47 Days: Vale Maggie

Maggie came into our lives about three years ago. She landed on my mother's doorstep one day, hungry and bedraggled. Nobody knew where she came from. She had no identifying marks. She just appeared.

Being my mother, she told Maggie straight up that she had better skeddaddle or she would end up with a bullet from The Mister. She ignored the fact that this poor, hungry urchin was dancing around her legs.

Half an hour later, my mother finds this scallywag on the back porch being fed ham - by The Mister.

Ham is much better than a bullet. It seems that The Mister, who tries to say that he's not a cat person, was completely won over. One day, somebody will tell my step-father that he is a cat person, he's just in denial.

And about the bullet - this was a real bullet. We're from the country - guns are used for vermin control. My parents live in the country and feral cats are a huge problem - and they are regularly dispensed with by the application of a shot gun. It's an unfortunate fact of life. They also get a lot of animals which are dumped arriving on the doorstep. It's revolting to think that people would dump a pet in the country - as Maggie certainly was - she was too tame, too friendly - and as my parents found out an hour later, house trained).

A week later, the aforesaid Maggie, named because she looked like a magpie, was micro chipped, wormed, spayed, vaccinated, registered and presented my my niece, who at the time was fighting leukaemia. Maggie and Lolly got on like a house on fire. The best of friends.

On Lauren's passing, Maggie helped my sister and her family get through the grief of the loss of Loll.

Maggie was always a character cat. Loved a game. Loved a chase. She loved getting into mischief. She wasn't particularly sociable, but she loved her family. And they will be forever grateful that she was around after the loss of both Loll, and Bozley, the family dog.

It appears that Maggie is no more. She didn't come home for dinner on Monday night, and she hasn't been heard from since. My sister and brother-in-law have scoured the neighbourhood - but to no avail.

Tonight, they heard that a small black and white cat was seen dead in the gutter not far from my sister's place. It matched her description.

The family are devastated - including my mother who was looking forward to babysitting this little cat next week. (and you wonder where I get it)

I'll be hugging Maow Maow extra tight tonight.

So, vale Maggie, you strange little beast. I hope you're happy across the rainbow bridge.

Bloody animals. They get under your skin.


Today's Song:

48 Days: The Technicality

My kid brother challenged me to posting a song which was less than five years old for a week. He says that I only listen to music which was produced when he was in primary school. My kid brother is 26. He is very cheeky.

I will admit - I've struggled with this challenge. My music comes from the eighties and nineties. I have really eclectic tastes, which run from The Pixies and Talking Heads, right through Phil Collins and Billy Joel (apologies to anybody who lived next to me at college) through to the best of Brit Pop and some Australian classics.

So ask me to actually name some songs which were actually produced in the last five years. Yeah, well.... next question. Let's go back to who is better - Talking Heads or the Violent Femmes.

There is gym music, which I have drawn on. Gym music is the music which is on the screens at the gym, normally filed with women wearing very few clothes making suggestive moves with their hips, singing about umbrellas, which aren't umbrellas.

I also buy the Triple J Hot 100 most years, though lately, I've begun to wonder what all this crap is about. There are a few good things on these compilations - but not that many.

And okay, I like Tash Sultana, Amy Shark, The Wombats and Alt-J - they are on serious rotation in the car.

But I've had a bit of trouble with this last song. Finding a song which I really like, but was made in the last five years.

So I've got this one on a technicality. The song was produced in 2016. The band - The Pixies, have been around since the late eighties. It's from their latest album - Head Carrier - which has a Bossanova feel about it. (Bossanova, the album, not the dance style).

So I am now feeling thankful I can go back to not having find a young song.

But the challenge is completed - and this will go on to finding songs that I like for my song of the day (and my ultimate play list).

Today's Song:

49 Days: Nanette

The weekend was awesome. Lots of cat cuddles. Alice and I found a location for our joint birthday party. The weather was great. I made Chicken Cacciatore. Gloria came around for a reflexology session, followed by some of the aforesaid Chicken Cacciatore.

The reflexology session was assisted by Maow Maow, who climbed up onto Gloria's chest and spent the session purring at her. She loved this. Gloria has two very antisocial Siamese - having a boofhead like Maow Maow about made her day.



Once the treatment was over, food was served and Gloria and I sat down to watch Hannah Gadsby's Nanette.

I've wanted to see this for a while. I also knew that Gloria would like to see this.

Gloria and I are very different people, but share some commonalities. We're both spiritual. We're both of Cornish descent. We both love animals, brought up in the country and had pretty miserable childhoods. We bonded in meditation many years ago.

Gloria, who is now in her mid-sixites, is also gay.

I don't see people as gay or straight - I just see people. But you really can bond over a shared knowledge that you are one of "the other". For Gloria, it's her sexuality. For me, well. I grew up the "crippled, weird" kid.

This fact has always made me sensitive to the needs of "The Other". Being "the Other" has made me empathetic.

There was something that told me Gloria needed to see Nanette as much as I did.

Nanette is one of the best pieces of television I have ever had the honour to witness. It's amazing stuff. Funny, powerful, sad, excoriating, brutal. This is the stuff you don't see enough of on telly.

The first half of Nanette is very funny. Very, very, self-effacingly funny.

The second half is where the pathos comes into effect. Hannah Gadsby is angry. She's furious. And rightly so.

I remember holding council with Gloria when the awful plebishite was going on here. I listened and bore witness to many LGBTI friends at this time - conscious that the persecution they were feeling was so very real and incredibly deep.

The second half of Nanette had me weeping.

You could have heard a pin drop in the Sydney Opera House that night.

Hannah Gadsby is now playing this show in New York.

She gives her reasons for giving up comedy in this show.

And between the tears, and the gasps and the fist pumps you understand fully, why she wants to do this.

The story about her mother tore me to shreds. There were other stories. Horrific stories, that had me wanting to hold this very, very brave woman.

Most of all, I want to shake her hand and say thank you. For her bare faced honesty.

Here is the Atlantic's take on it.

As the final credits rolled, Gloria and I dried our tears. I think, best of all, Nanette has given a tangible voice to "the other" Not only the LGBTI community, but for anybody who has felt that they were's an accepted part of society.

Me, the fat, crippled, weird kid - she gave me a voice too.

Nanette is required viewing. It's on Netflix at the moment. Save yourself a quiet hour. grab a glass of wine and a box of tissues, and see the power of a woman standing in her power.

As she says in one of her last lines of the show, there is nothing more powerful than a broken woman who has had to rebuild herself completely.

Hannah Gadsby is now one of my heroes. May she remain strong and find some peace. She deserves it.



Today's Song:

50 Days: The I Love A Parade Meme

Oh today's song is soooooooo apt. It sums up what I think of parades.

I am Australian. We have a military parade on Anzac Day (25 April) and we have a children's parade at Moomba (Second Monday in March - where they also waterski on the Yarra River (ew) and Adelaide has a yearly Christmas Pageant. And that's it.

Oh, I forgot Pride - I've been on a few Pride marches. But Pride is as much a demonstration than a parade.m

We're Australian. We don't do parades.

Questions - as always, but Bev at Sunday Stealing.


1. Do you like parades? 

Not really - I wouldn't go out of my way to see one. Better things to do

2. Rate the following parade attractions in order of affection:

I like horses. That's about it.

*. horses;
*. marching bands
*. floats;
*. anything that gives away candy:
*. politicians ride in cars?
*. antique cars/tractors;
*. fire trucks;

3. Have you ever been in a parade?

I was a clown in the Christmas Pageant in Adelaide about thirty years ago. That was fun. Drunk before 9 am - never a bad thing.

4. Do you bring lawn chairs to parades? 

What's a lawn chair? Oh, fold up chair. No.

5. Does it bother you to have to park a long way from the parade, and then walk back to the car afterwards?

Not really applicable as I'm not American and I don't do parades.

6. Do you wave at people you know? 

I wave to people anyway. Why would a parade be different?

7. At people you don't know?

Of course. Normally to say thanks for letting me into the traffic.

8. Do you take pets -dogs particularly - to parades? 

I don't have any pets - well I have visiting cats, but they would hate the crowds.

9 Have you ever been to a big parade in person (Rose Bowl, Macy's, etc)? 

No. The Pride March in London about 20 years ago was fantastic. Had a great day there - there were about 50000 people marching down to Hyde Park.

10. Do you attend more warm weather or cold weather parades? 

I'm Australian. It is not in our nature to hold a parade.


Today's Song:

51 Days: The Empath and the Woo Woo

This morning I took myself off to meditation this morning, my ultimate playlist on the car stereo. There was a sense of peace as I made my way out to Caulfield with the knowledge that I wouldn't need to flick over any songs. The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, James Blunt and Jeff Beck - an awesome drive was had.

I made it in good time -  a bit of a rarity for me as I normally burst into the meditation room as the session in starting. I took my seat on the sofa in the circle in which I have been meditating for ten years.This is a closed circle. You need to have studied Kabbalah under our teacher to attend. I sat down next to Gloria, who I have been sitting next to in meditation for the last ten years. We've had the same spots in the circle over all this time. Maybe there is a reason why she and I sit in the North East of the room, but we've never really known why we've had the same spots. It's just the way this meditation group goes.

Today's meditation was on the path of Judgement. Malkuth to Hod. The path of family. A path of seeing your own way forward. It equates to the letter Shin (ש) in Hebrew. The coming to the knowledge that you're going to have to make your way in the world.

The meditation has a format. We start the the Kabbalistic Cross - a simple blessing which equates to the lines in the Lord's Prayer, "For thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory". We then construct the Kabbalah Tree of Life in ourselves before taking off on our guided meditation.



After that, I can remember about two minutes of the meditation. Of late, I've been falling asleep once I've lit up the tree. Today, I made it until we met Prometheus, tied to a rock being eaten by an eagle. Great. I have to book from which we get our meditations. I appears I was asleep for about 80% of the session. The next thing I know, the tree has nearly been closed and I've been asleep for about half an hour. Thankfully this time, I didn't snore. I've been known to do that.

We go for breakfast afterwards. I've been going to breakfast after meditation with Gloria and Dee for many, many years. Were joined by two others. As is our habit, we out the world to rights. Dee is big into environmental and indigenous issues. Gloria is also very socially aware. I live for my second Saturday breakfasts.

However, today's meditation had more of an affect on Gloria. Coming into our cafe, she was on the verge of tears. This is a reasonably common occurrence - the meditations are very powerful. I think this is why I fell asleep today. Gloria, on the other hand, had to sweat it out.

It has come to pass that it's my job to bring things back to a level. It's my 'talent'. One of the joys of being an empath - and a healer.

Before the coffee's came, I started my work. We tried a couple of methods of bringing her out of her funk. Working on chakras. Making her laugh. Stomping her feet. All this managed to do was bring her  tears closer to the surface. In the end, it took a long bear hug to get her to start coming around.

This meditation stuff can be dangerous.

Regardless, I've been sent back into doing Woo Woo.

Woo Woo?

If I'm honest, the witchy stuff is my other vocation. I don't think about doing this stuff. It's something I have to do.

My witchy stuff. The healer stuff. The things I do which help people to start the healing process. I'm not bad at it, I'm told - but after a break, I'm having more and more people come to me for healing work - whether it be tarot, reflexology, theta healing, reiki - you name it, I seem to do it.

Gloria is coming around tomorrow night for a session.

I can't tell you what will go on. I don't know myself.

It's a hard thing to describe what happens in a session. As I have to do all of this with my intuition. I have to listen to this inner voice to see what works.

But it doesn't work, and cannot work all the time. It doesn't work on people who don't want to be helped. It also doesn't work that well for those going through huge and painful episodes. In the latter situation, all you can do is be there for the person and hold their pain.

One thing that I constantly remind myself of as I do this work. You can't heal everybody.

I'm curious to see what will come out of tomorrow night's session. Gloria and I have done some incredible and deep work in the past. Who knows what will come up.

And after that, we're going to watch Hannah Gadsby at the Sydney Opera House.

For one of the best healing agents in the world is laughter.

Today's Song: (And for my brother, this gem comes from 2015 - though not a real fan of rap, I love the Hilltop Hoods)

52 Days: A night at home with the cat

That is about it. It's Friday night, I had an early dinner, came home, showered, and I am spending the night with the cat and we're watching Suits.

I'm an introvert. I need nights in.

Myers Briggs has me tagged as an INFJ. I need lots of time off from people.

It's been a big week.

I was out of the house at 7 am as I had to meet some real estate agents about selling the temple.

I'm knackered.

I'm thinking about making a hot chocolate with 90% Lindt and Macadamia milk.

I'm in my pyjamas.

There is my new hot water bottle warming the bed.

The cat is snoring on his blue snuggie on the couch. It's his snuggie now. Just as his blue teddy is at the foot of the couch. He loves his blue teddy. I think I've adopted a toddler, not a cat. Just as needy in many ways.

The #Darvey fandom are in overdrive. Just don't mention the strawberries.

I should be addressing selection criteria for another job prospect - but I have until Sunday evening to do that, so I won't do it tonight.

I'll just continue to watch Suits and talk to the cat.

And this is about as close to bliss as I can get.


Today's Song:

53 Days: Your my favourite waste of time

I want to write the great Australian novel, but I am very good at one thing which is stopping me.

Procrastinating.

I am very good at procrastinating.

Dictionary.com describes procrastinating as the act of delaying or deferring an action. It comes from the Latin, Procrastinatus - to put off until tomorrow. See - I procrastinated there by looking up the Latinate of this word. The Oxford English Dictionary was made for procrastinators.

Which is slightly different to equivocators. (Faith, here's an equivocator!) Equivicators are people who equivocate, which is described as "to use ambiguous or unclear expressions, usually to avoid commitment or in order to mislead; prevaricate or hedge."

Equivocators and procrastinators are as bad as each other. In the words of the Porter in Macbeth (Act 2, scene 3) "Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. O, come in, equivocator."

I didn't have to look that one up. I just like spouting Shakespeare. It's another form of procrastination.

But I equivocate. I'm talking about procrastination.

I have favourite ways to procrastinate when writing. There are some good ways to procrastinate.

Some of the things I do include:

• Planning the ultimate holiday (Suite at the Plaza, New York, anyone? Business class of course)
• Sorting the ultimate playlist
• Cleaning the bathroom - which is procrastinating and useful at the same time
• Reading - never a waste of time but it doesn't get jobs done.
• Talking to the cat - and I have a cat to talk to at the moment
• Going to the gym
• Candy Crush / Clash of Clans / Words with Friends
• Binge watching whatever takes your fancy - currently Younger (on Stan - and 20 minute episodes means you can put it down easily), Harrow, The Handmaid's Tale, Suits and Billions are all up there.

Then there is the hard core procrastination. This is the guilty pleasures which really shouldn't be classed as procrastinating. These are the hard core habits that you don't really like to admit to.

My current sanity procrastination is Darvey fan fiction. Darvey. Yeah. I won't say any more other than it is a Bermuda Triangle of bad writing. You can't look away. 

It's awesome.

And my favourite waste of time. Just don't tell anybody.

Right, time to find tomorrow's song of the day. (Procrastinating again instead of doing the ironing)

Today's Song: