Don't listen to teenagers

My nearly 14 year old daughter tells me that I swear too much. She says that, instead of sayingthe naughty cuss words, I should just yell 'PENIS' when I need to swear. She says that it is a proper biological term and that people are perfectly entitled to say it out loud.So, this afternoon, when I dropped the hedge clippers on my foot, I yelled out "PENIS".
She thought that was cool; my next door neighbour not so much

Icecream and Hand Grenades

The phrase 'I need to dig deeper to find the cows' is not commonly used in reference to eating icecream. This isn't any common icecream, however. This is Ben and Jerry's Vermonty Python Icecream.

For you lesser mortals, who don't have access to this sort of thing, Vermonty Python Icecream is actually ' Coffee Liqueur Ice cream with Chocolate Cookie Crumb Swirl & Fudge Cows'. Yes, Fudge Cows, appropriately capitalized to indicate the serious awesomeness of such a concept. I am in love with this country right now.


I washed the cows down with Pumpkin flavoured beer, left over from that pumpkiny season of Halloween. I think such a partnership was designed in heaven.


Oh, and whilst I was purchasing the icecream from the open 24 hours petrol station I also bought a hand grenade. It's part of America's Arm-a-Toddler Campaign and encourages parents to get their children used to firepower early.

This one is a present for somebody back in Australia. I hope his mother still speaks to me afterwards. I wouldn't, what with the Australian lack of fudge cow icecream and all.

going down

I went sledding up the little hill you see behind me. It was very exhilarating but I failed to realise that part of the reason for said exhilaration was that my purple plastic overpants had come part way down on one particular spill.

Hence, everytime I stacked it after that, snow was filling the inside of my pants, so that I ended up looking rather like a baby with a very full nappy. Like the baby, I ended up with a wet bottom.

Saturday

We get up late on Saturdays, Paul makes breakfast, I do laundry, we grocery shop, and then we usually go out for the day, taking the camera and a picnic of sorts.

This Saturday we went to Whitbey Island, an actual island in Puget Sound, taking a 20 minute ferry ride across, drive on and drive off.

It was interesting to see that before any car was allowed to board, the dog squad had to check it out for signs of explosives. So Fido was sniffing all over every car, underneath and on top and sticking his great furry arsehole in my face, by the passenger side door as he nosed under the wheel well. Thankfully he declared us not terrorists and we could drive on.

We saw a bald eagle. Paul got really excited over this because he's never been so close to one before. (They are the American National Symbol, you know). I stalked it in a riveting series of shots from the road, across marshy frozen swampland, to the extent that it ceased looking like a pole and started to look like a bird. A BIG bird with a nasty sharp beak and talons, who didn't seem very appreciative of my presence. Just after this shot was taken it turned around and squawked aggressively at me and I felt judged as to my suitability for dinner. Really, I think Australia has the better idea, being not unduly respectful of our National Animal, thus not giving it delusions of grandeur. Being turned into dog food makes most creatures pretty humble.


The beach actually looks like the photos above, believe it or not. There are subtle differences from our Australian ones. Such as no sand, heaps of driftwood, huge popping seaweed. Oh, and icicles and snow. I'm not swimming.

A beautiful day, walking around and driving.

The way home was via the highway and the odd comfort stop.
They have amazing rest stops here in America. They are manned by volunteers and offer free coffee and donuts for all comers. Plus they have toilets, rather than bushes for the necessary.

American toilets are very weird though. They look more like bidets, with wide very shallow bowls, no variable flush and everything is porcelain. Very clean though, and available almost anywhere you go, regardless of whether you are actually patronizing the particular establishment wherein the facilities lie.

People think I'm strange for taking flash pictures of toilets. Hell, they think I'm strange anyway.

It's snowing!

I am so excited. I love snow. I guess its because of coming from a land where there is very little and where you have to pay inordinate amounts to go and see it (at least when you've been living in Perth).

Not enough yet to make a snowman but the kids are having a day off school (snow day - a bit like our 42 degree go home rule, although that may be different now that there are airconditioners in all schools).

If it sticks, that is, not turn to rain and melt, then I'll make said snowman and use food colour to make the snow features stand out against the background.

Straight out of 'The Birds'

My parents were out to dinner and I stayed up late by myself watching an old rerun of 'The Birds'. I was so scared that I couldn't go to bed until they got back, some 3 hours later.

It left a scar and I really have never cared for birds since. Little ones are more tolerable but the bigger they are, the eviller they look and years of being swooped by magpies has only served to consolidate these beliefs.

Seagulls were always given a little bit of an out because thery are very amusing to me.
They clean up food and scraps, they aren't terribly aggressive as a rule, and there is always the delightful chance that they will crap copiously on somebody's head.

They've just lost their out.

People, look at the frigging size of those things here in America:
Guaranteed un-retouched. They have to be at least a third as big again as the ones in Australia. The first time I saw them, I asked Paul what type of birds they were and refused to believe his answers. I thought they might be albatrosses, they are that big.

This picture was taken from INSIDE the car, for safety purposes. That guy feeding them is either incredibly foolhardy or very brave. There was a mother with a kid over the way who was running to her car because this flock of a godzillion birds was after her child. If I had a baby I would not leave it unattended anywhere around here.

Look at the bottom one, perched on top of a sign around 40cm by 30 cm.
The warning is clearly a bluff. No freaking way anybody is getting close enough to those feathers to move it anywhere!

A treatise on health care

Today I got my first glimpse of privatised medicine. Somebodyhan't been well for a week or so,running fevers and with various aches and pains so he was finally pushed into a visit to the doctor, for an antibiotic script.

It was interesting to see the difference between our various health care systems so I thought I'd compare and contrast it to our Australian one. His employer pays a huge sum of money each month for his health care (around $800 a month, I believe) but this covers family as well, which unfortunately isn't me. He is what is known as a 'co-payer', which means that every doctor visit or prescription purchase or medical test has a certain amount that he must pay at the time. For his doctor visit it was $15 (total cost probably up there in the low hundreds), for the prescription it was $10, otherwise around $90.

He made an appointment yesterday morning, with his doctor of choice, and got one for 11.15 the same morning. I don't know how it is all over the rest of Australia but where I come from you called to get an appointment to be even put on the waiting list for any spare slots, with any doctor at all for that day.

I have developed a medical phobia over the last year or so, due to little things like misdiagnosis, accusations of drug seeking and being locked up 'for my own good' so I'm not too keen on anything medically oriented. I have developed the nasty habit of panic attacks in medical situations so I wasn't keen on going but equally, I wasn't going to let him go by himself because he was so unwell.

It was totally different to what I was expecting. The building itself looked nothing like a medical centre. We walked in and the first thing you saw was a great big coffee shop and the air was full of the scents of fresh brewed coffee and muffins. The actual waiting room had very few people in it and they they didn't look sick at all. There was a kid's play area but no children at all. Flowers, hardwood floor, soft carpet, high brow magazines..... very like a specialist office rather than a GP's suite.

$15 up front to the receptionist (by the way, all staff were dressed extremely casually, fleecy tops and jeans type of casual, no makeup etc. In the States they seem to be lot less dressier for work than Australians in the equivalent jobs would be), asked to take a seat, and then 2 minutes later we were called. According to the somebody, this time frame is usual.

We were taken to a tiny examining room where there was one half sized examining couch, and two chairs, a total space of around 4 metres square. A nurse took a blood temperature, pressure and symptomatic history. She then left and the doctor came in, around 3 minutes later.

This guy was the somebody's doctor of choice, a middle aged man inhis fifties. He immediately endeared himself to me by shaking my hand and introducing himself as he came in. He asked the somebody his opinion of his illness and was appreciative of some of the history I gave him about the illness and any treatment I had undertaken. He positively welcomed the proactive approach, something which hasn't happened very often in my own experience.

Then a prescription for antibiotics and a medical certificate for time off work.
This was a great medical experience for me, so different to anything in Australia, and totally makes me see why the issues of employer funded health benefits as part of an employment package are such a big deal here. I can't actually afford to get to a doctor myself, though. I do have comprehensive travel insurance that will cover the costs but I have to pay up front and then reclaim and we just don't have enough money.

So my little infection is still cooking and I'm hoping that Mother Nature can get her act into gear at some stage soon. Low grade fevers really suck and they give me such nasty dreams. The highlight of those nightmares is the one that involved me being chased around our kitchen counter by a beaver! It was a scary beaver, with a large thwappy tail, and very big front teeth; all gnashing and grinding and snapping and thwapping at me. Bizarre.

I don't want to know

Well, I did want to know until I asked someone what they were for and he didn't know. They were situated in the toilet paper/hygiene/feminine products aisle and there was no writing on the package to indicate exactly what they were for.

So I picked up the packet and read it from top to bottom. Still no enlightenment. But look a little closer!

Each of these is individually foil wrapped for your protection. And non-toxic! That means single use items in my book, that touch areas you wouldn't want toxicity in! Help!

And in that particular aisle, you get two choices of ah, salient, areas to use various individually packged items. Girl bits or the bits that both girls and boys share.

Lemon fresh scent? Means its meant to cover up some other sort of smell maybe not so pleasant, if you'll excuse the bluntness. Did you see the shape of those rollers? I have heard that corn cobs are shaped approximately like that and useful in a paperless situation.

I was very traumatised. But not quite so much as the hapless late night shoppers who saw me take a full flash photograph of said items, perched next to a truckload of what someone so charmingly calls 'butt-wipe', and then saw me collapse into hysterics on the ground afterwards.

New Year's Eve, 2007

New Year's Eve from the Front Line


We were listening to and watching the fireworks he had promised me would be around. I was expecting Australia Day type fireworks at midnight. Instead, I got a block war, starting at around 8.30 pm.

Apparently Americans think it very necessary to celebrate any festive occasion with bangs, lots of them, preceded by copious intakes of alcohol, topped up by more alcohol during. They're not so big on the light-up-the-sky types of fireworks either. The main attraction when buying your incendiaries is apparently how much bang you get for your buck! These babies are loud. It sounded like a small army had invaded. At one point I was convinced that the Space Needle had been blown up by terrorists but apparently that was just a special firework called a 'Mortar Shell', working on the same principle as its namesake.

I could not believe the cannonade of sound with so little visible sign of glorious light up the sky. Paul tells me that the 4th of July is much worse and that it is a patriotic thing to deafen your neighbours, in the name of enjoyment and kicking out the British, or possibly a combination thereof.

I expressed sadness for all the poor cats and dogs, being forced to endure this on absolutely every American holiday ever. Paul proceeded to floor me by saying "Oh, its okay, most people would sedate them just in case.". So, this put a different perspective on things. There is a little known cultural tradition for Americans, which consists of drugging into sensibility any domestic pet over any holiday whatsoever, just on the off-chance said pet might get distressed. Nothing says 'Happy Holiday' like Rohypnol for the moggie.

Aren't you people glad you've got me to report on these little known cultural differences?

Oh, yeah, Happy New Year, Y'all!