Category: State-of-Being

Unproductive Day

Having it. Any Comments I might’ve wanted to make on my daily reads … thrown down the gurgler by WP.

Sorry, #Content Catnip. Sorry, #exacticablog. Sorry, the two or three others of you. Why do I have to be logged in to make a comment? Why isn’t that stated before I start typing? All my words, disappeared into the ether again.

Not that my words are of an earth-shattering quality that must be saved at all costs! Not at all. It’s the loss of a possibility to communicate that I regret.

An unproductive day represented by a stripped shrub.

There’s so much gate-keeping happening everywhere. I’m blaming that on the lessening of good online communications. I suppose it’s a good thing for face-to-face socializations. We’ll have to go back to them out of sheer frustration.

Called my Night and Day Pharmacy to repeat a couple of scripts, to be ready for the drought during the public holidays. They called me back, said they couldn’t repeat e-scripts only paper ones. Huh? Why not? Didn’t have any problem before? I called the Doctor’s surgery. Can’t get an appointment to iron the problem out till next week. Cutting it very fine again. I have 20 days supply remaining … gets me to the New Years long weekend. Nerve wracking.

But, I will say, a kind receptionist said she would call the pharmacy to see what was what. She’ll be calling me back. And she did, and she fixed the problem. I will take Reception@HealthCarePlus a bunch of flowers tomorrow. They are wonderful!

“Take the flowers on Monday,” my sister said. “They can enjoy them all week then.”

Will do.

I’m trying to sew/embroider the tiger’s face. I need something like ‘button yarn’ for the whiskers. Button Yarn? Usually I use ordinary sewing yarn doubled for sewing on buttons. I’ve never heard of Button Yarn. The ears are too big and they still have to be stuffed. I may need to re-open the neck seam and stuff the face more.

Tiger, looking kind of dumb without ears or eyes and with hanging threads.

Bleh … that reminds me of Linus.

Caterpillars

Six of these little critters are chomping down on my bolwarra bush. Not their usual food as far as I can make out.

Reading Helen Scwenke’s & Frank Jordan’s Create More Butterflies tells me that an Orchard Swallowtail will lay her eggs on any tree or bush in the citrus family.

Yet I thought I saw a large blackish butterfly in this bush. The caterpillars somewhat resemble the instars on p33 and there is a very small sandfly bush beside the bolwarra.

The caterpillars as you can see have a much closer resemblance to those of the Fuscous Swallowtail on p20. There’s only the lime berry mentioned for host plants for thst variety of swallowtail.

Here’s one doing its weird standing-up-in-the-sun move. Never seen that before.

The whole event is pretty exciting and was one of the reasons—the possibility that butterflies would visit my balcony garden—that I decided on a level two apartment rather than, say, a level seven place.

To top it all off, me getting an in house companion in the form of a cat is what made it possible for butterflies to visit. Before I got Moggy noisy miners, a pernicious sort of bird visited the balcony despite my efforts to keep them away, and clean out all insects good and bad. They even had a go at catching my fish. Moggy keeps them away and the caterpillars are safe.

The Same Old New Rules

Rather than becoming habits, after about two weeks of mindfully performing new rules and routines, I start to take my attention off them.

Fatal! Because I’ll start to forget them. And I bet nearly everyone one of you have the same issue.

So … a new rule I’ve been trying to make into a forever habit for over four months now, is getting mobile while using the mobile phone. IE walk around the house while talking with friends and family.

Yesterday did I do that? Hardly. Spent most of my time lounging on the couch despite hearing hints, along with the call, of busy diligence in the background.

Life admin calls need a different strategy. They usually need reference to paperwork and online forms. Although there are often lengthy waits involved, you can’t walk too far from your desk.

Such as when I called the RTA (Residential Tenants Authority) about the return of my rental bond pertaining to my unit in Coorparoo. Which I left back in March this year, about eight and a half months ago.

I was 23rd in line to a call center I was informed by a ‘kind’ call center robot. My heart sank. But I was updated every 60 seconds.

Surprisingly it only took about twenty minutes for that call center to work through that number of callers. The matter is not yet resolved, but since it was Friday afternoon, I arranged to call back next week.

My social caller a few weeks back … when I walked around the house and did almost 1000 steps toward my daily goal … and I discussed whether Brisbane will be ready for its go at hosting the Olympics eight years from now.

He doubts it. I wouldn’t know. He’s in building and has not seen any of the promised new venues even begun. Though eight years seems plenty of time, a really big venue will take that amount of time and all the available expertise all by itself.

We decided there should be a new rule. Any city taking this on–hosting the Games–should use what venues they have. Is it really necessary for the Games to grow bigger and bigger? A howl of protest would go up, I’m sure.

There. I’ve reminded myself to get back on the path to getting more active. Maybe this time I’ll remember to keep going!

Sunset at Coorparoo

After the Knitting …

After the knitting comes the sewing and stuffing …

But, because of the intricacy of the knit, there can be no sewing the whole thing together and then stuffing it.

Here I’ve sewn the two body-sides together at the spine, sewn up the four legs and stuffed them, and was about to start on the tail when I discovered the underside must be done before the back and tail.

The written instructions?

The written instructions are terse. I’m having to guess and gamble in places. Such as, pay out a front paw so the underside will stretch far enough to take in the backleg on that side sufficiently.

Because of course no hand-knitter will ever achieve exactly the same tension as another hand-knitter.

Cat Diary 18

Tonight, the first time ever, I finally understood what the old woman wanted me to do when she said, “Come on! Come on!” in that high voice she uses to encourage me to do something good.

Just recently she started watching Jackson Jupiter, or some such name, to get a few clues about what we were trying to do.

Training she calls it. I don’t see the use yet. But as I said today I played along. I came. I walked beside her and every four or five human paces she gave me a kibble and patted and stroked my back and said, “Good girl! Good girl!”

Whatever, you know? Just keep the kibbles coming. We went twice up and down the house and then I swung into the den, stood waiting for my supper. The other half of the kibbles that means.

How many days has it been that she gave me a kibble just for looking at her? About a month worth of days.

Anyway, the training is worth it from my end. I just picked up 24 more kibbles than if I’d been stubborn and ignored her entreaties.

This is me on a day when it is sweltering outside and we have the aircon going inside.

Skewed in Favor of Who …?

How is it even a fair election when people can choose whether or not to vote?

Everybody of the voting age in Australia is required to turn up to vote. You can of course mess up your ballot papers, but people are far less likely to do that it seems, than in the US where you can just not turn up.

Hope the Republicans have stacked the wings with a few strong influential honest stalwarts. Could be they’ll be needed.

The article below is the most uplifting thing I’ve read so far about the election results …

https://substack.com/home/post/p-151265805

And just a couple of hours later, one of my favorite magazines opened with this article …

On excitable neurons and how we craft our future