D- is for Deserted Wife

A to Z April Blogging Challenge

Scotto has nicked off and left me.

Only for a week… but I’m very sad for many reasons.

Who’ll create the silly Photoshopped graphics for my blog now? My posts will have absolutely no appeal without those.

Who will preview my posts and censor the offensive material and bad grammar so rampant in my first drafts? Blogger will disown me.

Who will go down and smack the German Shepherd with a newspaper at two o’clock in the morning after his pointless and relentless barking has woken the entire neighbourhood? I'll be too scared.

Who will shake me awake at three in the morning because I ceased my loud snoring and then stopped breathing for at least a minute and he was worried I was dead. I might actually die.

Who will explain the bits in “Game of Thrones” when I’m watching it on the telly. 

“Who’s he?” I’ll ask to thin air.

“But I thought he was Jon Snow! Isn’t Jon Snow the bastard brother? Then who's he? Why do they all look so much alike?” 

But that last one doesn’t matter because I won’t be watching any telly this week.

Even though Scotto left me explicit instructions, both verbal and diagrammatic, on using the remote controls for both the upstairs and downstair’s TVs, I didn’t listen to a word he said because I was thinking about juggling monkeys... and now I won’t be able to figure out how to turn either televisions on. 

I’m very sad Scotto has deserted me.

(Insert photoshopped picture of Pinky in monkey costume juggling balls)

Complaining... How Can I Stop?

A to Z Challenge: C- Complaining.

One day many years ago, I sat beside another mother watching our kids play basketball. She’d almost been killed in a serious car accident on the highway, was still recovering and wearing a halo brace. That’s one of those appallingly uncomfortable looking braces with a metal ring circling the head, pins that run through the metal ring screwed into the skull and a frame connecting the ring to a plastic vest.

                                         

It prevents your head or neck moving after spinal surgery.

“It’s sooooo bloody hot and stuffy in this hall, don’t you think?” I whinged, and turned towards her noticing the sweat trickling from her almost shaved head, down her saturated neck into the oppressive plastic vest encompassing her torso.

She smiled at me but didn’t answer.

We watched silently as the boys dribbled the ball up and down the court.

“Gawd… those whistles are giving me a headache!” I was about to blurt out, merely to break the silence, when I suddenly bit my lip remembering who was sitting beside me.

“Could these seats be more uncomfortable…,” I moaned and was about to add, “my back’s killing me,” before I cut myself off abruptly.

During the next thirty minutes I was constantly forced to bite down hard on my tongue until it was spurting blood because every one of my ‘conversation starters’ was a grouse about one of my stupid little maladies.

This poor woman had been through hell and back and only wanted to watch her son, who had very nearly lost his mother, play a game of basketball. 

She didn't want to be forced to listen to an ungrateful, whiny woman kvetching bitterly about her imagined medical conditions.

The encounter made me recognise how much time I actually spend complaining… it was an epiphany of sorts.

But I still gripe all the time without even realising it.

The first thing I do on Monday morning is walk into the staff room, throw my bag on the table and grumble, “Is it Friday yet?”

At lunchtime, I’ll complain to another teacher on duty about how tired I am, how stressful the term has been, how the kids in the class seem tired and hard to settle and how much I hate doing duty on the oval in the boiling sun.

When Scotto comes home and asks me how my day was my usual depressing response is, “Tiring and boring… same old same old.”

But here’s the thing, it’s not just me. A lot of people do it.

Why? Is it to fill a void in the dialogue; an icebreaker? Is it merely vacuous banter which no one really listens to anyway? Perhaps it’s just an innocuous way to get things off our chest.

Even our entrenched responses to the simple question, “How are you?” are riddled with misery.

“Fair to middling.”

“Can’t complain.” (Yes you can, you just complained about not being able to complain!)

“I’ve been worse.”

“Just happy to be above ground.”

“Upright and still breathing.”

“I’d be better if I won the lottery.”

“Worse than yesterday, but better than tomorrow.”
Anyway it’s all a moot point because tomorrow being a Friday and the last day of the school term, I know Pinky’s complaining will create sound waves rivaling that of an atomic bomb.

I can hear myself stomping belligerently into the staff room now…

“What the hell? How did this term fly by so quickly? I thought we still had a few weeks left! Now I’m going to have to turn my alarm off and waste every day for the next two weeks sleeping in, reading and watching stupid movies all day! I won’t have the stimulating challenge of holding my bladder for hours at a time! How will I survive the lonely day without twenty-six kids all asking me questions at the same time? And then there are those long lunches and coffees with the girls! That’s going to be a pain in the neck. Life is so unfair. I hate school holidays.”

Dear mums of school age children… you are soooo damn lucky!

B is for Bunnies: What the heck do they have to do with Easter?

A to Z Challenge: B

Have you wondered what’s really going on in a ten year old’s mind? I do... all the time when I stare back at twenty-six pairs of the sparkling eyes of my class, gazing at me in a seemingly focussed manner.

“Oh no! Here she goes again with one of her booooooring stories,” is most probably what they’re thinking. I do attempt to break up my monotonous drone by asking thought provoking questions though.

Take today for example…

We’d just finished making our cute little Easter Bunny baskets and as part of our curriculum were learning about the real Easter Story. You know… the one about J.C. and his journey to the cross.

We’d watched a lightweight animated version of the Easter Story on Youtube (nothing too grisly) and I paused it and turned the classroom lights on.

“So, can anyone tell me what bunnies and chocolate eggs have to do with the real Easter story of Jesus?” I asked and waited as they sat in meditative silence. At least I think it was meditative but they could very well have been thinking about what was going to go down at soccer training in the afternoon.

One cautious hand rose slowly into the air.

“Um… the cross Jesus carried was brown and so is chocolate?” suggested the faltering little voice.

“That’s true,” I acknowledged, “But that’s not the connection…anyone else have any ideas?”

A second timid hand went up.

“Was it because Jesus didn't like the taste of real eggs so he made everyone eat chocolate ones?”

‘Not unless Jesus had been on a holiday to South America, developed a taste for it and brought it back duty free,’ I thought to myself.

“Forget about the chocolate for a minute and think about the eggs and bunnies,” I persisted optimistically.

“People used to hunt rabbits where Jesus lived!” hollered someone at the back.

In my mind’s eye I pictured an olive grove in ancient Israel riddled with rabbits. Did they even have bunnies in Israel two thousand years ago?

“Jesus had a pet rabbit and he loved chocolate!” called another.

“Look,” I said, beginning to feel a little uneasy as to how this was playing out, “Stop thinking about the chocolate. Think about what a baby bunny and an egg might symbolise.”

A huge triumphant smile spread across the face of one wise little boy who actually knew what symbolise meant. ‘Success at last,’ I thought gleefully.

“The Easter Bunny is Jesus and the eggs are the despicables!”

“It’s actually disciples Cedric, not despicables,” I corrected, feeling a tad thwarted. “And even though that’s a great answer it’s not what I was thinking of.”

“Baby bunnies, little chicks… newly hatched eggs… what do they all have in common?” I pleaded like a drowning rat in cement-filled boots.

“I know what it all means Mrs Poinker!” declared my timely redeemer with the thrill of discovery in her voice.

“Yes? Yes what do you think it all means Velveteen?” 

I quavered in excitement.

“It was Easter time on the day Jesus died!”

At that point I gave up and explained the whole "New Life" concept which they all seemed to take in and ponder over... except for one bright little girl.

"So Mrs Poinker," she quizzed me. "What do the One Direction Easter Eggs have to do with it?"

Art... is in the Eye of the Holder.

Today is my first day participating in the April A-Z Blogging Challenge where my mandate is to write a post every day in April (except Sundays) using each of the twenty-six letters consecutively as inspiration.

As you can see today’s riveting topic is Art… Art in the primary school setting, specifically.

I don’t know if I’m the only teacher in the world who feels this way but I find the whole art thing a bit daunting.

All those paint smocks; the paint and the cleaning of thirty paintbrushes, glue everywhere, newspaper spread over all the desks, the spills, the paint fights and the angry parents who aren't impressed with paint stained school uniforms.

It’s just too messy.

Sometimes I take shortcuts insisting we use cotton buds instead of paint brushes. “It’s Impressionism!” I’ll sweet-talk the kids. “It was very popular in France at the end of the nineteenth century!”

It is a bit limiting though.

At university, our art lecturers suggested we never stoop to handing out colouring-in sheets to the kids but instead have them release their creative talent through free drawing which is far more stimulating and artistic.

It was with this in mind yesterday that I encouraged some of my students who’d finished their assessment task to work quietly at their desk drawing whatever took their fancy.

Without exception all of them decided to sketch the exact same subject. Me.

Mrs Poinker riding a stick legged horse.

Mrs Poinker in a rainbow.

Mrs Poinker in a lovely garden surrounded by flowers.

But there were two stand-outs I’d like to share with you.

This was my favourite...

Item 1.

I love the youthful glint in the eyes, the absence of crow’s feet and the jaunty hairstyle I really must experiment with. I only have one question… is my forehead really that high? If so, who can I see about it?

In contrast to that delightful piece of artwork we have...

Item 2.

Not only has the young Picasso lovingly portrayed his highly-esteemed teacher in an interesting light but he’s also had a stab in the dark as to how her husband might look.

I have several questions.

1. Noses…why?

2. Beer Bellies…why?

3. Scotto’s Ninja headband…why?

4. Resemblance to Punch and Judy… why?

I’d sidled up behind him while he was holding it up in the air laughing with another student across the room... but I was now standing in front of him with an outstretched hand as he desperately scribbled out the speech bubble in the centre of the illustration.

I wonder what it said.

The mind boggles doesn't it?

                            Uncanny resemblance really!

Thanks again to Scotto for his Photoshopping talent!

This post is part of the April A-Z Challenge

Pinky the Drama Queen!

 For the fourth year in a row Pinky’s class has been allocated the role of staging the annual Easter play where we re-enact Jesus’ journey to his crucifixion. 

Not exactly light subject matter and a definite challenge for a class of vigorous eight and nine year olds who can barely sit still for more than twenty-five seconds at a time.

Just between you and me, I think it’s the only reason they keep me on at the school. Most of the other teachers don’t want to do it so they pretend to my face I have a bit of flair in the theatrics department.

“But you’re so good at it, Pinky!” they cajole, gushing like the fox that fooled Aesop’s gullible crow.

Well, this easy to fool old crow has been functioning on overdrive all week struggling to get the performance to an acceptable standard for the Friday night showing in the church next door to our school.

It didn’t do my blood pressure any good at rehearsal on Wednesday when one of the kids inadvertently knocked over the wine on the font table when hauling Jesus’ large cross in. 

The entire church was instantly filled with the discernible bouquet of fruity red wine. 

Bedlam ensued with kids loudly blaming each other for the accident while I could only stare in dismay at the wine dribbling on to the floor wishing I could lie underneath and catch it with my mouth.

“It’s not even Good Friday and Jesus’ blood has already been spilt!” I moaned to one of the other teachers later in the staffroom. “It’s a bad omen I just know it.”

And the actual night was not without moments of anxiety. There was an element of concern when one of our diminutive soldiers arrived late because he'd been attending a birthday party.

Just as he was about to go into the church he turned to me wearing a pallid complexion and bleated, “Mrs Poinker, I think I’m going to be sick!”

“No you’re not! Now get on out there,” I replied, veiling my utter panic and hoping to hell he wasn’t going to throw up an entire box of cheezels and birthday cake in front of the unsuspecting congregation. 

He didn’t.

By some miracle it all went well and the kids put on an amazing display of commitment and devotion considering their youth and inexperience.

Maybe I do have a bit of a knack for the dramatics after all!

Pinky: In the Dark of the Night… oohOOHoohooHOOH

                              

Image Credit

When Hagar, (now twenty years old and built like an Australasian Yeti) was a little boy he was too frightened to sleep on his own so would bed down on a mattress in my bedroom.

He gradually eased into sharing a room with his younger brother, Padraic. When he reached about twelve he moved into his own room but I recall, one rare day when I was vacuuming, fishing out a large knife from under his bed.

He’d clearly placed it there as a preventative measure in the event of an attack by a random, maniacal intruder. I removed the shining and frighteningly steely blade but noticed during another (uncommon) spring cleaning marathon it had been replaced with a cricket bat.

I don’t know what he was afraid of but I’m assuming his obsession with Orks (Lord of the Rings) may have played a small part.

Padraic (nineteen years old) who took over Hagar’s old bedroom, has recently moved over to his father’s house on the other side of town because it’s closer to his work place, leaving his significantly large, capacious bedroom up for grabs.

I suggested Hagar might like to move back into said sleeping quarters as it boasts an abundance of room for his girlfriend, Meggle’s clothes… what with the walk-in wardrobe and all.

Strangely, Hagar resisted my helpful submission, even though Meggles seemed more than keen on the idea.

His flimsy excuses regarding the inadequate air conditioning in the room rang hollow to me.

‘Why?’ I thought. ‘Why would he pass up the opportunity?’

Last night, when Scotto and I arrived home, all the bedroom doors upstairs were shamelessly opened up to the world with mattresses spilling out, sheets spread over the carpet and the hall in a state of disarray.

Seventeen year old Lulu, was on the move.

Having been at the very bottom of the pecking order it was finally her turn. Lulu was to be Queen of Poinker Manor, lodged in the second biggest bedroom in the house; the largest of course belonging to High Priestess Pinky.

But was there a disturbing cost to this rise in boudoir status? 

What price would Lulu pay each night as she slumbered in her sizeable but menacing bedchamber?

Padraic, my nineteen year old, may have held the cryptic secret to Hagar’s reticence in embracing the upgrade in living conditions.

Any time I’d enter his room I’d discover his bed rammed up against the wardrobe door.

“Why do you keep moving your bed there, Padraic?” I’d snap in annoyance. “I have to move it back every time I need to put your washing away!”

He’d shrug evasively and grunt into space.

But each time I’d go in, the bed would be back firmly wedged against the door.

I suspected foul play of the natural kind. Was he hiding something? A bong or some other prohibited illicit utensil perhaps?



It wasn’t until this morning that the true motivation behind my big boys’ reluctance to occupy the room was revealed and it was far, far from natural.

Inside the spacious wardrobe, beyond the expansive shelving, past the spider webs and gecko poo, in the corner of the ceiling… was a manhole.

A dark manhole leading into the malevolently cavernous roof of our house where vile creatures scuttle in the dead of night and scrabbling entities manifest themselves after lights out. 

A presence exists which could slither down into the wardrobe and smother you as you innocently sleep in your bed.

That’s why you have to keep a knife under your bed… or a cricket bat.

It was the Bogeyman!

Lulu, my brave princess has thrown the gauntlet to the ground. Heroically, she will face the demons and unlike her scaredy-cat brothers will defy the creeping fear of the sinister man who lives in the cupboard.



It is truly astounding what things a courageous girl will do for a walk-in robe.

                         Lulu with her Direwolf protecting her!

Pinky's First Kiss

Image Credit

                              

His name was Ken. He was a hot shot in the senior volleyball team and Pinky was a skinny little unsporting type who hung around with the second rung on the social ladder at school. 

Not the nerds, but not the popular kids either.

But I knew the buff and handsome Ken fancied me because of what transpired when my friends and I were going into the library one day and Ken and his mate were standing at the top of the stairs.

“Is that the one you like?” shouted Ken’s mate, right before Ken shoved him down the stairs hissing at him to, “Shut the hell up ya stupid bastard!”

That’s how we did it back then. You got your friend to deliberately say something like that and you’d pretend to be embarrassed.

Now the ice had been romantically broken, the courting took on a more formal note. 

Before long Ken asked my friend Pip to ask me if I liked him back.

“I suppose so,” I replied, not really knowing what to say. I admired Ken’s popularity, his sporting ability… but did I want to get up close and personal? Not really.

I’d never had a boyfriend and frankly I was terrified, sixteen and never been kissed.

Two weeks later, I somehow found myself at a party sitting on a couch, lips locked with the lusty Kenster in the longest pash I’ve ever had. 

It went on for hours and I deeply resented every spiky second. The endless swirling of the tongue, the painful gravel rash developing on my chin and the sharp crick in my neck were not how I expected my first kiss to feel.

The only reason it happened at all was that I knew I was most likely the only girl in my grade who’d never been pashed; never had a boyfriend and had certainly never been on a date. 

The shame of my purity was a yoke I desperately needed to shake off.

“What’s wrong with your chin, Pinky?” asked my mother the day after the extended osculation event when she noticed the huge scab.

“I think I rubbed in too much Clearasil,” I lied with the acuity of a resourceful and deceitful teenager.

Now the trouble was, Ken was quite keen to follow up our amorous tryst and despite my diligent avoidance of him around the school on Monday, he managed to secure my phone number from my best friend.

“So do you play any sport at all, Pinky?” Ken asked me on the phone that evening. (I'd actually left the phone off the hook in anticipation of his call but my stupid sister Sam had discovered it and put it back on.)

Mum and Dad were sitting close by eavesdropping on Pinky’s inaugural flirtations with a boy. Mum was quite excited her strangely ‘uninterested in boys’ daughter had finally attracted some interest from someone... anyone.

“I go to gymnastics,” I replied, not really trying to impress him just stating a fact. “I have to do it because of my nasal asthma.”

There was a short silence on the other end.

A light bulb suddenly flashed in my adolescent brain. I knew how I was going to get out of this!

“I have nasal asthma you see and the Ear, Nose and Throat specialist thought exercise might help my condition. I sniff all the time because I can’t breathe through my nose properly and it drives people up the wall,” I continued on with my Woody Allen oration.

Mum and Dad were staring at me in disbelief; Mum miming slitting her throat with her finger and Dad shaking his head and frowning.

The rest of the telephone conversation consisted of Pinky elaborating on the various symptoms of nasal asthma and a long-winded history of her recent diagnosis.


Ken never called again and was surprisingly elusive at school as well.

Dad had a bit of a chat to me about the sort of things boys like to talk about.

Dame Pinky and the Petrol Station

P.E.T.R.O.L.E.U.M

P… Pinged off when I arrive at the petrol station and note a queue of five cars on every bowser on the same side of where I have to stick the thing in the thing to refuel my car.

E… Enraged when I forage through and notice I’ve recently cleaned purse and have no shopper dockets allowing me to save a possible $1:34 from the probable $60 cost of petrol.

T… Tickled pink when number one car moves off and am now fourth in queue. Spend time fiddling with radio station to find one that doesn’t have announcers laughing at their own poo jokes.

R… Rigid with boredom I try on lovely cow shower cap mysteriously gifted to me in my pigeon hole at work today and check desirability in rear vision mirror. Get enquiring glances from other jaded customers.

O… Outraged when hear on radio that Australian Prime Minister is restoring the titles of Knights and Dames in Australia. I bet Pinky won’t get one.

L… Line is moving up and Pinky wants to ram the car in front just for fun. Why aren’t these people sprinting in to pay for their petrol instead of meandering in lethargically and browsing the chocolate and magazine rack?

E… Ecstatic when finally I find myself next in line… then despondently watch the dawdling man in front of me begin to wash his windscreen.

U… Understandably upset when same man takes ten minutes to pay for fuel and walks out of cashier’s eating an icecream. He takes another five minutes to adjust his car seat then sorts through middle console in car; polishes sunglasses methodically and kangaroo hops out of driveway.

M… Murderous when realise have parked on wrong side of bowser after all, so drive off squealing tyres, doing donuts and hoping have enough petrol to get to work tomorrow.

                                   Scotto modelling showercap.

                                             (Thank you to whoever gave it to me xx)

Is Pinky a Bogan?

Q: How do you know if you're a Bogan?
A: You let your 15-year-old daughter smoke at the dinner table in front of her kids.

Every country knows the type.The United States call them 'Rednecks', the Brits call them 'Pikeys' and according to Google, in Europe they're called 'Gypsies'.


Fake tans, tatts, over consumption of Reality TV, unruly, undisciplined kids, uncouth dress style, holidays in Thailand/Bali, colloquial phrases and Eastern themed home décor are all defining aspects of whether or not a person falls into the “Bogan” classification in Australia according to Wikipedia. 

I thought I’d do a quick checklist to ascertain whether the Poinkers are or are not a family of Bogans.

1. I admit to owning Ugg boots which I've sporadically worn to the shops in winter with tracksuit pants on. I was very quick and kept my head down though and don’t believe anyone I know witnessed the event.

2. When they were young, I did on occasion allow my kids to run rampant in the Qantas business lounge at the airport. But there were five of them and only one of me and we don’t usually have raisin toast at home so the novelty became too much for them which was the reason they all kept going back to the servery about ten times each, especially Hagar.

             (L-R) Padraic 4, Jonah 6, Lulu 3, Thaddeus 7, Hagar 5.

3. I’ve never belted my children in public (or private because they were very athletic and can run faster than me).

4. Not only do I have a Buddhist ornament in my home I have several. The reason for this is that they’re very cheap.

5. I don’t have the Southern Cross tattooed on my arm although I do own a pair of shorts with a pattern of the Australian flag on them but my bottom doesn’t fit in to them anymore so they don’t count.

6. I’ve never bought a Zoo Weekly although I’m pretty sure I’ve seen one stuffed under Hagar’s bed.

7. I have indulged in a fake tan once before a trip to Airlie Beach but the spray ended up congealed in the fat rolls on my stomach giving me a Tasmanian Tiger like appearance so I gave it a miss after that.

8. I’ve never been on the mandated holiday to Thailand... although Hagar is headed there in two weeks’ time to celebrate turning twenty-one (with his girlfriend who does get fake tans).

9. I do call Brisbane ‘Brisvegas’ and say things like, “I got up at sparrow’s fart and I’ve been flat out like a lizard drinking all day so I’m buggered. Can you pour me a Chardy please luv?” but we only drink the more refined bottled wine from Dan Murphy’s.

10. I don’t have a nickname ending in “azza” or “o” but my husband Scotto does. (He also wears Ugg boots and follows Collingwood… just sayin’.)

11. We don’t watch a lot of reality television except for My Kitchen Rules but I do sit bra-less in front of the telly on Friday nights and hum along to the theme song of Better Homes and Gardens with a drink in my hand and a frozen pizza in the oven.

12. No-one in the family owns a Ute, although Hagar used to until he wrote it off when it was uninsured and still owed payments on it.

13. Sorry… I forgot; nineteen year old Padraic has just bought himself a Ute.

14. I’ve never finished mowing the lawn and discovered a previously concealed car, however Scotto did find a pair of unidentified board shorts once.

15. We’ve never kept an old couch in the backyard. There was one sitting on the front patio waiting to go to the dump for a few months but it made a lovely bed for the cat as long as it avoided impalement from the broken spring poking dangerously out.

16. I’ve never been on A Current Affair regarding a neighbourhood dispute but in the time I’ve lived here our neighbours have sold up and moved four times without saying goodbye to us.


So what do you think? Could we possibly be Bogans? What about you?

Or Shazza, Kazza, Pedro, Thommo, Davo, Johnno....etc.

Pinky's Booty Call

                                                       

Image Credit

Don't say I have a boring life because after flaunting my right boob at all and sundry yesterday, I spent today having my exquisite derriere pummelled by a strapping, virile, young lad.

I’ve been hobbling around at school all week with brutal back pain just above my left buttock but as I had more important things on my mind I ignored it as best I could.

Yesterday, I phoned my Deputy Principal and begged for a second sick day off as I knew things were becoming desperate when it took me fifteen minutes to gingerly ease myself out of the car when I arrived home.

This morning's physiotherapist appointment was booked at a place called SportsMed. I assumed by their name they dealt mainly with elite athlete’s injuries and figured I’d add a bit of old cranky woman into their daily mix of clientele.

When I arrived at the clinic however, the waiting room was filled with elderly pensioner types so I wound up feeling quite the young spunk.

Until of course *Connor, the broad-shouldered physio called me in to the red room of pain and I wondered to myself why everyone else in the world is getting younger as I’m getting more and more decrepit. He looked as if he was barely out of high school.

After watching Pinky awkwardly attempt to touch her toes and perform cumbersome side stretches whilst yelping when her low pain threshold was crossed, it was deemed to be a ‘mechanical problem’.

In other words… Pinky needed a 200 000km service.

Up on the table I crawled, placing my face in the donut hole and staring at a decidedly uninteresting carpet for the next ten minutes while my lower back simmered under a hot pillow.

Soon the burly Connor was back, peering intently at my white and wobbling rump.

“Have you let anyone else give you a massage?” he asked in a concerned voice.

“No sir! I have not!” I replied. Apart from Scotto, no one is allowed near my bottom.

“It’s just that there’s bruising in the area,” he continued.

“You know… I do remember trying to push a really heavy set of portable stairs with my foot the day before the pain started,” I mumbled to the swirled pattern on the floor.

“You may have torn a muscle in your gluteus maximus,” Connor offered sagely. “That would cause some bruising.”

“You mean bum,” I sniggered childishly.

And then, the pitiless, unrelenting pounding of Pinky’s rear end commenced.

Whilst the talented youngster proceeded to discover every excruciating ligament in my left butt cheek with his steely thumb, we discussed music; Connor’s girlfriend, world politics, toy boys, hamstrings and the growth of the Aussie dollar.

We also uncovered the fact that Connor was twenty-four; exactly the same age as my eldest son Thaddeus (who by now should have also finished his degree and be out in the work force earning big bucks but has spent too much time partying instead of studying).

After the ‘dry needling’ experience (not acupuncture apparently although they do stick small needles in you) it was time to bid farewell to my new physiotherapist with a promise to catch up next week to check on how Pinky’s buns are cooking.

To carve out a career in the health care industry requires a special type of person and it must be so rewarding knowing you have the ability to make people feel better. I must say Connor was an extremely impressive young man who no doubt makes his mother very proud. 

There is no way in hell I’d ever convince my son Thaddeus to give me a bottom massage… or any of my kids for that matter!


*Connor is not the physio's actual name. It’s Clayton.

Pinky and the Appointment.

After a string of uncomfortable tests and a nervous three hour stay at the hospital today I’m fully aware of how frustrating it is to wait for results, therefore I won’t make YOU wait. I’m pleased to inform you Pinky is in the clear having been given a completely clean bill of health!

Ermahgerd!!!!

The Appointment

My sister Sam, rang me on Tuesday insisting on accompanying me even though I put up a bit of a rebellion.

“I’ll be okay,” I asserted. “You don’t want to sit around for hours bored out of your brain. I’ll take a book.”

“You won’t read a bloody book,” she replied. “You’ll sit there stewing yourself into a nervous wreck, Pinky. Besides it’s what sisters do so there’s no way I’m not coming!”

God I love my little sister.

Since the recall after my mammogram on Monday I think I’ve been pretty laid back considering my natural temperament which usually leans on the side of obsessive hysteria. 

However, this morning I was appalled to find myself tearing up in the shower, snapping violently at Scotto and unable to swallow my coffee. My day of reckoning had irrevocably arrived.

Sam’s brand new blue Mazda pulled up in the driveway and I walked out waving and smiling but... inwardly I was ready to lose the plot at any second.

“You know those women who when they find out they have cancer are really strong?” I asked Sam solemnly as I slid into the car seat.

“Yeah…” she responded.

“Well… I’m not going to be one of them.”

She burst into laughter resetting the familiar humorous tone of conversation we sisters always share.

‘Aaah,’ I thought. ‘This is why I needed her to come along and I didn’t even know it’.

As we approached the doors of the clinic I suddenly baulked.

‘I could run away…’ I thought. ‘Pretend none of this ever happened. No one can make me do it.’

But with Sam quietly urging ‘Little Chicken Sh#t’ onwards, we finally fronted up to the counter.

Between the talk with the nurse, the examination by the doctor and the second round of x-rays, Sam kept me entertained with witty chatter and silly jokes. Occasionally my mind would drift into the dark recesses of possibility and I’d gaze at her stupidly not having heard a word she’d said for the previous five minutes. 

I looked around at the other seven robed ladies sitting in the waiting room with me. I hoped we’d all be delivered good news today.

It wasn’t until my ultrasound that my mood lifted considerably.

The technician was a small, grey haired lady who beckoned me in gruffly.

I was told to lie on my side with one arm above my head and my face turned away as she squirted the cold, slimy gel all over my right breast (the rogue appendage enclosing the suspicious patch of dense tissue).

“I’ve a sore back,” I groaned as I lay down.

“Not as sore as mine I bet!” she retorted. “I could hardly move yesterday. Now lie still and don't talk.”

In front of me I could see the x-ray with the sinister, misshapen patch circled and I felt her concentrating the paddle on that particular area for the next ten minutes.

“Not much to see around here!” she suddenly grumbled.

At first I thought she was insulting my less than abundant bra size until it dawned on me that this was a good thing she was saying. A bloody good thing!

The technician spent the next quarter of an hour taking what seemed like one hundred candids of my by now quite tender boobelishus.

“All done!” she declared. Then, miraculously, she added under her breath, “It’s hard to find something that’s not there.”

I spun around in all my half-naked glory and burst out laughing. I wanted to hug her… but it may have been a bit awkward in my exposed state.

“Thank you!” I practically shrieked.

I know technicians aren’t supposed to comment on findings and technically she didn’t…

It was another hour until the doctors viewed my results and soon after the nurse gave me my ecstatically received results. I knew the news was going to be good when I saw the nurse was skipping as she led me into the consultation room. 

I’m not exaggerating; she was actually skipping.

And I’m happy to say there were seven other smiling faces in the foyer that day. Seven!

God bless Breastscreen Queensland!


Sam, I love you. I’m sorry that because you accompanied me today you were strong-armed (by the skipping nurse) into making an appointment for your very first mammogram… but them’s the breaks honey!

                     Two very bad attempts at a joyous selfie outside the clinic!

Linking up at With Some Grace for FYBF

Pinky Crosses that Bridge.

Hanging in a kind of limbo as I wait to go to my call back appointment at the Breastscreen clinic tomorrow must be making me a bit nostalgic because instead of taking my usual circuit around the river this afternoon, I strolled across the footbridge and walked through the streets finding myself heading towards the house I grew up in for seventeen years or so.

Walking along the street towards the old house was a strange mix of familiarity and reminiscence. I must have walked that street thousands of times after catching the bus home from school, staring at the ground, counting my dreary steps in boredom. It seems so small now; such a short street of only about a dozen houses.

I wanted a photo of the house and fortunately when I arrived at the front there were two teenage girls playing Frisbee out the front.

They stared at the weirdly gawping woman as their Boxer hurled itself against the fence barking menacingly.

“I used to live here when I was a little girl,” I croaked, possibly coming across as the type of suspicious, peculiar old hag whose presence they should immediately alert their mother to… which of course they did.

I apologetically repeated my mantra to the mother when she came out to the gate. I’d clearly interrupted her dinner preparations.

“Were you from the Poinker family?” she enquired pleasantly.

“Yes! I was a Poinker!” I replied, happy that she knew the name of the very first owners of this house and that even though she may have lived here for twenty years it was really still OUR house.

“I dream about this house all the time!” I rabbited on. “That was my bedroom when I was a little girl.”

If some wild-eyed stranger rocked up to my front door and told me they’d once lived in my house I’d probably smile, say ‘That must have been nice for you!’ and close the door in their face; especially if I was in the middle of cooking dinner. 

But fortunately for Pinky not everyone is that grumpy and the affable Sue, invited me in to have a sticky beak around.

Everything inside the shell of the house has been completely renovated, retiled and remodelled. There was no trace of anything familiar; even Dad’s masterpiece of a pool had been renovated.

But that bedroom window I sat at staring out of hour upon hour, hoping to catch my boyfriend doing a drive-by, was still in the same spot. 

The bedroom window my sister Sam and I precariously hung out of while smoking Benson and Hedges and trying not to get caught was still in situ. 

It was the very same window sill I sat on when I was seven, waiting for my father to pull up in his work utility every night so that I’d be the first one to greet him. 

The same windows all my Daryl Braithwaite and Sherbet posters were sticky taped onto.

Then I saw another forgotten window which brought a deeply buried memory flooding back. 

                              There was no screen back in the day!

When I was about twenty years old, I arrived home after having been out partying all night. I was a horrible, selfishly thoughtless young lady and my parents, fed up with my inconsiderate ways had deliberately locked me out and gone shopping. 

My jittery hangover didn’t stop me shimmying up the drain pipe though. Hoisting myself onto the roof and squeezing my body through Mum’s bathroom window like a cockroach I managed to infiltrate the lockout.

Mum hit the roof when she arrived home and found me lying on the couch lethargically eating coffee ice cream out of the tub. 

Then, after she discovered how I’d broken in, she was incredulous.

“It’s a wonder you didn’t kill yourself, Pinky Poinker!” she fumed, with a badly disguised undercurrent of disappointment in her voice.

Hagar has broken into our house many times in a similar way over the years. Now I understand in hindsight, where he inherited his break and enter tendencies from.

So thank you to Sue for welcoming a Nosey Parker she didn't know from squat into her house and for not thinking I was casing the joint when I took photos of her bathroom window with the easy access. 

It brought back some precious memories.

Do you ever dream about the house you grew up in?

Pinky gets a Recall after her Mammogram

Remember last week's post about my devious procrastination of phoning to book an appointment for a bi-annual mammogram and the story of how the Breastscreen nurse had diligently pursued me and locked me into an appointment on Monday?

Well since that fateful rendezvous, I’ve been watching my phone much like a small grey mouse watching a cobra that’s reared up, hood spread and about to strike. 

Every time the phone malevolently ‘hissed’ at me, adrenaline shot through my entire body as I desperately feared it was Breastscreen Queensland calling to deliver bad news.

I found myself ‘forgetting’ to take my phone with me to school or leaving it on silent and only checking it sporadically, breathing a sigh of relief after summoning the courage to peer at the screen and discovering there were no missed calls or messages.

By Friday I’d heard nothing and relaxed, enjoying the weekend, assuming all would be fine.

“Surely they’d have called by now if there was anything wrong,” I bleated piteously to Scotto on Sunday.

So it was with heart thumping wildly in my chest and hands shaking that I answered a private number via Bluetooth as I drove to work at 7:30 this morning.

The nurse’s dulcet tones ominously came over the phone informing me the doctors had reviewed my x-rays and need to see me again… for a few hour of testing… at the hospital... in three days’ time.

Damn! I’d thought I was out of the Neurotic Woods and joyously sprinting towards the sunny clearing.

The voice I used when speaking to the nurse didn’t seem to be coming from my own body. The terror I felt surging through every nerve wasn’t evident in the weirdly chirpy responses shrilling from my tense throat. 

After she hung up the phone I felt as though I’d been in a dream.

I wanted to pull over to the side of the road and call Scotto to hear his comforting voice and reassurances but there was a dirty big semi-trailer tailgating me on the motorway so I breathed deeply and endeavoured to remember what the statistics were for getting a recall.

Was it nine in ten… or one in ten? I hoped it was the former but highly doubted it.

“It’s probably just a cyst!” said my ultra-supportive Deputy Principal when I explained my situation and requested Thursday off.

“It’s probably nothing at all! Just a loose bit of skin or something.” quipped my close friend, Kyles.

Of course I had to ask Sue the Librarian for her thoughts on the matter because librarians know pretty much everything. School librarians are like Yoda.

“Well Pinky,” she said, “The thing with mammograms is that even if it’s the worst case scenario… (you know what she meant; that blood-curdling C word) then a mammogram usually picks it up when it’s at an extremely early stage.”

Therefore, as a believer in self-affirmations, I’ve compiled a ready reckoner of reasons it is nothing to worry about.

1. The recall wasn’t urgent.

2. Nine out of ten recalls after routine mammograms turn out to be nothing.

3. I had a mammogram just over the recommended two years ago so I haven’t left it for too long.

4. It could be a silly old cyst or some other simple, benign annoyance.

5. It could simply be they didn’t get a very good image because Pinky, being a bit of a sook, flinched when the flash bulb went off.

I do recall teetering on one instep with my hand on one hip burlesque style and the opposite boob clamped painfully in a waffle iron. I may have wobbled slightly.

Anyway, there’s no point in worrying is there? There’s nothing I can do to change the prognosis so I may as well stop stressing.

I would like to hear any stories you have though. Have any of you ever had the dreaded recall? Please share.