Edinburgh photos!

So it's only seven months late...but I finally got around to posting some of my favourite photos from my trip to wee bonny Scotland last year!

I actually have a good reason for it taking me so long too! Usually I upload all my pics to my own computer and then do blog posts etc from there. However, at that point my computer had decided it wasn't going to play well with others and I had upload my photos onto the HTPC in the lounge room and to do a post from there I have to sit on the floor and it's uncomfortable and my butt hurts but I am doing that right now for you people and my bum is hurting so stop your bloody whinging that this post is seven months late already!!!

*phew* Ok, now that that's out of my system, here we go!

This is our room. It will forever be our room. No one else can claim it. No one!

The ever lovely Arthur's Seat.

We are all laughing. Why? Because this dog's name is Bum. Oh yes, you heard me. Bum the dog.

Wait a second! I'm sure there was a castle here somewhere...where the heck could it have gone???


If this sign says it is so, then it must be so!

Sunshine and lollypops! Wait a minute, we didn't have lollypops...awwww :(

Our camping adventure begins!
Christian in a tree. Don't ask.

Who's in the bag? Are they wearing glasses? And a beanie? And are cold and wet? Is it Flora and Nettie? It is? Yay! I win!

Hush, the White Rabbit is sleeping!

Squirrels! Red ones at that! And a squirrel sized hat factory!

Do you think they would honour this?

I love wolfies :D

'Alice?'
'Yes dear Roger?'
'Don't look now, but there's something on the bench with us...'
'Oh dear Roger, should I get out the bug spray?'
'No Alice, I'm sure they'll scurry off soon.'
Play time!

Cawdor Castle. The crappest castle in the world. Seriously. They don't even make hats!

Horsey!


Pixie house.
Curses woman! I don't want my photo taken but I seem to be trapped in this giant web. I shall use my only defense against the likes of you...my cold, steely glare!
All dressed up, let's rock this baby naming ceremony!
Inappropriate canon behaviour. I'll just let the photos speak for themselves, shall I?

Fear him...I bloody do!
Follow the white rabbit.
And you will discover something veeeeeery interesting about Nettie...
I love this photo.

Up above the world so high...

Like a wacky Brady Bunch.
Eeep! It's a highland coo!
Don't look now but there's a furry white nose growing out of my ear!

At the zoo. According to Christian, this is apparently a wolverine. Honestly, just because he can tell the difference between a polar bear and a rock, doesn't mean he can see wolverines!

Evil King Zeph!No! Don't jump!

Boo!

To complain or not to complain...

Or to return a product or not. To make a fuss or not?

I am one of these people who just cannot stand being rude, confrontational or the teeniest bit assertive. I am logical enough to see that being assertive doesn't necessarily mean being rude but to some extent it's always confrontational. It might not be violent or angry but if you pull someone up on a small mistake (however nicely you do it), there's always going to be an undercurrent of confrontation.

I however take things to extreme. My brain just doesn't work like most people's do. Returning something to the store because it's faulty makes me so uncomfortable because I fear I will be perceived as rude/annoying/arrogant/confronting.
I've been on the other end of the returns counter and in most cases I've never felt that way about the customer who is returning the item (unless they're being an asshat about the whole thing). If anything, I'm extremely apologetic and feel awful that they've been so inconvenienced. But once I'm the one returning the product I just can't do it.

It's so bad that it's a running joke in my family now.

Here are some examples of when I should have returned something or complained or spoken up and I have not. These have all occurred in the past couple of weeks.

* I bought some pre-grated cheese and it was mouldy. I threw it out and went and bought some more.

* I bought a 2L bottle of diet coke. When I opened it, I discovered the seal had been broken and the coke was flat. I poured it down the sink.

* The other night my mum took us all out for dinner and my meal didn't arrive. Everyone else was already almost finished but I didn't say a word. My mother noticed and called over the waiter to ask what had happened to my meal. He apologised, explained it had accidentally been forgotten about and he would be right back with it. I was silent the entire time, beet red and squirming from embarrassment in my chair.

* I went to Ikea the other day and wanted to try one of their Daim cakes. I left their 'market' store only to discover I had bought the wrong kind of cake. The friend I was with told me to go back and just swap it over but I wouldn't, I just said 'No, you can have it'. In the end he went in and bought me the right kind.

*I bought a different brand of cereal the other day, thinking I'd try the home brand since from the packet it looked exactly the same as the branded kind. It was the most disgusting thing I've ever had, it tasted like it had been burnt. Christian had it too and was so annoyed that he actually rang the company to complain. I would have just thrown it out and never bought it again...

And now I have the conundrum that our new toilet seat we got the other day is broken. The thread for the screw is buggered so we can't attach it to our toilet. I've asked Christian to take it back so he can explain why we need a new one but he just gave me a look and told me that I wanted the damn seat so I can take it back and get a new one.
I know that I just won't be able to do it, I'll end up having a panic attack and then leaving it until it's way too late to return in and we'll end up wasting the money we spent on it.
I know it's illogical but unfortunately I did not inherit my father's Vulcan personality so logic be damned!

I may need to use my cunning womanly wiles to convince my dear husband to do this for me. More likely I need to bloody well grow a damn pair and man up.

I'm putting my money on option A...

Attack of the GIANT spider of DOOOOOOOM!*

*No actual attack took place...

Today was an absolutely glorious day! It was only about 27C or so and the sun was out and there was a lovely breeze and so it was the perfect time to go for a walk down through Bassendean (a suburb very near me that sits on the banks of the Swan River).

I parked my car near the main road and headed off in the general direction of the river. There were lots of other people out and about and I would have probably walked right under the GIANT spider of DOOM if not for some cyclists taking photos of him.

He was perched in a tree right about the footpath. Isn't he awesome???


Complete with web and eggs!



I then headed down to Point Reserve, one of the many parks in Basso (I will take this opportunity to say that spell check has an issue with 'Bassendean' but not for 'Basso'...interesting). The entrance to the park has some painted murals depicting native fauna.

The Killer Kookaburra.


The Deadly Dragonfly.


The Bloody Bobtail.


A Fearsome Frog.


So there have recently been lots of floods over East and up North and I have wondered how likely it is that we will ever suffer the same fate. A newspaper article in the local rag I read a couple of weeks ago said that if the Swan did flood, experts expect Bassendean will be one of the worst affected areas.

I wonder how often this has come in handy in the past...?


There were a gaggle of geese frolicking around on the grass. As soon as I got within 20 meters of them, they formed up and started advancing on me, honking furiously.
I'm well aware from reading Footrot Flats that geese can be a (literal) pain in the arse so I high tailed it away from them.


"And don't you come back now!"


This pink and grey was much more sedate.


The river is rather pretty.


Just look how the morning sun shines off it!


Marvel at it's murky browness!


I rather liked this tree so I snapped a pic of it from the end of the jetty (contrary to popular opinion I cannot walk on water).


Finding my thimble sized bladder alarmingly full, I decided to make use of the facilities at Point Reserve. I had never ever before used a chain flush toilet.
I can now strike that from my bucket list.


I want this house! I'm pretty sure this used to be a church of some kind that is now being renovated.


Unless it's just a seriously cool house...


After about an hour I was making my way back to the car and spotted these magpies. Apparently there was good pickings along the wall!

Smorgasbord!


And lastly, for your viewing pleasure - ducks!

In a land far, far away.

I love where I live. Sure it gets bloody hot, mother nature is currently trying to kill everyone in Australia and we have a ranga as our PM yet I still have a kind of fierce love for my country.

However, there are times that I wish I lived anywhere else.

Because anywhere else would be closer to everyone else than where I am now.

Ten years ago I would never have dreamt that I would become such close friends with people who live on the other side of the world. I would never have imagined that I would visit far away places to meet almost complete strangers, people who I only knew from chatting on MoH and could well have been hoaxes themselves (as I almost believed when Boo was an hour late meeting me at the airport! Oh how we laugh about that now!). Ten years ago I had few female friends let alone close friends.

But a lot can change in ten years and so it has. And that leads me to where I am today, looking back through photos taken from various holidays, reminiscing about the good times (most of them), wincing at the bad (Will's disappearing act) and being a rather sad, miserable wretch.

I miss my friends dammit!

I miss hanging out with them, how easy it is to laugh with them, the fact that we have the same sense of humour.
I miss the quiet times and the times we rushed around like headless chickens because we were running late for the bus.
I miss Edinburgh itself, the city that stole my heart with it's history (over fifty years old!), majestic buildings, creepy graveyards, culture and flair.
I miss arguing with Boo over things I wouldn't eat or even try.
I miss Zeph's cheeky grin and the funny faces he pulled.
I miss the way that Christian so effortlessly became mates with my friends.
I miss showing them around Perth and watching them fall as much in love with my tiny city as I am.
I miss our girly outings, dressing up, wearing the biggest boots and shoes we had and teeming them with lacy gloves and black lipstick.

I speak to Mouse most days via msn. I rarely see Boo online so we have regular phone calls (weekly when we can but rarely less than once a fortnight).
But it's just not the same! I want to be able to call them up and say 'Let's hang out tonight' or meet up with them for coffee (or tea!). Talking on the phone whilst browsing 80'stees.com is not the same as shopping together. Watching videos of Zeph impersonating a pirate is no where near as wonderful as seeing him do it in person. Writing *hugs* isn't even the shadow of a real hug.

Gah! It's just so frustrating sometimes. The world is so small now but at the same time, it's bigger than it ever was.

In roughly 18 months Boo and Matt will be coming to visit again. Rarely have I wished time to fly by so fast...

Baby lawn and fish!

But not exactly in that order...

Fish first! I love our wall mounted aquarium, it's different and pretty and a talking point. Getting photos is kind of difficult however but these are a couple we managed to get.

I took this photo about two weeks ago. The bubble is still there!

This is Skeletor, our Glass Catfish. He's just insanely awesome.


Christian captured this photo of Coolio, our Kuhli Loach. Isn't he adorable?


Our Glowlight Tetras are amazingly difficult to capture on camera. Christian and I both tried a heap of times and this one of mine was the best picture we got.



So, onto our new lawn! I never really took a 'before' photo which annoys me now. How I wish I had! This is the closest I have and it's a 'half way through' photo. You can kind of see where the huge pile of dirt had been (it's mostly smoothed down now) but it was towards the back of the fence.


So I smoothed down all the dirt, as best I could, raked through some soil improver and water crystals and put down some seed and made a wish! It's not exactly the best time of the year to plant lawn because it's just so hot but I've been watering it twice a day and voila! Baby lawn! This was about a week after I planted it.


And now after about two and a half weeks. The area under the tree is growing much better because it's in shade for most of the day so retains moisture but the rest is slowly starting to come along.
I'm not sure if you saw the creepers along the fence in the first picture? Well Christian has pulled them all out and we'll plant some Jasmine or other nice smelling creeper at some time in the future.


For Christmas my mother in law got us a dwarf peach tree which I potted (the front pot) and I've always wanted a dwarf lemon tree so I got myself one last week. It's been too hot to re-pot it but tonight it had cooled down quite a lot so I popped it in it's new pot. The lemon is the pot next to the fence.


And finally, this paper wasp nest was outside my lounge room window several weeks back. When I used to garden I received several stings from these little buggers and I know they bloody hurt. But I couldn't see a way of getting rid of them without antagonising them. Eventually though they moved on and they took their nest with them! It's entirely gone now. Weird huh?

Why I'm looking forward to winter*

* Perth winter, not crazy freezing northern hemisphere winter...

So it was bloody hot today. Got to 39.6C officially but the temp gauge in Osborne Park that Christian drives past every day said it was 43C. Either way, it was awful. Throw into that mix the chance of a thunderstorm and you have some lovely humidity as well.
Perth is full of hot, sticky, sweaty and grumpy people and I am one of them. Bring on winter!!!

It's not just about the temperature though. I love winter for more then just the cooler temperatures and lower risk of bush fires (even though we live smack bang in the middle of suburbia, we are still threatened by bush fires like this one yesterday that flared up again today. To put it into perspective the intersection they talk about in the alert is 600m away from my house). I love winter because I have so many awesome things that I can only use/wear during the cooler months.

This is the hat that Crafty made for me. I have promised for over a year now to take a photo for her but I kept on forgetting. Please excuse the perspiration on my face, it was hot when I modeled it! lol


And to go with the hat are the prettiest gloves ever!


Knee high socks are a must in winter. I also have several pairs of tights and stockings but they don't cooperate with the camera...


My Diego hoodie complete with bat wings and ears. You can see a photo that Boo took of me wearing the hoodie here.


I cannot wait until it is cold enough to wear my new Snoopy scarf!


For Christmas, Christian got me these felt beanies from an awesome shop in Melbourne when he was there for work. I keep on stealing his Kangol beanie so I can understand why he got me my own bunny ears.


For Christmas I got a Madness Hamsters Heat Bear from my best friend. However, customs confiscated the wheat bag from inside because it might have contained some odd European parasite so we had to make our own wheat bags up...


And finally, on an unrelated note, I promised a photo of my froggie biscuits so here it is for those of you who missed it on FB. I'm not the most patient icer in the world so they're not very neat but they were yummy all the same :)

An unexpected trip to the zoo

Yesterday I had gone round to my visit my best friend and after watching the new episode of Big Bang Theory, we found we didn't really have much to do. I was being a bit of a grumble bum because I'd had a headache for two days straight and probably wasn't being the best of company and I soon found myself bundled into the car and on my way to a 'mystery location'.

The mystery was soon solved when we pulled up into the zoo car park and I became much less grumbly. I love the zoo! Christian and I used to have a zoo membership and we'd go all the time but life has become so busy lately that we haven't been for quite a while.

It was already about half past two in the afternoon so the crowds had mainly dispersed which was good but of course, being mid afternoon on a warm day, a lot of the animals were having a siesta. We passed enclosure after enclosure where all we could see was a distant lump of fur in a tree top (sun bears), a streak of orange against the far fence (tigers) or absolutely nothing at all (wombats, lions, cheetahs and otters).

Some of the enclosures were being refitted so we couldn't see anything (the crocodile Simmo was having his glass replaced and was supposed to be in his outdoor home...he wasn't so we trod carefully until we were faaaaaaaar away) and the dingo enclosure was empty after the death of their last dingo, Durka. I always love visiting the dingo so I was very sad when I learned he had died :(

There were however a few animals who were being very voyeuristic. The Little Penguins are always good for a laugh, however stinky they may be. The elephants were demonstrating how strong they are by carrying around big tree trunks. The orangutans were being very orangutany and usually I'm not a fan but they had babies and were being very cute. The Meerkats are adorable as always and were doing very cute Meerkat things. The rhinos started to get into a fight, there was some stamping and a few horn butts but they settled down eventually.
The most surprising of the day though was one of the hyenas. Usually you hardly see the hyenas as they're always bloody asleep. But one hyena was having a bath in the pond by one of the viewing windows. He was jumping around, splashing, scratching, looking very cute and then he would go bounding off, run all the way around the enclosure (which is pretty big) and then eventually he would come running back and jump into the pond with a huge splash. It made my day :)

I'm just sorry I didn't get any photos but as it was a surprise trip I didn't think I'd have any need of my camera. I did however go to the gift shop afterward; a place I normally avoid since I spend too much money there. I ended up leaving with a zoo calendar, a froggie cookie cutter and a spiderweb necklace. I plan to make froggie cookies soon so I shall get photos and post them here :)

A productive afternoon

I had one of those eye opening moments today about my house. You know the type. Each week you tidy the house, do the floors, clean the bathroom, get the laundry done. The house if tidy and you think nothing more of it. Then all of a sudden, you actually *look* at your house and go 'My God! It's filthy!'. Yeah, one of those moments.
It happened when I was doing the dishes this afternoon and I looked out the kitchen window and realised I could hardly see out of the window. We've been in this house for three years and we've never washed the windows! How bad is that??? The amount of dust and grime on them, inside and out, was disgraceful. And then I started looking around the house and started seeing other things. Not just the accumulated dirt, but half completed or never started jobs, things that needed fixing, those sorts of things.
And so I made a list. I figured if I wrote down what I thought needed doing, then maybe it would poke at my memory every now and then and I would actually get around to completing these tasks (or nagging Christian to do the ones I can't do).

Clean the windows.
Wash the curtains.
Put up curtain rod and hang curtain in laundry.
Buy rod and curtain and hang in study.
Mow and edge the lawn.
Put in simple retic system for back lawn.
De-cobweb outside of house.
Clean off top of fridge.
Clean out kitchen cupboards.
Clean out bathroom cupboards.
Pot dwarf lemon tree.
Put up brush fencing along retaining wall.

Quite the list eh? And I didn't even include clearing out all the junk in time for our next curb side collection and de-skanking my yard. I've already started on the yard. Last week I dug out all the old, dead grass from out the back, smoothed down all the dirt and have put down some lawn seed (which probably won't take since it's the wrong time of year to plant but I was feeling optimistic). Our yard has just become really run down over time; to be honest, it was never really up to scratch in the first place. The backyard at least was pretty much a blank canvas when we bought the house off Dad and apart from my pots and a demented attempt at re-doing the lawn (major fail!) we haven't really done much except accumulate crap and grow weeds. I know my neighbourhood is Dodgeville but I'm sick of blending in with the trailer park trash who surround me (uncharitable I know but somewhat justified). Anyway, I'm hoping that our bulk collection will be soon so we can throw away all the junk that's built up round the place so I can start getting the yard organised.

Sorry, I digressed quite a bit there...I was talking about my list! So anyway, I wrote the list and then decided, you know what? It may be half past two on a Sunday afternoon but it's not too late to get started.
Christian also inspired me because he decided to change the washers in all the taps around the house since they hadn't been done in a while. So I started with washing the curtains from the kitchen, bathroom, toilet and the curtain that's destined for the laundry. Then I washed the kitchen window and the laundry sliding doors. The outside of the house got de-cobwebbed and I also put WD40 on all the interior doorknobs so they would stop squeaking. I made a trip to Bunnings to get a part for the spare curtain rod we have here and while I was there I bought a pot for my lemon tree and a new peg bag for the washing line. I got back only to discover I had bought the wrong part for the rod. And so I went all the was back to Bunnings, only to find they didn't have the part we needed so I had to buy a whole new curtain rod. When I got home I discovered it was an inch too long to fit in the laundry...we can put that rod up in the study but I have to buy curtains for in there first. I almost cried.

So by this time it was getting late and so I gave up on my list for now. But considering I started so late in the arvo, I thought I'd accomplished quite a lot off it. I'm just hoping that I can get everything on it done since that would make me feel a lot better.