athena and kimba

normally quite camera shy, it isnt often i get photos of my girls
and, like kids, its almost impossible to get a good photo of them both at the same time

mikael, my little handyman

The toilet roll holder fell off the door last week and scotti hadn't gotten around to fixing it yet,
i think mikael got sick of it cos today he asked scotti if he could borrow a screwdriver so he could fix the toilet roll holder.
Scotti turned to me about 5 minutes later and said
"i'm not sure whether to be proud or worried"
"why" i asked,
to which he told me,
to which i said "oh shit! go check he isnt putting holes in the door or something!"
Scotti came back and said
"you might wanna see this"
so with dread in my stomache, up the hallway i went,
to find..

the boy has surprised me.

ten

10 songs i've been listening to lately..
1. we're in this together - nine inch nails
2. the ecstasy of gold - metallica
3. bulls on parade the new style - rage against the machine vs beastie boys
4. halls of illusions - insane clown posse
5. crank that - soulja boy
6. ride on - ac dc
7. shiny toy guns - le disko
8. all the same - sick puppies
9. an audience with the devil - hilltop hoods
10. dont fight it - the panics

10 things i can see right now
1. my coffee cup
2. my computer
3. the bottle mick found at the resevoir that i put wildflowers in
4. the computer speakers woo!
5. my phone - nokia 6288
6. mikaels last school photo
7. the fishtank
8. the black and blue catepillar with segmented body that kael made at school
9. blue bic lighter
10. the finnish flag hanging above the stereo


10 things in my fridge at the moment
1. dairy farmers thick n creamy yoghurt. orchard peaches n mangoes
2. porterhouse steak
3. broccolli
4. baby swiss mushrooms
5. cracker barrel cheese
6. kangaroo island free range eggs
7. cheese kransky
8. kirks ginger beer
9. cottees coola cordial
10. western star spreadable
10 places i've been lately
1. mikaels ninjutsu class
2. the school
3. jasons house
4. nathans house
5. micks house
6. shopping at foodland
7. the other micks house
8. my mums house
9. fishing at garden island
10. fishing at th port river

10 ways i've been occupying myself during the day lately
1. walking the dog
2. listening to music
3. gardening - so cold outside, brrr
4. watching movies on the computer
5. checking out the midday movie on the idiot box
6. cleaning. fun.
7. drinking lots of coffee
8. ringing scotti for his lunchbreak
9. posting on blogger every now n then
10. dreaming of summer and swimming

10 things i want to do before i die
1. learn to fly a helicopter
2. get my dive ticket
3. import a pontiac GTO
4. learn to ski
5. visit finland where my grandma was from and where my dad was born
6. go to a metallica concert
7. drive a porsche
8. catch a snapper
9. see australia
10. move back to the coast somewhere nice

10 things i would do if money were no object
1. buy an island purely for holiday purposes
2. buy a massive house with 8 acres of land, multiple rooms, an underground cellar and a pool
3. build a goddamn huge shed soley for car restoration purposes
4. negotiate to purchase Daimler - Benz
5. start an abalone farm with tuna farms on the side
6. start up multiple de-salination plants
7. inject massive amounts of freshwater into the muray river
8. buy saudi arabia so i had my own personal petrol supplies
9. go on the most amazing holiday that involves seeing many different places and lots of diving
10. buy a nice boat with all the mod cons and room on deck to carry a little fishing dinghy for shallower areas the boat cant access

10 people i would like to meet
1. david attenborough
2. wilbur smith
3. graeme base
4. the guy that does abcs gardening australia show
5. david letterman
6. james hetfield and the rest of metallica
7. richard branson
8. mark skaife
9. the chick from alias
10. whoever invented the speed detection radar so i could hit them with a tyre iron

10 places i would like to go
1. finland
2. diving in hawaii
3. diving with whale sharks in thailand
4. cave diving in mexico
5. new zealand
6. galapogas islands
7. antarctica
8. great ocean road, vic
9. lake eyre, s.a
10. exploring in the northern territory
10 of my favourite things
1. my photographs
2. my VN
3. my V8
4. my jump in the fire hoodie
5. my garden
6. my fishtank
7. our music collection
8. my quilted black adidas jacket
9. my dragon statues
10. my phone

little ray of sunshine

this is what greeted us as we got out of the car after school.

how to kill half an hour

i have half an hour to waste before i have to pick scotti up from the train station and i could think of nothing else to do that would fit into a half an hour slot, so i shall ramble on..

have you ever noticed how the sun always seems to come out on a monday. just in time for the end of the weekend. hooray.

i think i am sick of this constant cold already (hence the beach homage below) and it is only the first month of winter. even when the suns out, dont be fooled, winter is very decieving. i dont think it has gotten over 14 degrees in the last couple of weeks, correct me if i am wrong.
i always do this (and then when it comes true i complain incessantly of the heat) but i say it again..

i cant wait for summer!HINDMARSH ISLAND

i miss the beach, i miss the warmth of the sun, i miss the cold water being refreshing rather than the rude shock it is now, the beach always seems cold and windy in winter.SCEALE BAY

although still beautiful.

always beautiful.SEARCY BAY

i miss driving with the window down on a warm evening with the warm air rushing through your hair making you sweat, racing to chase a sunset at some beach, some hill.THOMPSONS BEACH

i miss visiting friends and they DONT sit inside with the t.v on because its too cold outside..

mick and hayley dropped in on friday night. was a good night, mick brought his memory card down and we advanced his game of GTA:SA some more. he started a game around the time we started ours. we're ahead :P
so Friday Night In This House was mick and i shooting gangsters, stealing cars and trying to get our brother out of jail lol
while this was happening hayley was doing her best not to fall asleep on the couch and scott was trying to fix the telstar exhaust leak under the carport.
i wont get started on that - went to the mechanic who diagnosed a fucked fuel pump and a fucked flange. (thats a bit of a tongue twister) and said to me he would fix them for $240 yeah?
no. i think not.
scott decided to buy a flange kit (again) and a 2nd hand fuel pump and do it himself at a cost of around $20.
which he thought was better than my idea which involved a jar half full of petrol, an oily rag and port gawler.
he didnt think molotov telstar was advisable considering its the work car and all..

..aaanyway.
been listening to a bit of nine inch nails lately, which i used to listen to when i was a teenager, some of it is total shit but some of it is just fucking awesome! it breaks up the usual.

i should go to the train station, mikael hasnt finished tidying his room yet like i asked him to, surprise surprise.
guess i'll be doing that tomorrow lol

it was like an explosion!

scotti got a flat in the telstar..its a bit more than flat.
id say it is completely annihalated lol

my new thing.
8 for $3

better than a king size, more variety and it lasts much, much longer. woo hoo!

green river

after i picked up mikael from school today, we had half an hour to kill before having to drive to pick scotti up so when i left home i took kimba and a lead
(poor athena had to stay home this time.)after we left the school i asked mikael if he wanted to go for a walk, of course he did, so we drove to a spot near a creek we go sometimes thats sort of on the way. we locked the car and took kimba for a walk along the path that runs along the water.
yes. there was water.mikael loved it, kimba loved it, it was a little cold but i dont think either of them noticed and i got a half hour walk in so everybody won :)i am pleased to see how green everything is (even though its a little overgrown) its definately nice to see everything so alive when it all has been so brown lately.picked scotti up at 4 and mikael had ninjutsu at 6 so now were having a little dinner before putting the boy to bed.
ciao!

cats and fishing. hmm. thats an idea lol

hmm. where do i start. right now its and as much as it is sunny outside and looks warm, it isnt. so im sitting here trying to talk myself into taking the dog for a walk.

That cat still hasn't left. i dont talk to it. i dont pat it. i sure as hell dont feed it. yet it sits on my vehranda, meows at my door and stirs up my dogs by waltzing around the gates. i dont know what to do anymore. i am not a cruel person, i actually hate cruelty, yet it got to the point last week where it was trying to get in my door everytime it was opened, like it lived here. if you went out to put the rubbish in the wheelie bin without shutting the door it would sneak up on the vehranda while your back was turned and be in the door before you knew it. which would lead to yelling running races. winner was the last one out the door lol

i got that sick of this obnoxious, righteous behaviour that everytime it meowed at my door i would throw a saucepan of water on it. cold of course, im not that mean. though with the cold weather lately cold water wouldnt be my choice. this for a week straight yet it still wont go away.
im tempted to ring the council but i know they will come and collect it (and the stupid thing wouldnt run away) and it would be put down at the animal shelter. which i cant bring myself to do. most desirable outcome for this situation for everyone involved, would simply be for the cat to fuck off to wherever it was 6 weeks ago. omg i just looked up in my blog when the damn thing arrived and it was nearly 2 months ago! and all this time i fed it that first whiskas singles packet ONLY. im not feeding it. the bugger is NOT starving so it is obviously eating somewhere why does it keep coming back??? grrrrrrr!!!!!
im just going to keep ignoring it like i have.
and it will keep sleeping under my tree near the front door @!#$%*@#!$%*&*!#!

on another note, i went fishing not the weekend just gone but the weekend before.
did an all nighter it was fantastic, i havent done a fishing all nighter in years! got a call about 7 o clock from a mate who said he was fishing and did i wanna come down, at that point i wasnt sure what was happening so i said id let him know. scotti didnt want to go cos he thought it was a bit cold and he didnt want to get sick, which i was a bit spewing about so he told me to go anyway. at first i didnt want to go without him but then i thought why not, so about 8:30 i packed up my shit and went to meet mick. when i got there, it wasnt just mick but his brother as well.
we didnt catch much at west lakes and mick wanted to try somewhere else so we packed up, mark didnt want to keep fishing so he went home and we went to garden island. was pretty good at garden island, the bream were on the bite which was fun, bit of a challenge to hook the bastards though, they were being real finicky. after a while we ran out of bait so we packed up and went to the on the run on grand junction to get more bait and a hot coffee to wake us up (at this point it was about 3am and there werent many people around so we left the telstar at garden island and went in his car, i had horrible images of rocking up back there and the telstar would be gone lol)
the coffee was awesome, 5 star, definately recommend on the run cuppacinos! and we had more bait hurray! so we went back and kept fishing, the fish had fucked off cos we hadnt been there feeding them for the past half hour,
and it started to get cold about 4:30 but we persisted until about 6am when the cold got a bit much so we retreated to the car to sleep "until it was daylight so we could keep fishing"
when we woke up it was about 8:30am and the water looked amazing, so still and calm, i love that time of day, especially when youre putting the boat in for a day of fishing. i wish i had taken a photo come to think of it, it was beautiful.
mick reckoned he was tired and wanted to go home to sleep and as much as i tried to talk him into staying he wouldnt, so me having no bait of my own had to go home back to reality. and that was the end of my fishing all nighter. but i had a great time and am keenly planning the next one, waiting for some nice-ish weather again so its not too cold.
i just looked outside and mate, its windy.
ill go make a coffee and see how i feel about that walk i think. bye!

awesome!

check out this hair!!i want!i miss my dreads and this would be a way of getting them back without totally fucking up my hair more! (and causing scotti to leave me lol)

update

wow it feels wierd doing this...
i havent contributed to any of my blogs for about two weeks now, my internet spazzed out in a major way and then my modem decided to shit itself.
i must say, in the beginning i thought it was going to be a really traumatising experience, but it really wasnt!
the first couple of days were awkward, i would get home in the morning after taking mikael to school and feel so lost! i felt i had nothing to do and i was so bored, but then i forced myself to do things i havent done in a while and it went from there.
I have been walking athena every second day, an hour walk at a time, sometimes closer to two. ive been walking mikael to school instead of driving, takes us 40 minutes to walk there in the morning, then i have to walk home and walk back later to pick him up so i have been quite active, doing around 160 minutes walking a day just with the walk to school, not to mention the dog as well!
i feel much more motivated and awake ive also been doing alot of gardening, potting bulbs and lillies, ive pulled out the long grass from around the pond, my pot plants, the carport and the fencelines out the back and ive also done along the gates and the house out the front, so now i just need to do the fencelines out the front and get scotti to mow back n front and its all done! hurray..
the shed got finished sunday, there is stuff only in the very back of it now, stacked neatly. we put the v8 in the shed and my vn back under the carport (it was sitting on the back lawn for about a week because we had to quickly make space one night for the v8. the guy were buying it from wanted it out his yard so he wasnt tempted to thrash it drive it - while i mention that, we are a 1/4 way paid now..)
i cleaned out the dog kennel big time, puppy dogs were getting rather smelly and it was getting to the point where our nostrils were assualted every time we let them inside, so basically the whole house and yard has had a major clean out and re-arranging festival, which has really has added so much positiveness to the mood of the whole household.

On another note, scotti is really enjoying his job, he likes the people, he likes the work, he likes that its not a million miles across town. the only thing he doesnt like is theres never any overtime available. nothing like putting in overtime to really boost the budget. im so proud of scotti, he works so hard to provide for us.
i have enrolled mikael in ninjutsu classes, im hoping he will make some new friends, learn some new skills, i want him to appreciate training in a sense where he has to apply himself and concentrate, which requires self discipline. not to mention the discipline he will learn from Sosai. maybe this will help to refine his respect, concentration and confidence, and by starting him young, if he enjoys it so much, he might get really good by the time he is a teenager which would surely be good for his confidence. he had ninjutsu last night, i sat in and watched and i could not believe how much he listened and payed attention. he did everything he was asked to do, i was totally amazed.
so weve all been quite busy over the last two weeks, its also been nice weather on and off, probably the only reason we have been able to get so much done around the place.

anyway, signing off..***