Because I can ...

The other day, much to my despair and annoyance, I noticed one of my back hubcaps was missing (the car people, the CAR!). I have no idea when it fell off, let alone where it's laying naked without it's wheel and as yet, I'm still to find out how to replace it. How hard can it be? Ring the Ford dealership, tell them my woes...get new hubcap...wa la! But THEN...driving up my street last night, I spied a car parked outside a house that's a few doors down from my own. I pulled up to the kerb (carefully mind you, can't have another one breaking free now can I?). Me: "Hey, that red car over there...are those hubcaps the exact same design that we've got on our car?" Cameron: "Um, dunno." Me: *pushing him whilst gazing at the other car* "Well get out and go do some comparison." Cameron: *sighing but opening car door* I don't see what difference it makes anyway." Me: "Well, how do we know they didn't steal one off our car

This is it for the day. I got nothing to add. Ah well...still...better than a poke in the eye, right? And speaking of pokes, how about the HNT people that come in here for a visit today, pin my map on the sidebar there. I'd love to see where yall are at!

This is probably something you're already aware of, but possibly not using. This is part of an HTML code for your posts or templates if you want to use it. When you put a link in your post, if you don't use this type of HTML code along with that link, then the reader will be taken away from your page...to the link. Of course, you want them to view the link, but if they click on it and they haven't read your whole post yet...well..sometimes they may not even come back to read the rest of your post. *gasp* And who wants to be writing such wonderful posts, to find that readers only get as far as the link you've put on there, right? Imagine all the wonderful reading material they've missed out on??! Imagine sitting here writing all that magnificent material to find they don't read it all??! (*slaps hands on sides of face crying "OH NO!"*) For example: Let's say we linked my sweetheart Walker. We click on the 'link' icon while we're creating

I came home from work today to find 7 teenage boys strewn in various positions around my lounge. The house was all closed up, the temperature was fairly warm, so make that 7 teenagers stewing in their own smell in my lounge. Ok, it wasn't that bad, I wasn't overwhelmed with it or anything, but even so. Cameron had moved his computer out to the lounge, hooked it up to the tv and they were all glued to the screen when I walked in the door. Except Ryan...who made it his business to walk straight at me as I entered...his finger at his mouth "sssshhhhh". So much for being the king of my home an' all that. Ah well, at least they feel comfortable being here...that's a good thing. Right, change of subject. A couple of weeks ago, the police turned up at work. They were enquiring about one of our patients. Apparently he'd not been heard from in a while and a relative from Auckland (near the top of the North Island) had become concerned about him. We hadn'

Dear Fizzy Some days life can feel like it's so much bigger than us. Sometimes we can feel we've bitten off more than we can chew... we feel trapped... it's like there's something right there, but we can't quite put our finger on it. There are days when our children don't want to know us. Days when we feel like we're just one of the crowd. And, Oh my god, the housework.... Some of us are plagued with bad hair days. Quite frankly, some days we just don't want to face the outside world *sigh* Then there are the really cool times. Like, when we take off outdoors to spend time with our families. Times we just want to sit around and ponder life and reflect on it's meaning. These are the kinda days we feel exhilerated and free to mix with the big boys. You my dear Fizzy, are one of a kind. You can have the world chasing your arse... and you still come up smiling. Your caring, sweet nature...your drive to succeed and your love and compassion for your family

Now come on....do you REALLY think I'd go ahead and bare my body for the whole world to see? Well, you know what I mean...maybe three extremely drunk guys sitting at the foot of the stage. To them I'd be the best stripper they ever saw....even if all they saw were my hands floating back and forth on either side of the pillar. I know there were a few of you, who that had your suspicions that I wouldn't do anything like that. The fact that the doubt was there is encouraging to read. Course, it also means you're not really sure I wouldn't be nuts enough to do such a thing....that's not a bad thing either I reckon. Keep the crowd guessing etc etc. So, no, I've not signed up to become an exotic dancer. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just don't have the balls and bravado (same thing?) to subject the audience to my nakedness. It scares the shit out of me at the best of times...it's surely going to horrify and cause trauma to them. They&#

Ya know I should start up some kinda weekly radio post....considering the amount of blog fodder I get from the radio on a regular basis. I listen to the car radio....reverse in a hurry up the driveway....slam the car door and run up the stairs to the house chanting "I've got a post, I've got a post". Works for me. Polly mentioned she was sitting on a plane the other day next to an exotic dancer. Most of us know that means stripper right? Anyway, they got to talking and Polly asked the lady what songs she likes to dance to the most. I'm sorry I can't remember her response. But it got Polly to thinking that if she was a dancer what music would she like to dance to. Polly opted for anything by Barry White. She reckoned that Barry White sings such sexy songs that everyone would get turned on by the music, and not notice that she may not be looking so sexy as she's taking her clothes off (I can kinda relate to that logic, although as far as I'm aware

Behold. My HNT offering for the day. It's 4.30pm Thursday here, so it's not an early posting, it's just that the rest of you are too slow on the time zone calendar lol Straight from the shower...I give you.... my feet To be honest, I'm not sure how many more of these I can take without the help of someone else. Look at the tension and position of those toes...it's obvious they feel under stress at trying to stay in one position long enough for their owner to take the photo! Poor babies. Told you I had strong (read "flat and wide") polynesian feet, didn't I? Perfect for walking across coral reefs. Apparently. I can't even walk across gravel without the expletives flying. So the coral's a no go. BUT ...I reckon I could. If I concentrated really hard. So please don't let my sissy feet stop you from giving me a free ticket to an island of your choice. Any island. I don't mind. Honest... YOUR choice...I'm THAT generous.

*ring ring* Me: "Hello?" Anna: "Hiya! I found another song I want you to download and listen to!" Me: "For the wedding?" Anna: "Yeah" Me: "To walk down the aisle to, do you mean?" Anna: "Yeah, Jason loves it too. I want to know what you think." Me: "Ok...sure" Anna: "Listen to the lyrics, they're awesome!" I downloaded the song and listened to it wearing one ear of the headset, the phone pressed against my other. I listened, she sat quietly waiting. I listened and then attempted to speak to her. Tried to tell her what I thought. It was practically hopeless...I was envisaging her walking down the aisle to this music. Over the lump in my throat I managed to croak out... "It's lovely" *sniff* Anna: (to her co-workers in the background) "We've found a winner folks, she's crying!" *bursts of cheers and laughter from the background* How she expects me to be able to get up in

Walker and I have had a fairly rocky time together this past week. Couple that with the frustration of being so far away from each other...well...let's just say, it can create enough pent up energy and emotion to blow the top off a volcano that's been dormant for a zillion years. Course, this causes the "ash affect". Anything and everything in it's path will be touched as it scatters itself around on it's float back to earth. Neither of us have been well this week. Besides the fact that I've been drowned thoroughly in PMS, my neck glands are up (having a spongey, swollen double chin does nothing to improve my demeanor). I have ear ache, and I've been coughing so much my throat is raw (I know this because I got Dr R to check me out at the end of my shift yesterday morning). Walker has been very unwell, in fact he's been sick as a dog, hacking and coughing, having trouble catching his breath....sweating profusely (eww) with fever, his body'

Last night I discovered myself another celebrity crush. Yep, I sat there and watched the telly during NZ Idol and found myself pulled towards this young man. I wanted to jump into the television screen and grab this poor unsuspecting fellow and yell "Here I am!". You know those girls that you've seen leaping all over the roofs of cars and crying and screaming etc for the Beatles or whoever? (yeah I know...and yeah I am THAT old). I could see myself doing that over this chap. Oh yes indeedy. He had a bloody good time singing that song last night...and I had a bloody good time watching him. And then at the end of the show, I did something I've never done before. For the first time in the history of NZ Idol, I voted. Yep, I want to see him win....because I want to see some more of what he can do...I want to continue seeing him strutting his stuff. The two female judges were fanning themselves, the crowd had gone wild and the male judges were rolling their eyes at

Over the past couple of months, off and on, (which means, whenever we feel like it and we've the time), I've been reading a book to Walker over the headset. I can do this whilst sitting here in the lounge...I can stretch the cord of the headset to reach the sofa, so I have often ended up laying down on it while reading....and I can use my laptop set up in the bedroom. Sometimes we just don't want to spend hours and hours in front of the PC, but we want to spend time together, so the laptops are ideal. Walker has at least 3 laptops in his house. One set up in his tv room...one set up beside his desktop...and one permanently set up, upstairs in his bedroom. This allows us some flexibility to spend time together, but not having to be upright when we're tired. I've been known to cook dinner while talking with him or sitting in my lounge chair, feet up on the ottoman, giving myself a french manicure. I've done many things with the headset attached to my head...about

Morning all...I've just dropped Cameron (16) off at work. Well, actually, he dropped himself off. Seeing as he's had bugger all driving experience, I've been making him drive down to the bakery each weekend to at least pick up some confidence behind the wheel. Considering it's 5.50am when he takes to the streets, there's almost always absolutely no traffic whatsoever. On the rare occasion that another vehicle is seen tootling along at that hour of the morning, he tends to become extremely rigid and I have strong suspicions that his heart rate triples. Anyway, this morning is the second time he actually drove to work with a good amount of confidence and the speedo even reached over 40km (last weekend was the first). I'm thinking now he could be ready to take on the motorway during peak hour traffic. Well, maybe not yet, but it's a goal to work towards. I don't have a helluva lot to impart today, so I'm going to leave you with this and head back to bed

Right, firstly, let's get all the grumpy stuff out of the way. Don't panic, I aint gonna be harping on like I did yesterday, it's ok...oh....come back! *sigh* Thanks to all those that weathered my emotional blah de blah yesterday and commented. You guys rock! I am truly blessed to have such sporting and good hearted people read me and for this I am grateful. It's good to know we can say whatever the fuck we like (oh, can I say "fuck"? oh yeah, fucken right I can, cos this is my blog, we established that yesterday, doh). I'll start again...it's good to know we can say whatever we like, about whatever we like. Rant, gush, whatever, it's all good. Last night I spat out that post, then went offline to settle down and watch some telly. During this time, I attempted to pluck my eyebrows. Now, I don't have bushy eyebrows, but it'd been a few weeks since I'd touched them. Each morning before work, as I put the little amount of make-up on that I

Thanks to all those that commented on yesterday's post. I appreciated each and every one of your comments. Really I did. It's always interesting to view other's perspectives on what I write and the subjects I write about it. I won't finish off replying individually to the rest of your comments if you don't mind, I'm afraid I'm feeling in a rather grumpy mood tonight. It seems that I have offended some people with my post yesterday. This was certainly not my intention. I have no excuse for the 'tone' that I wrote it in. I was short of time and I didn't read back over it to check if there was a possibility that anyone would take offense to it. When I choose to write about the more serious issues in life, I tend to read those posts over and over again, look at them from as many angles as I can, and then if I'm comfortable with them I hit publish. Yesterday however, I wrote that post with one eye on the clock almost the entire time, and I hit pub

This morning on the radio, the DJs were discussing cervical smears. Polly has to go to have one at midday today, and the for the past couple of days they've been discussing this issue off and on. Polly's decided that she's going to have a microphone in the surgery while she has her smear today. Then this morning she receives an email from her Boss. He said that she needs to remember that between the hours of 8 and 8.30am in particular, that there are a lot of families listening in. He went onto say he wasn't feeling too comfortable about her having a microphone present and what did she think about doing a 'mock up' of it instead? Polly's pissed about this. One of the reasons she's been discussing this on air is because cervical cancer is increasing. It's an important issue for us women, and for a man, any man, to feel uncomfortable about her discussing it hacks her off. So what if he feels uncomfortable?? How the hell does he think WE feel ab

This is an update on things you may have been wondering about. I just know that you spend most of your day thinking about me and my life, so it's bound to have crossed your minds. 1. Whatever happened to the young guy at work that you were bitching about the other week? After the first balls-up of him arriving so late that first Monday (after I returned to work, he'd already been working there a couple of weeks), I spent the next few days bossing him around. I told him I didn't know what he knew or what he didn't know, so if he could please put up with me telling him what to do, I'll eventually find out. I also told him to feel free to boss me back and to tell me if he knew that already. He wanted to apply for the job, so over the course of that week I talked with him about the necessity of being on time for each shift...I helped him with the various procedures around our office...and I explained so many protocols about the why's and wherefores of just about eve

I'm hoping to get around you all and catch up later tonight. I've visited most of my favourite sites and caught up on what you've been doing, but I haven't commented as yet. Course, by the time I can return to you later this evening, my comments will be null and void because you've bound to have posted something else. Oh, also just wanted to let the postcard people know that I have in fact posted them out (that's the cards, not the people). I keep meaning to let you know, but then I kept forgetting, doh. I posted them last Tuesday. The amazing thing is... Mr Haney sent me an email this weekend, to say he'd received his on Saturday. That's only 4 days after I sent it! Pretty impressive postal services I reckon. Anyway, the only site I did comment on when I returned home on MY Sunday evening (not to be confused with YOUR Sunday evening), was Michael Whitt's. Danielle Jade Whitt finally arrived this weekend. Saturday, September 10, at 8.41am.

I had a lovely Saturday/Sunday with my Dad, my brother-in-law and both my sisters. My younger sister also lives up the coast, so she came up with her two kiddies both days and we had the chance to catch up. It was wonderful. Right now, I'm a bit on the tired side. The weather was GLORIOUS and sitting out in the sun has drained me. All that sitting around and chatting, whilst watching my brother-in-law working hard putting down paving stones was quite exhausting really. I discovered this weekend that my brother-in-law is somewhat of a pyromaniac (my 5 yr old nephew is also showing major signs of this). Unfortunately, I didn't capture any evidence on camera. There was a fair amount of scrub being burnt, so instead of coming home smelling sweetly of apples, I stink of smoke. I'm not bothered in the least, it's not like I've never smelled of smoke before lol. I'll write a little more about it in the next couple of days. I stole this off FredandFreds' site .

I won't be around much at all this weekend, if at all. I have to word it that way, cos if I tell you I'm not going to be here at all, and then suddenly turn up without warning, you'll all brand me a liar. Not a good look. My Dad's in town, which means he's come over from the South Island to the North Island, and staying up the coast with my older sister. My oldest sister and her husband bought an apple orchard a couple of years ago. My Dad, now retired and living with Mum in the apple orchard metropolis of kiwiland, has come north to impart some of his apple wisdom. This can be translated into...works his 72 year old body tirelessly for the love of the great apple god...and...get's in the way constantly. My Dad is a full-blooded pacific islander. He comes to us from Niue (yeah I know, I'd never heard of it before I was born either)...it's one of the tiniest islands in the pacific. It's claim to fame being that it's the largest attol in the Pacifi

Yesterday when I arrived home (after saying hello to all those present), Cam told me a parcel had come for me. A parcel? For ME?? How COOL! Sitting on the table in the dining room was a package wrapped in brown paper...and it came to me all...the...way...from...ENGLAND!! I would show you a photo of how well it was wrapped, but without thinking I immediately launched myself upon it and 10 seconds later it was looking like this. Sorry, but the adrenalin of the excitement got the better of me...and I started ripping it apart before thinking about how good it looked just as a parcel. The below is the contents (sorry bad lighting always makes for bad out-of-focus pics in the household of Internet Lovers). The pear drops are the first thing I opened. I had to really. I do believe it was a comment I made about never having heard of pear drops before that prompted this package on it's journey to Down Under...so pear drops had to come first. Very yummy! Now...the Thorntons toffee was a diff

I never thought too much about the response I was going to get to yesterday's post while I was writing it. Yet, I'm not surprised by the responses either. Thank you all so very much for offering your opinions and sharing your own stories with me. I appreciated each and every comment you made. A special thanks to Gabby , who wrote her post yesterday for me. Thank you also Gabby for 'trackback'ing me. First time I've ever had a number next to the trackback option...a small thrill for me, but a good one nonetheless lol. Several years ago I was invited to my friends' son's 16th birthday party. She had decided she would serve some alcohol and rang around the parents of the kids that were invited to ask if they were opposed to her doing this. From what I can gather the majority had given their consent...the few that weren't happy about it kept their kids away for the evening. The party was well planned, and there were about 2 adults for every teenager there. I

I've been thinking about my boys growing up (as ya do). Or more precisely, about alcohol and my children growing up and thinking about their consumption of it. When does this start? I mean, I know the laws and legalities of what age they're allowed to start drinking in public, but now that they're older, should I be introducing it to them at home slowly in some sort of way? Years ago when they were about 11 and 12, Anna and I took them out for dinner at a local restaurant and I ordered a shandy for them both (mixture of beer and lemonade for anyone who does know). I told the barman to put more lemonade than beer. I just wanted to show them it was ok to have a little bit, and that despite what they could've overheard about what I've said about their Dad drinking, that I wasn't going to forbid the stuff completely passing their lips. Besides, I think if I was giving the impression it was evil, they'll be hitting the liquor store with a mission from the tim

Years ago Michael tagged me for this meme and I've not done anything about it until now. Ok, it wasn't years ago, but it seemed that long ago. Anyway, here's my contribution to the Meme of 7 thingys. 7 things I plan to do before I die: 1. Watch my children grow into two fine young gentlemen 2. Cry when they leave home to strike out on their own 3. Kiss and cuddle my grandchildren 4. See the Eiffel Tower and the London Bridge 5. Pay a visit to Jo and Fizzy with Walker 6 Own a home that's on one level, with plenty of space for all manner of computers and drumkits to fit 7. Get down to some kinda decent weight 7 things I can do: 1. Cook a mean vegetarian lasagne 2. Speak my mind (sometimes at the most inapporpriate times) 3. Know the inside of a PC better than anyone else at work (which says alot for them, poor sods) 4. Get plonked after only 2 wines 5. Always be there when my kids need me 6. Crave to be in too many places at one time 7. Drive my kids to work/school, whil

Here's my new 16 year old, playing with his cellphone and unsuspectingly getting his photo taken. He sees me. Then he's not happy that I'm still snapping pics of him. Then it occurs to him "OMG, you're going to put me on your blog aren't you??!" Me: *ignoring question* "Come on, just smile for the camera" Him: "Aw Mum, why do you insist on doing this to us as often as possible?" Because I can, that's why. MWAH AH AAAAAAAH!!

We had an awesome time at dinner last night. The boys thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Not feeling so great today, spent most of it in bed (and not due to a hungover either lol). Cam's been unwell the past few days, and I took him to the doc on Wednesday morning. He went back to school Thursday morning...not because he was feeling any better...but because he thought if he wasn't there, his mates wouldn't turn up for dinner that night lol. Whatever he's got, has now shared itself with me...thus, both of us doped ourselves up on neurofen tablets and went out for dinner with his friends. My ex-husband brought his girlfriend with him. She'd arrived back in the country that morning, and insisted on coming for dinner too. That's fine, I had taken that into account, should she have wanted to join us. Problem I had was they sat down one end of the table, while I sat down the other, although I was hoping us 3 adults would be sitting together. Once I came back from parking

It's Cameron's 16th birthday today. I've been completely unorganised for it, although I've asked him several times over the past month about what he'd like. The thought of professional driving lessons and a gym membership crossed my mind. I was hoping to go for something that had nothing to do with his PC or Dual Screen. Eventually it hurt too much to be creative, and I opted out. I bought him World of Warcraft and a two month membership to start him off online. It did occur to me that some kids get cars on their 16th birthday...and considering I've got bugger all money, I'm happy he doesn't know how to drive properly yet. Tonight, his father, brother and I, along with some of his friends are going out for dinner. Because he's so into anything to do with Japan, we're going to a Japanese restaurant where they cook the food in front of you, throw bowls of rice, and raw eggs etc at you. 6.40am: Me: *shake shake* " Cam? " Cam: "Hmph?&