I wish I had a tripod, because I couldn’t keep the camera still to take the photo’s. I don’t know if this was just Australia or if other parts of the world will get to see it tonight. The moon, Jupiter and Venus all lined up to make a smiley face in the sky. I thought Tim was pulling my leg when he told me it was going to happen but sure enough when we came out of the pool there it was smiling down at us.

Ahh. It is just Australia. Here’s what I found.

THE world may be facing its worst economic turmoil in decades, but the heavens are about to smile on Australia.
A rare cosmic alignment tonight will produce a smiling face – or an emoticon, depending on your generation – high over the country.

I don’t know if it’s worldwide or just Australia wide, but for the last 30 days it’s been “Movember”

The month where men all over the place don’t shave for a full month to raise money for prostate cancer research.

I’ll admit, it’s a good cause. But I hate facial hair on my husband. Not for any other reason than when I kiss him I feel like I might be kissing my Dad. A man whom I have never ever seen without a beard.

So when Tim gave me a peck on the lips it was all good. But when he went in for the kill, and stuck the tongue in and all I saw was my Dad…that’s a mood killer right there.

The real issue is, that I LOVE the mo on Tim. I think it really suits him. For the sake of our sex life, and my sanity…that mo’s gotta go!

The Mug Shot.

Dude wont go out all day. He will go to the door like he wants to go out fifteen times but then cowers away like some huge dog is waiting just outside to eat him up.

But come night time, when I feel obligated to let him out because he’s been cooped up all day, he wont come back for hours at a time.

Last night, we figured out why. There are hundreds of frogs out there!

Say “ahhhhhhhhhhh”

This is me in grade prep. Five years old. Wearing of all things, a sailor suit. I think that might have even been my choice.

My teacher’s name was Ms. Reddin. Can you tell?? She was the best teacher and the one who discovered my dyslexia (hey I spelt it right!). She had the smallest hands in the world.

And of course, Tasha. I think we’d been best friends for two or three years there. She’s not as dorky as me, and it’s the same now. I always was the dorky kind.

This is what our BOM said about our area tonight.

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING

For DAMAGING WIND and LARGE HAILSTONES

For people in the Maranoa and Warrego, Darling Downs and Granite Belt and parts of the Central Highlands and Coalfields, Central West, Channel Country and Southeast Coast Forecast Districts.

Issued at 4:16 PM Wednesday, 19 November 2008

This is what we captured. I would have got some photo’s of some very impressive hail if it hadn’t been so dangerous to go out.

These two photo’s don’t show the bolts, just the sky lit up.

Stomping through the puddles in our flooded front yard

And yet we still have this to come.

TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING

for DAMAGING WIND and FLASH FLOODING

For people in the Capricornia, Wide Bay and Burnett, Southeast Coast and parts of the Central Highlands and Coalfields and Darling Downs and Granite Belt Forecast Districts.

Issued at 9:27 pm Wednesday, 19 November 2008.

Severe thunderstorms are likely to produce damaging winds, very heavy rainfall and flash flooding in the warning area over the next several hours. Locations which may be affected include insert MY TOWN HERE, Gold Coast, Toowoomba, Brisbane, Dalby, Gympie, Gladstone, Rockhampton and Kingaroy.

If they’re predicting floods it’s not for the amount of rain we’ve had (so far about 65 mil in three hours) it will be the rain coming down from the hill’s. Tomorrow is going to be a very sticky and muggy and yukky non washing day for me.

But for now, I’m going to sleep, in my NEW bed!!!

And before you get all up in arms about Jaxon being out in the rain and lightening, it’s HOT and MUGGY and he loved it. I remember being a child. I’m letting him experience it all, despite the 300+ hits of lightening we had in an hour! He also had a nice long hot bath afterwards. I remember loving those too.

Dude, as I have said before…is the best cat ever. But right now, and many times throughout every single day, I want to strangle him. Right now, Dude and I are fighting. It’s a battle of will’s and I just don’t think I’m winning.

Dude is an inside cat. Not because I force him to be an inside cat but because he likes to be inside. The only time he really likes to go outside is if WE go outside. Even then, he wont stray much more than a few meter’s from where we are.

So to set the scene. At the old house, Dude was locked in the bathroom overnight, because if I let him stay out then he sleeps on my face and is in to everything he shouldn’t be. But here the only place to lock him is the laundry. But he doesn’t like that, even though he has always been locked up overnight. In the laundry he has put his paw under the door and scratched and meowed to be let out ALL BLOODY NIGHT!

The problem with that is that the laundry is close to Jaxon’s room. While I couldn’t hear Dude from the other end of the house, Jaxon could and if Jaxon doesn’t sleep, mama don’t sleep either. So for the last three nights I’ve had to suck it up and let Dude run free range overnight.

I’ve left the laundry door open with kitty litter in it for him. Because for some reason Dude has forgotten how to hold it for the night, even though for the last year he did perfectly while locked in the bathroom.

So three nights in a row now Dude has slept out. Three nights in a row now I’ve noticed that he’s not used his kitty litter tray. Until the morning. After I have made him go outside with Mexxi.

This pisses me off. This morning I caught him in the act. I caught him before he went and threw him out the laundry door. He walked around the house, through the back door, in to the laundry and tried to go in his tray. So I threw him out again. He walked around the house, came in and tried again. So this time I threw him out and closed the back door. So he came around and meowed to get back in for 20 minutes. When I ignored him he climbed the security door.

I just know that if I don’t let him in to go in his tray, he’s going to sit at that door ALL day and meow at me and scratch at the glass door to be let in. I know that when I finally say screw it and let him in, he’s going to go right in and use the litter tray.

This is only a little bit of a bigger complaint, but I don’t have time to list the other shit Dude’s been getting up to in the last week or two. Don’t get me started on a cat that will not go outside during the day but spends the night sitting at windows meowing to get out.

Under the Laundry Door

At the old house when Jaxon started crawling, Tim and I took the easy way out. What I now refer to as The Lazy Parent method of putting baby gates up so that he couldn’t go where we didn’t want him to.

Jaxon couldn’t get in the kitchen, so the fridge, microwave, pantry, rubbish bin and sink were all out of bounds for Jaxon. He couldn’t get to the bathroom or the toilet, our bedroom, a spare bedroom or the sun room.

He couldn’t get in to the laundry or “Oscar’s Room” and he couldn’t get outside freely. All he had was his bed room, the lounge room and dining room and the computer room.

Just because he was so short, the dining room table was out of reach and so anything that we didn’t want him to see or touch or have we simply put in the rooms he couldn’t get to, or on the table.

Coming here though we decided that we’d let Jaxon be a free range toddler. He doesn’t have access to everything, but not because we’ve put up gates. Just because we think he needs supervision in those rooms.

So the other day he was in our bedroom playing on the bed. Of course this is a novelty to him. Here he can climb our bed, he can open our bed side tables. He can get to all of our mobile phones.

While Tim and I laid on the bed waiting for him to come up and join us, he explored my bed side table. I knew what was going to happen. Because I have a little vibrating egg sitting in my top drawer. You know, the one with the remote control and the cord to the egg??

Well, Jaxon picked up the remote control and immediately pushed on the button’s. The egg part started jumping about and vibrating (dah) all about making a heck of a noise. The sheer look of terror on his face as he backed away from my top drawer like there was a 15 foot snake in it was absolutely priceless!

There are times in my life when I don’t have the camera, but surely wish that I had. I’ll have to try again next week

In the mean time, here’s one I just took. When I say nothing is safe I’m not sure if I am talking about our belongings or Jaxon’s sanity!?!?

Following the Great Ducky Meltdown, Tim, Jaxon and I went on a HUGE Duck hunt.

The store which had originally stocked Ducky no longer ran that line. I asked them to check their storage, their computer’s. I asked them to call other store’s. But no, no more Ducks.

The next best thing, as everyone knows, is EBAY.

The real problem was that the only two ducks we could find were from America, and Australian’s can not use the US Ebay unless they have a US address.

So to my girls I looked. Kelly was kind enough to buy them for me and post them out.

They arrived yesterday, and clearly they were not some other child’s “blanky” (AKA lovey, comforter)

I have a video, which I am yet to edit. It was the first time Jaxon got to see his new Duckies. It involved “rub tests” “touch tests” “cuddle tests” and last but certainly not least, the taste test.

Guess which one is THE Ducky??

This might help a little…

Before you ask, can Jaxon tell??

Yes.

He can.

And those other duckies, are not worthy!

The new Duckies are clean and smell quite nice, they are soft and new. They still sing their “singing in the rain” songs. Most importantly I think, their bum’s just don’t taste the same.