahua: Why am I smaller than a fricken chicken?


But there were no fatal attacks.

In fact, the chickens were utterly nonplussed by the presence of all canine, wolf-like creatures and to our amazement, we created a blissfully Utopian society where feathers and fur came to a perfect political and social realisation of harmony. 



Now that the happy chickens free range all day, you would expect an abundance of eggs. Sadly, the little bee-artches are too busy pecking around for worms to find any time to hop in their nesting boxes and squirt out a cackle-berry. 

Actual photo of Foxy amongst the chickens


Either that or a large snake is entering the coop during the day and eating all the eggs. .. or possibly a German Shepherd. 

Is that Chihuahua really pissing on our coop?


A trio of menacing magpies used to swoop-dive the chickens in an ongoing dispute over worm territory. It was like watching F-4 Fighting Phantoms in a dogfight over the skies of Vietnam, circa 1965.

Recently, Lyanna Marmont (the big black chicken), lost her shit and grabbed one of the marauding magpies by the neck as it swooped. 

The astonished infiltrator struggled and screeched for a good minute before escaping; leaving Lyanna standing triumphant; mollified, and sporting a beak full of magpie plumage.

The maggies still swoop but, shrewdly, never make direct contact anymore.

One day soon, our little hare, Mixy, will be big enough to intermingle with the others. 



Then I really will have a Beatrix Potter garden.

Of course, I will also need a badger.

And a squirrel.

And maybe a duck…

Anyone know where I can source a badger?