Much ado about what?

It all started innocently enough.

A  comment or two on our Facebook community page about the problem of excessive mozzies on the island and some semi-helpful advice about what to do to eradicate the tiny terrorists – and the poo hits the blender.

‘Mozziegate’, as I like to call it now, began with the aforementioned general discussion and by the time it had finished I was throwing down the gauntlet to one particularly insulting individual who felt that along with telling us that we were all a pack of whingers and we should just suck it up without the aid of harmful repellents and pesticides –  it was also okay to post away hourly after that with innuendos about other chat participants’ mental processing capabilities.

Unfortunately, the above individual is affiliated with the  ’Green’ contingent dotted about the island.  As they are living alternatively in this alternate-living environment, they feel that it is necessary to point out conservation, green issues, living clean and saving-the-whale stuff to the rest of us who should know better.  I, for the most part, ignore them, as I am reasonably aware of what I need to do in life without having it shoved up my nose every five minutes – but like most species, the Green-agitator is at his most annoying with a bit of bravado in a pack, so it has been game-on around here for a while now and my patience is wearing pretty thin.

To be honest, I was doing well to ignore the nutter and had planned on turning the other cheek until the wife joined the fray and asked us all to be fair and nice to each other which, incidentally, we were all doing quite well with until her husband put his oar in.

I told her as much and I also told her that as they knew where I lived, they were quite welcome to come around and discuss it with me personally – my husband would love to meet a man who used the anonymity of  a social networking medium to bully others.

In the scheme of things, however, Shakespeare was right.  It all really is ‘much ado about nothing’ and unless you can grasp that concept, your life will be like the above-mentioned scenario in varying formats.  Get a grip, I say, and write a blog about it all to get it into perspective and get it off your chest.  It’s much more cathartic than a few pills and a square box.  The added bonus is that even though the names have been changed or not even mentioned to protect the innocent and/or insane, it’s nice to get it out there.  You know who you are…. you green-back fruitcake.

Ads of nauseum part 4

Hands up who likes ads?  No takers?  Welcome to my world.

Once upon a time, many light years ago in my dim, dark past – I actually liked ads.  They were informative, colourful and were generally based on –  from a kid’s point of view – something that I either wanted or would like to eat.

As I grew up, so did the technology to impart information and the ways and means a clever marketing campaign could deliver it  into the general consciousness – the consumer.   After a while things just stuck.  Who doesn’t know what the golden arches are or the colour of a coke can is?

Things accelerated with the advent of the Internet and are now moving at warp speed in an effort to keep up with the trends before it’s old news.   Something that was in vogue this week will be superseded within one week to six months, depending on the genre and the popularity.

The advertising world is moving with the times and is everywhere – and in my personal opinion has become increasingly annoying – if that is at all possible.

A couple of weeks ago I turned on my computer and there it was, a separate banner of advertising across my screen as soon as I started up my browser.  My computer is only a couple of months old but somehow those pesky bits of spyware found me again and had attached themselves to my home page.  It took me a while to figure out how to get rid of them – they were like the barnacles on the bottom of a boat – but after a little tweaking and a lot of swearing – I am ad-free on my home page and not attracting any pop-ups for the moment.

Sadly I can’t say the same about Facebook.  I logged into my account yesterday and was bombarded with tits and ass.  When did this happen?  I’d noticed a few double Ds in the background a few weeks ago and thought nothing of it – now they’re everywhere – and jiggling around in little embedded programs.  If I wanted a smorgasbord of big breasts and g-strings shoved in my face – dammit – I’d be typing ‘pornography’ into Google and going from there.

And what about television.  Don’t start me.  I was watching a prime-time show a few nights ago and they managed to squeeze in as many ad minutes as there was television show.  I’ve taken to recording the shows I want to watch and zapping those pesky promotional pratts in two seconds to get back to the aforementioned viewing.  Cop that you denizens of advertising iniquity, I can fast forward your ass in to oblivion any time I want.

Not even the sanctity of the public toilet is safe anymore.  I was recently the victim of two large and gaudy advertisements about the dangers of drinking alcohol at nightclubs and solutions for erectile dysfunction on the back of my cubicle door.  My question to the first advertiser would be why does an occupant of a women’s toilet in a nursing home need to know –  and for the second advertiser – why does an occupant of a women’s toilet need to know?

Sadly, as long as there’s a dollar to be earned, there will always be somebody trying to find a way to sell something to earn it.  I’m starting to think about ways to make some money myself but it won’t need much advertising.  Just as soon as I can invent the personal ‘off’ microchip that you can insert under your skin that banishes conscious advertising within a one mile radius from your personal space with one click – they’ll walk out the door.

Home alone

I recently had to go away to Melbourne to attend a conference being held by the company that I contract my medical transcription services to.  To not attend wouldn’t have been a bad thing but getting some face-to-face networking action wasn’t going to be a bad thing either –  therefore overriding my hesitation to leave my home in the hands of my son while my husband was away.

I was reasonably committed to the impending trip but I was hedging my bets on house sitting with the lady down the road who adored my dogs or the local house and dog sitter who I’d had before.  I wanted to give my son a chance but I’ve got a reasonably long memory and I could still smell the gas after he’d been home alone for one night and gone to bed, forgetting turn the oven dial to off.  I had been lucky in this instance to arrive home early or it could have been a more tragic scenario.  My dogs had had the good sense to go out onto the back veranda but one lit match and it all could have been featured on the 6 o’clock news the next day.  There was also the time he left the house unlocked just after a break-in next door and the case of the missing house keys last seen in his wallet in a Brisbane night club.

To be fair, he has lifted his game a bit and is more reliable now, albeit a little absent-minded at times.  I was starting to come around to leaving him for short stints when I went shopping or overnight if I had to be on the mainland and couldn’t get home.  Since he has moved out and is now looking after his own turf, he has become a little more concerned for the welfare of the things he has bought and paid for.

Two days before I flew out he walked in with all his gear and assured me that everything would be fine, my precious dogs would still be alive and the house would be in good condition upon my return.  I wasn’t entirely convinced of the credibility of that statement after I walked into his bedroom a half hour later and found the cold meats, milk and sausages he had bought from the shop strewn all over the bed and leaking through to the mattress.  He had apparently gotten sidetracked with something on cable and forgotten about them.  Two hours after that he managed to spill cooked rice all over my computer tower which promptly fell through the cracks and landed on my graphics card and my motherboard – after I told him to keep himself and whatever he was eating out of my office.

The final nail in the coffin of doubt was when I managed to get a good look at the laptop he’d been trying to hide from me for a couple of weeks because it was now sporting a round, black hole of nothing about the size of a large heel in the middle of the screen.  Apparently, after I’d told him about one hundred times to get it off the floor or somebody would step on it – he’d stepped on it with his size 12 foot in the dark when he’d jumped out of bed.

It was at this point I decided that yes, he could stay and look after the house for me and babysit my dogs, but I was getting some backup just in case.  The lady around the corner was rostered on to call in and see him the morning after I left and the lady up the road was commandeered to phone him the day after that and drop around unexpectedly in the afternoon on a seek-and-find mission and report potential problems back to me immediately.

I also put my own laptop in the office with the other computers, locked the office up and took the key with me to Melbourne.  As far as I was concerned it was more important to remove the temptation than to have to kill him later on.  I ensured that he had enough to keep him happy with as much cable as he could handle and a cupboard full of as much food he could scoff in three days, to negate the hard-done-by notion that he was inclined to run by me every now and again when it suited him.

In the end it all turned out okay.  The house was reasonably clean, the dogs were still alive and fed and I had only been cleaned out of assorted packets of chocolate biscuits and chips.  He’d had no wild parties, no stupid friends over to trash the place and no breakages.

My husband wants to go overseas for two weeks next year but I’m digging my heels in.  I’m not sure either of us are ready for that yet.

Smell city

I’m into smells.

No, not the bad smells that waft from my bathroom occasionally or from my son’s running socks – I’m talking about the pleasant smells of home-made soy candles laced with essential oils of every brand and variety known to woman.

I consider myself a soy candle connoisseur of sorts.  I have been known to visit a market or five in my time and bravely go forth, seeking out new olfactory experiences to heighten my senses, bring me peace, relax my mind or perk me up when I need to concentrate on one thing at a time.

The better the ingredients, the better the experience.  I’m pretty much hooked.  I’ve tapped into the local market to get the best quick fix when I’m running low, I know the best sites to purchase the premium grade mix for long-term burns and I’m always searching for that new, elusive smell ‘high’ on the web.

My husband, while not a fan and could probably do without the aromatic barrage that assails his nostrils as soon as he walks through the front door, grins and bears it and even accompanies me to the markets when he is in a good mood.  As long as there is an offering of food, a quick beer and no driving he is good for a return trip once a week if the timing suits and he is not away working.

My mother thinks I’m a pyromaniac.  I don’t blame her.  She still hasn’t gotten over me nearly burning my doll house down and blowing up the back shed a few years after that.  She even bought me a set of battery-operated candles that flicker ‘like the real thing’ when you turn them on to save me a future insurance claim.  But there’s nothing more mesmerising than a flickering flame or a scented candle or two to create a bit of ambience after the 6 o’clock freak show in the evenings.

I have different scents for different moments.  My flavour of the week is a vanilla and ylang ylang combination that I am currently burning every evening on the bookshelf.  It’s doing wonders for my head and getting rid of the doggy smells out of the lounge room.

My husband is definitely not a fan of some of my more decadent combinations any more, however, after I accused him, in a fit of pique, of hoarding that delicious chocolate cake that I couldn’t find anywhere when I arrived home late one evening.  After I finished berating him about his weight he pointed out my latest acquisition, a chocolate-pudding-and-cream candle chugging away on the kitchen table.  He had lit if for me so I would have a ‘smell’ to come home to.

While I had to give it an 11 out of 10 for authenticity, I only burn this baby when my husband is out of town for a while and the smell has been replaced by the time he walks in the door again.

Smells are very good at creating memories and sadly, the chocolate-pudding ambience is not one that I care to recreate any time in the near future.

MT trenches revisited, again.

Another week in the MT trenches is now over and done with and I can hear the collective sigh of relief from various family members as I toss my leg over the armrest of my favourite TV-viewing armchair.

It was a rabid week of ranting, swearing, head-banging and turning blue as I threw a few tanties over a succession of misdirected English-second-language medical experts trying to twist an English phrase or two to suit themselves and the diagnosis at hand.

I have seen more new, unexplained and non-existent medical materialisations in the last 5 days than in my 10 years in the medical industry and there were times when I had to restrain myself from adding a few creative phrases of my own to the comments box regarding the sufferings of the end user – me – in this instance.

One mumbling, stumbling so-called expert got so fed up with himself, he shouted the ‘f’ word into the microphone, and my ear, four times in quick succession as he tried to reformat one sentence three times and then gave up, berating himself for his stupidity.  On the entertain-o-meter,  however, I did give him an 11 out of 10, despite his shortcomings, with a 100% rating for inspired personality insight.

My ire, unfortunately, increased towards the end of that same day after tapping away furiously at my keyboard for what had been a marathon episode of stuttering only to have the transcribee stop in mid-stutter to take a phone call of even more epic proportions without stopping the recording.  It was just as well I was not being paid by the minute and it was also just as well I was discreet, as the content of the now stutter-free conversation was worthy of a pornographic link of it’s own on another blog.

I could go into the epic meanderings of a recent Scottish addition and the tight-fisted abbreviator who won’t pay for any more than what is said, even if it doesn’t make sense – but I won’t.  I will say, however, I am looking forward to next week when my favourite long-winded, previously frustrating, yet understandable regulars come back from their summer breaks.

Photomania

Well the day finally came recently for our photo shoot.

I’d had this organised for ages and my husband wasn’t getting out of it, despite his aversion to any type of recording or digital photographic device.  I hadn’t had any decent photos done since our wedding and even those weren’t done by professionals – just family members who were pretty slick with a camera click.

I was determined I was getting a few nice shots before I got too old and wrinkly to have something nice to look back on when I was too old and wrinkly, so the date was set in stone for when I could organise the photographer around my husband’s work schedule.

He grumbled a bit about it all but he grumbled even more when I told him that our dogs were going to be included in the shots, as I had missed getting my last two much-loved dogs in any good photos and I wasn’t prepared to let this happen again.

A bit of preparation was involved in getting myself ready for the photo shoot, ie, makeup, hair, the right clothes and clean teeth but that was nothing compared to the preparation that was involved in getting my precious dogs ready.  My husband ‘volunteered’ for the grooming  job, as I was working  but he was ready to spit more than dog hair out of his mouth by the time they were finished.  I decided to keep a low profile, as the stakes were high and I just wanted us to make it to the photographer’s looking like we all loved each other to create a bit of ambiance.  I could come out swinging later.

I was feeling very pleased with our presentation despite the hair-raising, teeth-grinding ride into hell with my cranky man.  He’d even spruced himself up with a clean, buttoned shirt and a shave which was a good sign, so I let it go.  Just after we got through the studio door Ruby, my Bichon female, threw up all over the floor – no doubt the result of her hair-raising roll in the back seat on the way here.  We were off to a great start.

We got a few good shots in with us and the dogs, me and the dogs, my husband and the dogs and the dogs on their own before my husband began to get a bit twitchy.  He doesn’t like to stray too far away from his environment when he is home from sea and this was a foreign country as far as he was concerned.  I had paid for a two-hour session but he managed to get back out of the photographer’s door to the car in under 68 minutes with the dogs in hot pursuit.

Thankfully, the photographer was fantastic and she had actually managed to fit in some great shots in that frenetic time period – enough to get a few favourites to frame for our walls.

We made the ferry in record time and I dropped him and the dogs off and left him to it.  I wasn’t speaking to him and I was up for a bit of retail therapy to pacify myself.

He’s not off the hook yet though.  I liked the photos so much I am booking in another session with the photographer in a few months’ time with my whole family, including my husband and the dogs.  Let him throw a time-tantrum in front of my mother and see what happens to him.

Holiday fun

Well, the Easter break has come and gone for another year and I can start going about my business as usual.

I’ve managed to notch up another successful yearly mission in keeping a low profile amidst what feels like thousands of tourists as they descend – en masse – upon our sleepy little island hideaway to fish, swim, jet ski, party, make noise, make mess  and become general nuisances in as many places as possible.

My quiet little concrete street winding through the canopies of native trees, wildlife, funny little birds and alternative-style housing has become quite an attraction and sightseers can wander around all day long drinking it all in and having loud conversations outside my house about the merits of moving here and absconding from the rat race altogether.

While I’m all for dropping out of society and becoming a hermit, it’s a bit hard to keep the faith with the menagerie of  families, old folk and groups of tag-along adolescents meandering past our home at ten-minute intervals oohing and ahhing while scanning for some hapless alternative-home dweller who is willing to impart some local knowledge on the pros and cons of island living.

If I manage to find myself in the unfortunate position of being cornered in my front yard in the above-mentioned scenario, I try to manoeuvre my now barking dogs behind a bush and pretend I haven’t seen them.  If plan A proves unsuccessful because my still-barking dogs have worked themselves into a frenzy and have drawn too much attention, plan B will be to tell them about the mosquitoes, sand flies, eccentric nutters and general weirdos – of which I am one – and those funny little birds that wander the island at night in packs and emit a horrible screech not unlike a minion from hell.

If they can get past that helpful advice, I then point them in the direction of the local real estate agent and information queen for any other questions that they might like to ask about the economic viability of living on an island and having to commute to the mainland for work, food, and any other essentials that may be required for the duration of their residency.

Don’t get me wrong, island living has its bonuses.  As I said, I get to escape the rat race.  I also work on the island from home so it’s even less important for me to mingle with the mainlanders, but it’s a different way of life and I like to weed out the foolhardy from the fair dinkum from the word go.

Colour me with whatever brush you want but I have been here after many tourists have departed and seen the after effects of their bad behaviour and disrespect for our environment.  Some people just aren’t worth having as neighbours and I’m providing a valuable community service in regard to the natural selection processes of potential future island habitation.

I can’t wait for Christmas.