"Do Whatever You Like"

I can hear the heater blowing
The smell of lunch hits my nose
Sweetened by the vanilla sugar
On the quince paste
But all I can really feel
Is the knot in my stomach
You left there with your words
A conversation stunted
By offence for who knows what
As you closed off
And twisted out
Leaving this barrier here
You float on oblivious
I brood and dwell and sulk
My mood shifted to black
By your indifference

Mupsta Is a Hero

Well it turns out fixing some of my editing problems with my blog was as simple as using firefox, not safari. Thanks to Muppit for the hint:) Now I can do links again, and I can put things in bold and italics and I can post pictures. Don't know why it suddenly stopped working properly in safari. Never mind. I shall put up some pictures of some yummy chocolates that Matthew and I ate on our anniversary:)

GRRR.... ARRRGGG

I can't seem to fix the problems with one of my previous posts (the "happy anniversary to me and matt" one). It's all bizarre and wierd. If you click on the comments it comes up all bizarre and doesn't show all the comments. It is so frustrating! Plus I don't know where the picture button has gone:( I am so mad at blogger.com right now (even though in the end it's probably my fault). So I shall sit here and hopelessly sing "Grrr.... Arrrg" like at the end of the musical episode of Buffy.

football, babies, clotted cream

I had a lovely dinner the other night:) The quail turned out delicious! We actually used this little portable BBQ thing my sister gave me to cook them. It is basically like a metal bucket (it is that size as well) that has a grate in the bottom that you put the heat beads on and then a grate at the top to cook on. So we put in heat beads and when they were red hot, we threw on some twigs of rosemary to give the quail a nice wood/smoked flavour then through them on the grate and turned them heaps till they were tender on the inside (a little too tender at first - we had to put them back on) and flame grilled on the outside. I almost went to bed after the first 12 minutes of the state of origin as it looked like it was just going to be a very embarrassing horrible game, so when we only lost by 1 point I was practically happy (even though I feel that winning of one of those silly kicking goal things is stupid and that the blues are evil). To be honest, I'm still impressed after the terrible way Qld played (hopefully next time they'll have mastered catching the ball, and by the third game they'll have mastered not having to stop to catch the ball, then think about running and then running straight into the biggest blue player they can see). Plus our team seemed really, really short compared to the blue team! Importantly there were some punches thrown. I know it's bad to promote violence, but I don't think I enjoy state of origin as much if the players seem to like each other.

Yesterday while I was at work Matt made quince paste with the left over quinces (and some extra he bought) which turned out perfectly! We now have HEAPS of quince paste. Today we put it on biscuits with blue cheese and it was delicious!

The actual exciting news is that Matt is an uncle again:) I would put a picture of little Riley up here except that the button for putting photos up is still missing from my create new post page. What's up with that? Anyway, congratulations to Dale and Wendy (Matt's brother and sister-in-law) who are doing an exceptional job of having very cute children:) (This is very good as it takes the pressure off Matt and I to have to have cute children or any other kind of children).

The other exciting news is that for those of you who live in Brisbane, you can now buy clotted cream from at least two stores there. There is a pommy store at Wynnum that says as far as they are aware they are the only producers of clotted cream in Queensland. Plus there is a store in The Valley that sells it. We have a dairy in The Yarra Valley that sells it, but we haven't gotten there yet. This means I don't have to go to England anytime I want to have scones the way they are supposed to be eaten:)

I hope I'm going to be able to post pictures again soon. There seems to be some other issues with my blog at the moment too, so I'm hoping they go away magically on their own.

Happy Anniversary To Me and Matt

Well today Matt and I have been married for 3 years. We have spent the day in a rather leisurely fashion. We went out and ran a few errands. The first of which was to go to the doctors to get a script. Ordinarily I may have left this out of the story, except that the doctor was exceptionally rude! We got there for my 1130 appt at 1125 and waited until 12. Now I expect doctors to be running late, and normally this wouldn't be a problem, except that we had an appt to get Victorian driving licences at 1230 and I didn't want to be late for that. So I politely went up to the receptionist and asked how much longer it was likely to be as I had another appt. She in turn called the doctor, who soon called me in. He then lectured me about how the reason I was late getting in was because I was late getting there. Very politely I informed him that in fact I was early getting there. He then got annoyed and told me that he gets a lot of interruptions during his day from pharmacists and xray people calling him and he didn't appreciate the extra pressure I had put on him by saying I had another appt to go to! I'm in the medical profession. I know he had been sitting at his desk doing whatever he felt like except calling me in prior to me getting there! I know this because he hadn't called any patients in while I'd been there, and he didn't have to send anyone out to call me in. But that's not the point, the point is, he was rude. I didn't go in there all angry about waiting, I'm used to waiting, but he was defensive and angry for no reason. The annoying thing is I did want to ask about a few other things besides the script, but I certainly didn't want to have a discussion with him about anything because quite frankly he obviously had the impulse control of a 3 year old. So I paid my $55 for a 4 minute consult, that I had to wait 35 minutes for, that mostly consisted of the doctor lecturing me and trying to deflect blame and treating me in a manner that I have never treated any patient in, no matter how frustrating or rude they were. And I wasn't rude at all, I held in all my anger until I got to the car. Matthew was with me and can verify that the doctor was a real *&%$. Jerks like him are why people hate doctors. I can only presume it's another case of Victorian service. Which I have found to be shockingly terrible and rude in a lot of areas.

We then went and got our victorian licences (apparantly if you're here for over 3 months you need victorian ones and your QLD licence ceases to be valid).

Then we took a meandering drive and found this nice cafe in what may have been an old post office or something and had some very yummy lunch. As we walked back up the road after this we found a chocolate store selling handmade chocolates and bought some pretty looking chocolates, which I took a photo of but the insert photo icon has disappeared. Bugger.

We are staying home for dinner and cooking a yummy dinner. We bought some quails which we will lightly season and then grill, then we will rest them in an olive oil, verjuice and grape bath. We are going to serve them on a fresh salad of greens from our garden - rocket, lettuce and baby spinach (plus we bought some fennel and will put some shaved fennel in the salad also). On the side we will have a sage risotto. Even though technically this is a white wine meal, we have a lovely shiraz that we bought at the mornington peninsula that we will have with the meal (the place we bought it from was also an olive grove and it is where the olive oil and verjuice came from). Matthew is currently making the chicken stock to make the risotto with. For desert Matthew is doing something arather with quinces where you roast them in a sugary syrup with some vanilla beans for ages and ages until they turn soft and pink. What will we do after this romantic dinner? Watch State of Origin of course! Only victoria sux and is showing a delayed telecast which means that we can't watch it on the tv while listening to the Roy and HG commentary on the radio (which is so much better than the TV commentary). It also means I will be very, very tired during my 8am-915pm shift tomorrow....

Blackbird

I nudged your body with my shoe
But you did not move
The wind rustled your feathers
But your chest stayed still
And the autumn leaves swirled
Dancing a dirge for you
Your body chilled by an icy breeze
That left my fingers numb
And I wished I knew a way
To breathe in you life
And return your feathered wings
To the sky

Red Shoes

Death crept in silently
And became a demanding, bustling visitor
Who left a quiet stain on your heart
That will haunt you forever
And all I could think was:
Is there blood on my shoes?

Mushrooms, Jill Sobule, a crap weekend, and nice nurses

Well in some very exciting news, my mushrooms suddenly had a big flourish of mushrooms. I picked them and got 220g of mushrooms. I think there are still more to come as well. So far we had them in a yummy risotto, and tonight we will have them in a mushroom sauce on some yummy steaks.

I don't generally watch the west wing, but matthew does and I like to keep him company. So what I generallly do is to do sudoku's whilst half watching the show. This is very, very irritating for matthew because I miss a lot and ask questions (a lot of questions because I don't actually know any of the characters or anything). Anyway... The other night Jill Sobule was in it singing one of my favourite songs!!!! If you don't know who Jill Sobule is, you are missing out. She is one of the wittiest, quirkiest singer/songwriters around. On The West Wing she sang "heroes", which is all about how all our heroes are imperfect, it has such lines as "the founding father's all had slaves, the explorers slaughtered the braves" and "T.S. Elliot hated the Jews, FDR didn't save the Jews, all the French joined the resistance after the war" etc. She is very, very cool. West Wing has gone up a notch in my book, even if the only thing I really know about it is that it's set at the white house (although I tend to get it mixed up with Commander and Chief).

In other news I had one of the crappiest weekends at work ever. I was busy all day saturday (13 hour shift and I had a 5 minute break where I scoffed down 1/2 a sandwhich), however in all of the hectic evilness of my day I discovered quite a nice side to a lot of the nurses (admittedly they were the midwives on the ward not in the delivery suite). They were really kind and brought me orange juices and panadols and things like that. However it was still a bad day:(

Must go now, my lunch has been heated up, by that lovely husband creature of mine.

Someone New

Yesterday I had a fun day meeting someone new - Suze and Luka. I'd put a link here if I had any idea how, but I don't so I won't. I feel like once upon a time I new how to do it, but the ability left me. We went to a funky cafe on Brunswick st - The Black Cat. It's always so interesting meeting new people and hearing new perspectives on life, it helps you not to become to narrow minded. Anyway, I had a great time, she's a lovely person, next time maybe some more people will come to Melbourne with her.... ;) I think EVERYONE should come to melbourne, I could call in sick to work and we could have a big party:)

Dreams and Plans

I was reading someone's blog today that reminded me of all the things I wanted to do before I settled down back in Brisbane.... live in alaska, live in a jungle, learn to sail and then sail from place to place working in remote areas from my boat, go back to Indonesia, see Europe, maybe visit america, go to that big blue lake/spa/bath type thing in Iceland that I saw in a magazine once.... etc and I know I can't do them all and I still dream that Muppit and I will sail around the world in a glass bottom boat watching the fish and singing songs. But then sometimes I think "if I don't buy a house soon and plant all my fruit trees, I'll be 80 before I can get enough figs and other fruits from my trees to enjoy them...". It's all such a conflict!

O&G - The sad truth

I don't mean to be negative, as a general rule I have never had any trouble getting along with nurses, but midwives are different. As with any profession, there are nice and nasty ones, but the ratio is slightly different to other nursing populations. It doesn't matter how much I don't interfere, how nice I am, it doesn't matter what I do at all - they hate me because I'm a doctor. I find the best way to make a job a happy job is to be able to get on with all the people you work with, the actual work is not necessarily as important as the people you work with. I think working in O&G is going to be an emotional roller coaster. Right from the beginning the staff misdirected and lied to me. Some of them are outright hostile, whilst some of them are a bit sneakier. Some of them are really quite nice if you treat them the right way, but there are less of them then there ought to be. Anyway...

The problem with my email self-corrected. One day my email just stopped downloading multiple copies. I'll never know what the problem was.

Today Matt and I planted more fennel and we planted garlic and leeks as well. Unfortunately all our various pea plants have developed a disease - their leaves look rusty. I'm quite worried for them. I will surf the net after this and find out what it is and how to cure it. I hope they don't die. Even the new ones have it:( Maybe because we use pea straw in the garden there was something in it that spread to our plants.

Nothing else to say right now. 11 weeks of O&G left (not including the one week in the middle that I work somewhere else)

Cacoon of Numb

Ears grow dull
With hearing
The stranger's voice echoing in yours
My mind recedes
Knowing of
The missing links here
And I am in a cacoon
Of numb
And it is not what I imagined
It is not soft
And safe
It is cold and dark
And stale and suffocating
But it is all I have
This heart-heavy shell

The Tearing Asunder

Once again
Your thoughtlessness
Has plunged our worlds into black
Once again
You are creating hurt
That you cannot take back

And this time where will it end
Will you even be there?
Will you be gone forever
As we swallow pills of guilt and despair?

You've runaway
You've runaway
Socks on your feet
With nowhere to run
You've runaway

What have you left?
- one of them hollow, lost all sensation
- one of them seeking, their own creation
- one of them frantic, all desolation
- one of them separate, in desperation
The tearing asunder begun, they all feel alone

And how do I feel?
I feel everything the way I always have with you
I am powerless, I am frustrated, I am thwarted
I am guilty, I am angry, I am sad, I am sorry, I am so mad,
I am numb, I am blase, I'm wishing for another way
I am grieving for what might be lost

What am I thinking?
I am thinking lots of thoughts I shouldn't think about you
You are sick, you are sad, you are selfish, you are foolish
You are manipulating all of us to your own demise
You have sacrificed too much to make us mad
And this time, we are yet to learn the cost

Belle & Sebastian, mushrooms

I remembered the exciting thing I wanted to write here - I got tickets to go see belle & Sebastian when they are in Melbourne :) Yay!!!!! I am very excited to be seeing them live. If you have never heard any belle and sebastian, well you really must! They have such a quirky feel to their music, kind of this 1960s feel to it. My favourite's of there's if you want to listen to some to see if you like them are: Piazza, new york catcher; dog on wheels; catastrophe waitress; Lord Anthony..... There's just too many of my favourite ones to list them all!

In other very exciting news - my mushroom farm has some mushrooms! I have no idea when precisely they are ready to be picked and used, but I'm of the impression they'll be right there for another day or two, so I'll wait until there are a few and than use them to make a really, really yummy mushroom sauce for a beautiful medium rare steak.

To dance in autumn rain?

As I ramble through this jungle
My brain is dimly aware
That the rain is beating
An insistent rhythm of life
Upon the earth
Struggling to bring
The smell of newness
The smell of freshness
To a world full of rubbish
And not enough dirt

I feel polluted
The desire to put myself
Under that stream of life
That pours from the heavens
Is overwhelming
Will it wipe these cobwebs?
Will I dream again?
Will the words free themselves from my heart?
So that my mouth is not mundane?

But it is not steamy
Like the rain from home
It does not hit with a sizzle on the hot road
It is cold and penetrating
Urging us to remain cozy
And my bones are tired
From the sound of midnight
And I miss my chance
To dance in autumn rain

Eulogy for The Bitch

It is a sad, sad day in Bec and Cecil land. Today, after a few days of attempted resuscitation, we have had to declare The Bitch dead. It was a beautiful 2 months, full of sourdough bread of many varieties - normal sourdough bread, rye, malt, double malt, fruit and spice, malted fruit and spice, pizza sourdough, sourdough pancakes, sourdough flat fried breads. But now that beautiful ride has come to an end. In the prime of her life, when she was souring bread to perfection, The Bitch has died of an as yet undiagnosed condition. A few days of neglect, and unfortunately some other bacteria must have taken a foot hold in The Bitch, she has a distinct acetone smell to her now (as in when you lift the loose lid off the top, you step back and think "nail polish remover"), which we have decided is probably not healthy. We will start another one, but I do feel very sad that this one didn't last forever (as they ought to).

I had something else important to say, but it has left me. Oh well, I'm sure it was only important in my head anyway! If anyone is coming to Melbourne anytime soon, you have free accommodation if you bring me Double Happiness tea from Queenies Tea House. I have been to a few tea stores now, and have smelt an undescribable numbe of teas (and bought a fair few more than I should have) and none of them are quite the same and it is my favourite everyday comfort tea. If Queenies is too far out of your way, I'm pretty sure I'd settle for Monk's blend from Aromas (I think that's what it's called, I've only had it at The Three Monkeys, I've never bought a bag of it). Whilst I have many beautiful teas to drink, I'm still in a small tea crisis.

I had to build another no dig garden the other day. Decided I needed more fennel as I had eaten all the other fennel, and realised I'd run out of room to plant out half of the seedlings that I grew from my Eden Seeds (I think they're organic seeds that aren't hybrids and stuff so you can collect the seeds from your own plants if you let them go to seed - they have a webpage if you google them). I'm hoping it actually gets enough sunlight to keep my little plants alive! My backyard is quite narrow, and has a limited number of spots that get much sunshine.

Happily have managed to post the photo of the spider eating the other spider, it's a scanned black and white film, so you have to imagine the orange front legs!